Why does 'further borrowing' always mean permanent extra mortgage accounts?
It is possible to consolidate mortgages with Nationwide, in some circumstances. Quote from their website: It is possible to consolidate different mortgages and other debts such as personal loans and credit cards. However it does depend on your individual circumstances, including the exact type of loans you want to consolidate and whether you are still in a special deal period I, personally, would be amazed if you couldn't get them all in one mortgage without changing provider. But... I wouldn't be at all surprised if they forced you to have this one mortgage as a new mortgage, rather than adding balances to an existing one. My reasoning is as follows: Coming at it from a different angle: whatever there was that required your further borrowing to be in new mortgages, rather than added to your existing mortgage, will also preclude your multiple mortgages being added to one of your existing mortgages.
You say A #1 priority, that implies multiple #1 priorities. Long term or medium term my goal is to pay off the mortgage. But short term paying off the mortgage isn't a concern. Some people are comfortable with a mortgage during retirement, others aren't. When I was younger the mortgage concern was not being overextended. I didn't want to be in a situation that dictated my financial decisions because I needed to make a big house payment. Being overextended is no longer a concern for me. Now I am looking in more detail about how my retirement will actually play out. How to handle my actual retirement income sources. For me, not having a mortgage simplifies my planning. It depends on how much equity you have in your home. Scenario 1: Your home is worth $100K, and your current mortgage is for $100K (or more which means you are underwater.) In this case you can't get a 2nd mortgage because: That being said, you can use different portions of equity in your home as collateral for multiple mortgages, as long as none of the equity overlaps, but you may need permission from the primary mortgage bank first, for example: Scenario 2: Your home is worth $100K, and your current mortgage is for $80K meaning you currently have $20K in equity. It is possible to get a 2nd mortgage or home equity line of credit for $20K. As a side note, if your loan agent is telling you to use a different bank, it sounds like she is trying (and willing) to do something shady. If you are in Scenario 1, I'd find a new agent. With an investment, you tend to buy it for a very specific purpose, namely to make you some money. Either via appreciation (ie, it hopefully increases value after you take all the fees and associated costs into account, you sell the investment, realise the gains) or via a steady cashflow that, after you subtracted your costs, leaves you with a profit. Your primary residence is a roof over your head and first and foremost has the function of providing shelter for yourself and your family. It might go up in value, which is somewhat nice, but that's not its main purpose and for as long as you live in the house, you cannot realise the increase in value as you probably don't want to sell it. Of course the remortgage crowd would suggest that you can increase the size of the mortgage (aka the 'home atm') but (a) we all know how that movie ended and (b) you'd have to factor in the additional interest in your P&L calculation. You can also buy real estate as a pure investment, ie with the only objective being that you plan to make money on this. Normally you'd buy a house or an apartment with a view of renting it out and try to increase your wealth both due to the asset's appreciation (hopefully) and the rent, which in this scenario should cover the mortgage, all expenses and still leave you with a bit of profit. All that said, I've never heard someone use the reasoning you describe as a reason not to buy a house and stay in an apartment - if you need a bigger place for your family and can afford to buy something bigger, that falls under the shelter provision and not under the investment. You could classify the mortgage as a different assets class and then create automated additions and deductions to the account as deems fit. other than that quickbooks online is a bit fishy so it seems. The underlying investment is usually somewhat independent of your mortgage, since it encompasses a bundle of mortgages, and not only yours. It works similarly to a fund. When, you pay off the old mortgage while re-financing, the fund receives the outstanding debt in from of cash, which can be used to buy new mortgages. "they apply it to my next payment That's what my bank did with my auto loan.  I got so far ahead that once I was able to skip a payment and use the money I would have sent the bank that month for something else.  