Member-only story
Kickstarting “30 Years in 30 Days”—Decades of Mortgage Wisdom in 1 Month
30 years’ worth of savvy wisdom about house mortgages — one year per day for each of the 30 days in November!
Related and recent articles
(Full list of “30 Years in 30 Days” Series
articles available at bottom of this article.)
• 30 Years in 30 Days • Year 10: A Tale of Two Eras — Home Buying in 1972 and 2023
• 30 Years in 30 Days • Year 9: Visualizing Savings — Mortgage Charts that Matter
• 30 Years in 30 Days • Year 6: Mortgage Power Play with a Single $100 Extra Payment
• 30 Years in 30 Days • Year 3: Early Extra Payments Are Magical
• 30 Years in 30 Days • Year 2: Rapid Progress on the 30-Year Mortgage
• 30 Years in 30 Days • Year 1: Starting Strong on the Mortgage Journey
• A Friend Texted to Ask “Who I Favored” for 2024 butHated My Answer
• Has U.S. Healthcare Really Become a Mob Protection Racket?
(Subscribe to receive email notifications when I post new articles in this series and on other topics.)
Introduction
TV pundits on finance shows often talk about how expensive monthly mortgage payments have become over just the past 2 years as interest rates soared from 3% in October 2021 to over 8.3% today in October 2023.
(See articles like “The Sales Pitch for an 8% Mortgage: Buy Now, Refinance Later — for Free” (WSJ) or “Homebuyers and sellers: Get ready for mortgage rates at 8% for a long time, top economist says” (Fortune Magazine) for examples of this.)
That is true. They are correct. Monthly payments have increased by a lot.
To be precise, monthly payments increased by 66% over the last 24 months on 30-year a fixed interest mortgage for $431,000.
A 66% increase in just 2 years is a big jump by anyone’s standards.
- October 2021. Interest rate = 3.0%. Monthly payment = $1,817
- October 2023. Interest rate = 8.3%. Monthly payment = $3,019
- Increase in monthly payment for…
