A couple months ago, I added another little widget to my total debt spreadsheet: It subtracts my monthly average amount going to principal(A) from my monthly average debt payments (mortgage payments included)(B) and divides it by my monthly payments. It looks like this: (B-A)/B. This gives me a sense of the percentage of my debt payments going to interest and fees. For the longest time, it was up over 50%.

Granted, there's the escrow and mortgage insurance and the fact that my 30-year mortgage is only in its sixth year, but still, that really sucked to see that more than half my payments were just going to maintaining my debt.

Now, with AS's newest student loan payment going to more than just interest, and with my personal loan's principal going up, it's down to 48.59%! That is a huge jump and makes me feel much better about my debt payments!

I don't look at that formula frequently, because it's just one line at the bottom of the spreadsheet and plus, it was depressing. So I just randomly noticed it while glancing at my spreadsheet after updating my numbers. I guess it's still a depressing percentage and will start bugging me in a couple days, but right now it's making me really happy because of how awful it was to see it up over 50% before!

Oh yeah, and I haven't even figured in the fact that NT's mortgage interest rate got dropped AGAIN, this time to 1.49%! That drop will be reflected at the first of the month, when I see what portion of his payments go to principal.