Welcome to Thinking Ahead, GoAhead Finance’s Newsletter that provides information to educators for all things financial. GionMatthias Schelbert has been a high school educator for over 15 years and has worked in real estate finance for over 30 years. The purpose of this newsletter is to bring financial insight that helps you, the educator, make the sound financial choices during your career in education so you can retire on your terms. Having helped hundreds of clients in his mortgage career and assisted dozens of educators in his district to financially plan, he wants to share his knowledge to help all educators like you. Using real estate, investment portfolios, insurance opportunities, and union programs to build a solid financial foundation for retirement, his insight allowed colleagues grow their net worth and be in command of their retirement. It’s never too early to begin saving, and whether you are a Tier I or Tier II educator, making the right choices today will pay off when it comes time to retire. We hope that this newsletter will help you better understand your financial situation and help make choices that gets you onto the path that meets your long term vision.
Bi-weekly vs Monthly Payments
Where I teach, we get paid biweekly… so how could I use this scenario to my advantage and shave up to seven years off of my mortgage? Biweekly payments! If you slowly reduce the principle of your mortgage over time, those payments have a huge ripple effect on the back side (or end) of your mortgage. Let me show you how it works.
When to Refinance… What Most Lenders Don’t Tell You!
When we own property, we receive offers to refinance on a pretty consistent basis, but how do you know if a refinance is the correct move? The mortgage industry earns its money from transactions, so the more one completes, the money they earn. Because of that setup, how do you know if a lender really has your best interest at heart? I hope that this post will shed light on how to analyze your own situation and extract exactly if a refinance is right for you!
The Time Value of Money
When investing, there are three main components: Initial Capital, Rate of Return, and Time. If any of these variables are “large”, then the result is also large. Not all of us have large amounts of money to invest, and no one can predict the interest rate on your return. Time, however, is the great equalizer. In this post, I’ll show how time can work for everyone, including you!
Update Your Retirement Plan to Succeed
Welcome to the 24-25 school year! At the beginning of every school year, we always plan to make updates to what we teach, how we convey our information, and reflect on ways to better connect with students. When it comes to your financial planning, now is also the best time to adjust what you are doing to plan for the long term. This post highlights some strategies you can implement now to reap huge benefits win the years to come.