Still, though, I kept on paying extra, and eventually it was paid off faster than ""normal"". EDIT:  what does your loan agreement say is supposed to happen to extra payments?" Yes, for a credit card, payments in excess of the minimum will go toward principal. This is not always the case with a mortgage, where prepayments of extra principal need to be explicitly stated. "replace ""new member acquisition"" with ""new loans"" and see how true your statement isn't.  ...but more fundamentally, there are two factors that exclude banks from ponzi scheme membership:  1 - the thing they create is not in finite supply (they create money at a 10 to 1 rate by encumbering future labor proceeds).  Technically, one could argue that future labor proceeds *are* the thing that does have a finite supply.  I've never seen **anyone** post an estimate of the maximum supply of future labor proceeds (which is totally adjustable via inflation).  2 - they lend at a higher interest rate than they pay.  Technically, all they have to do is keep the time value of money under control with respect of inflation over the duration of loans and they're good." The loan agent surely knows that having a combination of loans greater than the value of the property (less some margin) is illegal, but also impossible.  Your first mortgage, mechanic's liens, tax liens, and so forth are a matter of public record.  In most states the records can be viewed online, by anyone, for free. The title search prerequisite for getting the second mortgage looks beyond the low hanging fruit for things like aborigines claims for parcels of land that include your property.  The loan agent is trying to sell you a home equity line of credit. Almost everyone gets one after building up some equity.  There's often no closing cost and it's not necessary to ever use it.  Keep it for emergencies. Actually the extra payment comes off the back end of the mortgage. So technically the mortgage is ony reduced one month.  However, banks always recalculate the amortization table when the last payment is paid or a payoff amount is requested. There is a difference between the two situations but that is a minor amount. The 30 year note offers flexibility that the 15 does not. Pick one, save money-15 year, get flexibility-30 year. "One way to think of the typical fixed rate mortgage, is that you can calculate the balance at the end of the month. Add a month's interest (rate times balance, then divide by 12) then subtract your payment. The principal is now a bit less, and there's a snowball effect that continues to drop the principal more each month.  Even though some might object to my use of the word ""compounding,"" a prepayment has that effect. e.g. you have a 5% mortgage, and pay $100 extra principal. If you did nothing else, 5% compounded over 28 years is about 4X. So, if you did this early on, it would reduce the last payment by about $400. Obviously, there are calculators and spreadsheets that can give the exact numbers.  I don't know the rules for car loans, but one would actually expect them to work similarly, and no, you are not crazy to expect that. Just the opposite." I had a car loan through GMAC and extra money was applied to future payments.   At one point, I received a statement telling me I had 15 months until my next payment was due because I had not marked extra payments as going to principal. Second mortgages were also a popular way for home buyers without a down payment to borrow 100% of the money, but avoid certain extra fees if they borrowed all the money from a single lender. For example, to borrow $100,000 on a house would incur something called PMI (private mortgage insurance).  So to borrow $100,000 to buy my house, my payment might be $800/month, but I would have an additional $100/month of PMI to pay.  (These numbers are totally made up and not based in math in any way) So instead of that, borrows might get a first mortgage for $80,000 so they don't have to pay the PMI and get a second mortgage for the difference.  This can be beneficial if the second mortgage payment is less than the PMI for borrowing 100%. As far as I know they aren't as easy to get these days, like any loan you need to be qualified and I think 100% financing is probably harder to come by.  The negative connotation is no worse than any other loan.  I am personally against borrowing money, but if you had big medical expenses, major home repairs or some other emergency I could see it justified.  