I did a big, scary thing today....at least for me. I changed my mortgage to a bi-monthly payment automatically deducted from my bank. Auto payments make me uneasy just because I feel like I'm not in control of it. But, the benefits of doing this FAR out-weigh that. First off it will force me to pay even more attention to my spending, always a good thing. With splitting the monthly mortgage into two payments I'm actually able to pay more each month on it which means the loan will get paid off earlier. The projection with what I'm paying now is it will cut 7 years off the mortgage. Nice....but not good enough for me. My goal is to pay off my house in 15 years so I will be working for the next year to get into a position of being able to up my payments even more. The third benefit is in 10 years I will have gained an additional $26K in equity that I wouldn't have had. All in all, a smart financial move that I've known every since I bought the house I needed to do....just had to get serious about it.

I still want to start a home business too. Something else I really need to get serious about and start doing some planning for.