Finance question- family of four soon to be five, is this a sound plan?

We make 52,000 a year in iowa, we pay 130 on our car loan a month still owe 2,200, 44 a month on a tsp loan still owe 6,200, 366 on a separate tsp loan we still owe 820, and about 200 a month to the army on a debt- husband was deployed daughter got sick he had to come home and ran out of leave time and kept being paid with the knowledge we would pay back and I have absolutely no idea what we still owe they keep heaping fines on top of it as they dont feel we are paying it back quick enough. 90 goes into a retirement account every month 24 into another retirement account every month. We pay on our credit cards every month (under 2,000 total) We also pay 240 a month ins, and 37 a month for life ins, we have about a 115 dollar bill for phone cell and internet, house is 600, electric gas water 150, We also took out a loan to pay part of our hvac system -2700. We have a closing cost refund of about 3,500 coming in a few weeks and one of our tsp loans will be paid off in 10 weeks.

With the 3,500 I planned to pay off 1,000 of the credit cards(the other thousand wont accrue interest for another 9 mo) then pay off the Hvac loan. Next in December I would take out a new tsp loan(I have to wait 60 days after the other is paid off) at a low rate of 4. something depending on the daily market. I would take out 9,000 and pay off everything except the army and use any left over for new beds for all 3 kids and my husband and I (if nothing is left over we will wait till tax time, last year we got back about 8,000 something all together) then I would make the payments I would otherwise be making towards everything to the house loan to get it paid down quicker (half) and half into savings as buying the house depleted our savings to zilch(we put 10,000 down) we still owe 62,000 as in the last couple months about 800 has went to capital(we are on a fixed rate of 6.25 and I am paying what I can extra) Then when taxes come back hopefully we can use them to buy a better vehicle

Sounds like a plan, but instead of putting extra toward the house, I would first replinish the savings account for emergency funds. No sense in putting all of your extra money onto the house to save 6.25% (which isn't really what you are saving - see more below) and then having an emergency (appliance failure, car repair, etc) and having to take out a high interest loan to pay for that (which sounds like is what happened when you had to replace the hvac).

After you get about 3 months of income into the savings account, invest the rest. Maybe start a college fund for each of the kids or add additional to your retirement fund. The house is at a low interest rate, which ends up being an even lower rate once you consider the tax deduction on the interest. It reallly makes no sense to pay off a mortgage early unless you have an outrageous subprime interest rate.

After you consider the tax deduction, your 6.5% interest rate is really only about 4.75%. You can put your money in a savings account - ing direct is currently almost 5%. I have several money markets that are 5%, and CD's right now can be over 6%. So don't "earn" 4.75% on it by paying additional on the mortgage when you can and invest it and earn 5% or more. Also, in case you need emergency funds you don't want it tied up into the house where you don't have easy access to the equity.

By keeping the mortgage, you are essentially using their money to make money for you. And, that is how one becomes rich in this country. People don't get rich in this country because of their salary and people don't get rich by scraping pennies and shopping at Walmart. They get rich by investing wisely. And, there is nothing wiser than using someone else's money to make money for you.

you'd be better off clearing your credit cards & loans & not taking out new ones before paying off any mortgage - generally mortgages have lower interest rates than loans etc. try to stay out of debt - you only end up paying more money and getting yourself in further debt. its not worth it

I'm sorry... I'm not going to read all that. Too many numbers and whatnot.

Instead, I'm going to give you advice to HELP the situation.

First off, as my father told me, you can adjust to pretty much any financial situation needed. It is like being quarterback of a football team. You have people coming at you from all angles, you had a plan, but even if that plan isn't available, you will still have options.

First I would open an Excel spreadsheet and make 5 or 6 columns. The first column would be the name of the transaction (paycheck, car loan, etc). The second colum would be all your assets (paychecks, lottery winnings, birthday cards, things that are positive). The third column would be your expenses (all your bills, groceries, etc). The fourth column will be column 2-3+ the cell above (aka a total column). The fifth and sixth column would be your estimations of all these transactions.

The goal of creating this spreadsheet is to make a budget of what you need to do to get by. By laying it all out like this, you can come up with a plan (your estimations) on what you need. Then, you will have to track all of your ACTUAL amounts in the 2 and 3 columns. You can review this for additional financial tinkering.

If you need any help configuring a spreadsheet like this, I could help you. I have records of spreadsheets tracking everything from my monthly cashflows, calculating my investments and debts, and I've even programmed a GPA calculator for my girlfriend (converts letter grades to numbers).

Good luck!