Probably not for a big vacation or for new car though. "Your first question has been answered quite well already. To answer your second question: ""If you pay extra, do you want the extra to go toward the interest or   toward the principal?"" This gives the consumer some flexibility to decide how additional payments are applied. It might seem like a no-brainer to always apply extra payments towards principal - that way, the interest amounts on future payments will be lower and (if you're billed a fixed amount each month) more of each regular payment will then be applied to principal, shortening the term of the loan. However, while it would mean spending more over the life of the loan, there are certain advantages to applying extra payments towards interest†. The main advantage is that it pays your account ahead and means you don't have to make another payment as soon. You could use this strategy to give yourself a buffer of several months, so that if you should ever run into financial hardship you can stop making mortgage payments for a while without the risk of foreclosure. † Note, in most cases it's more likely that you are simply paying more without specifying to the lender that it should be used as principal curtailment. I haven't seen cases where you can explicitly ask the extra to be ""applied toward interest"". In this situation the funds would be held until you've provided enough to cover one or more monthly payments in full, at which point your ""next payment due"" date will simply be extended.  Another advantage is that the funds that are being held (not due yet, not allocated toward any specific payment, maybe held in escrow) may be refundable to you, upon request. This would depend on the lender's policy. Some will permit refunds of credit balances that go beyond what is necessary to cover the current month's bill. Whether you apply extra payments towards principal or not, it makes little difference to the bank. Any additional payments received increase their immediate cash flow. The cash can be reinvested immediately by them into whatever they are currently focusing on." "&gt;The odd thing about primary school education (that I hear from talking to teachers) is that the materials used in the classroom are all bought under some sort of district wide (or even state wide, in the case of texas) decision for which program to use.  It didn't used to be that way, but yes, that is pretty much how it is done these days... basically ""central planning"" and ""one size fits all"" as I said.  &gt;For reading they generally include a set of books (or single book) with a sequence of things to be taught. Teacher's who've been teaching for a long time will know which series has useful properties for teaching the material. They might refer to them by names, but it really just comes down to a set of materials and sequence of introducing material.   And of course none of that really has ANYTHING to do with actual ""reading"".  &gt;When one teacher says to another ""I used $X to supplement the required $Y"" it'd be like a software engineer saying ""I used a hash map instead of a map for that case because it had better performance for the use case"" - there's a fair amount of baggage in the statement, but another software engineer would understand the differences and know what tradeoffs were being made.  No. That's a rather poor analogy.  A better analogy would be: ""We used to use SAP, but then we got bought out by XYZ corporation, and now we have to build everything around Oracle."" (And the reality is that both choices are crap.)  &gt;As to the ""Master's in Reading"" - there's a lot of goofy degrees offered through the Education departments at state schools. A large part of it is because the union pay scales include things like education level. They tend to be equivalent to any terminal masters program you'd find in other subjects - including MBA. ""Take these classes - part time and summers over the next 3 years, and if you pass them all, we give you a piece of paper that says ""Masters of Education - Reading"" or similar. It comes down to something like 45 credit hours with a focus on something.  It's also a result of the ""requirement for continuing education"" to maintain Teaching licenses/certifications.  And yeah, it has created a lot of ""Underwater Basket Weaving Experts"" -- the problem is that they ACTUALLY *SINCERELY* BELIEVE that they have some significant ""expertise""... even though it can *not* be shown in their results (if it could, they would be ""all about"" merit pay).  &gt;I actually doubt that. It's going to come down to the sets of materials they have available for teaching. Some work, some don't. The structure of the system discourages improvisation, unfortunately, and the teachers often feel that they have their hands tied.  Young, beginning teachers feel they have their hands tied -- those types either leave teaching, or they succumb to the system.  The teacher in question (with the ""Masters"" in ""Reading"") succumbed to the system long, long ago.  And that teacher's whole concern was really just a ""brand X"" versus ""brand Y"" thing -- the teacher knows ""brand X"" and so can (and probably does) ""teach"" it while half-asleep.  Most long tenure teachers tend to get in a comfortable ""rut"" -- comfortable in no small because it is not only familiar, but also because it then requires little work to update their curricula or prepare anything new -- disrupting that (i.e. switching from ""brand X"" to ""brand Y"" is therefore nearly always met with either opposition or grumbling &amp; grudging compliance).  **It is INDEED ""the system"", but one must keep in mind that it is the ""teachers"" (collectively, in aggregate over time) that have essentially created that system.**"