One of the easiest tricks in the book to pay off your mortgage faster is to make bi-weekly payments instead of monthly payments. Any mortgage calculator will show this and, since most people are paid either bi-weekly, it makes a lot of sense to match your mortgage payment schedule to your income schedule.1
Here’s another method my wife and I are using to pay down our mortgage quicker:
In short:
Everything flows into our main bank account: payroll, other income, gifts, etc.
That same bank account makes all the bill payments, all the transfers, etc.
Our mortgage is held at a different financial institution than our “operating” bank account.
The mortgage is paid out of a bank account held at the same institution as the mortgage.
Transfers are made every two weeks from our operating account to the “mortgage” bank account.
Our mortgage bank account is not easily accessed; we do not have a debit card for the account, we do not have quick or easy online access on our phones to the bank account, and the bank account has usage fees if we complete any transactions other than mortgage payments.
Based on the graphic, you can probably figure out the rest of the story. Our mortgage payment is $XX and is paid out of the mortgage bank account every two weeks. The transfer we make from our operating bank account to the mortgage bank account is $50 more than the required mortgage payment. And all these transfers are pre-authorized transfers which require signatures and paperwork to change.
After a year, it’s easy to see how a balance of $1,300 builds in that mortgage bank account. At the end of the year, we take the $1,300 and make an extra, principal-only mortgage payment. And then we start all over.
On a $250,000 mortgage, this additional $50 in the bi-weekly transfer dramatically cuts down on mortgage costs in the long run. As per the Government of Canada’s Mortgage Calculator, the $1,300 additional annual payment results in (assuming a 3% interest rate on a 5-year term amortized over 25 years):
Savings of $13,191.55 in interest costs over the course of the mortgage.
Mortgage payoff 35 months sooner.
Savings of $407.52 in interest costs over the course of the first 5-year term.
“OK, Josh. Great idea,” you say.
“But why not just make your mortgage payment higher? Clearly you can afford more.”
Aha! Great question.
The point is that you are locked into a lower required cash outflow on a bi-weekly basis than if you made larger mortgage payments. Larger mortgage payments will pay off your mortgage faster and will result in greater interest savings in the long run, to be sure.
However, should a crisis strike, having a lesser required cash outflow may be nice to have. That extra $1,300 is exactly that: extra. It’s not required. You could use the $1,300 and invest it in the stock market. You could save it in a Tax Free Savings Account and use the money to purchase an investment property down the road. If you have children, you could put the money into an Registered Education Savings Plan and receive the 20% RESP governmental grant on top of it.
Whatever you choose to do with the $1,300 is up to you. Extra mortgage payments simply provide a guaranteed return.
I was updating all our personal finances the other day and completely forgot about the fact that we have an extra $50 transferred every two weeks. Seeing the accumulated balance was a nice little revelation; there’s nothing quite like the rush you get when you stumble across “found money”.
And I figured, perhaps, this could help some other folks to get ahead of their mortgage a little quicker.
In fact, I mostly think it’s best to match your payment schedule to your payroll schedule for investment-type purchases in general. If you are paid in big lump sums, then pay for things with cash! But if you are a wage-earner or are paid on a consistent schedule, it makes a lot of financial sense to use debt to make the investment, pay some tax-deductible interest, and use the asset to earn a return greater than your interest rate. ↩
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Following Revenge of the Sith in 2005, there was little in the way of new Star Wars storytelling for fans to enjoy. Most of the Star Wars story, at that time, was built out in the form of video games and children’s TV shows.
That’s how The Clone Wars began: a children’s show with a snippy little Padawan that was not only not mentioned in any of the official live-action Star Wars films, but also more annoying than any work Hayden Christensen ever pulled off as a live-action Anakin. Ahsoka Tano began as an annoying, know-it-all child, and stood as a shining example of Lucasfilm’s unbelievable reach to build out its story.
At the time, it didn’t much matter to me — any new Star Wars story was a consumable Star Wars story, and I had to defend myself over and over for watching a show made for eight to twelve year olds.
The show evolved fast over the first four seasons. Ahsoka grew quickly, became less snippy and annoying, and new elements of the story were being unlocked. Anakin’s fall to the dark side in Revenge of the Sith still remained fairly unbelievable to me, but it was evident Lucasfilm and The Clone Wars writers were working on creating more reasons, more variables, more factors to explain the fall of Anakin Skywalker.
Then there were the clones. The live-action films paint the clones as one gigantic Jango Fett, one of the penultimate villains of the prequel saga. When Commander Cody takes off his helmet to hand Obi-Wan his lightsaber, it’s hard to see any sort of relationship between the “former” Jango Fett and Obi-Wan. This is one of the biggest underlying failures of the prequel trilogy — Lucas simply did not do a good job in explaining how and why the Jedi were so easily wiped out by Order 66.
The Clone Wars builds out the stories of the clones — who they are as soldiers, as men, as friends. Each division has its own unique set of personalities, with captains and commanders you come to see as central to the story. Rex and Cody become pivotal characters in The Clone Wars story — Rex more so than Cody — and hats off to Dee Bradley Baker for magically imbuing multiple personalities into multiple clones with the same voice. Of all performances in The Clone Wars, perhaps Baker’s performance ranks at the top.
The Clone Wars ceased to be a children’s show with the return of Darth Maul. Like the cash grab reach of giving Anakin a Padawan, the return of Darth Maul felt like The Clone War’s weakest point at the time. Filoni and team handled Maul’s return well, however, building him up from a crazed lunatic lost in his path to, perhaps, the most brilliant villain in the entire Star Wars story. By the end of The Clone Wars, you simply don’t know whether to be rooting for or against Maul.[1]
Today, after 12 years of defending myself for watching a “kids show”, The Clone Wars has come to an end. An end worthy of the show’s entire history. “Victory and Death” is masterfully, masterfully put together, with pain, suffering, triumph, foreshadowing, and reminiscent tones spread throughout the episode.
The last four episodes of The Clone Wars are the best Star Wars stories made in the last 40 years.
I want to reiterate that — no single film, spin-off story, book, or comic that has launched after Return of the Jedi can match the depth, beauty, and story of the Siege of Mandalore saga. The Siege of Mandalore is, in my opinion, essential viewing for any person who calls themselves a Star Wars fan.
The fall of Anakin Skywalker, the rise of Emperor Palpatine, the fall of the Jedi, and the downfall of the clones are the absolute core elements of the prequel trilogy, yet they are the parts of the story so poorly built out in the live-action films. The Clone Wars build out each of these backstories in a wonderful way, and somehow add perhaps the most intriguing characters in the entire Star Wars saga in the form of Ahsoka Tano and Maul.
I am not fully convinced of Disney’s handling of the Star Wars franchise so far. The sequel trilogy is by and large a catastrophic failure, with the lone bright spots coming in a spin-off film and two television series. But if Disney can somehow replicate the magic it instilled inside of these last four Clone Wars episodes, then Star Wars is in the right hands for a long time to come.
Congratulations to Dave Filoni and the rest of his team. The Clone Wars will stand forever as the best Star Wars work of this generation.
One last note: I think it’s very notable that the only character in this sketch not seen in any live-action films is Ahsoka Tano. Her character ranks as one of the top three most intriguing Star Wars characters ever — I’d put only Darth Vader and Maul ahead of her — and most Star Wars fans have never seen her, let alone heard of her. I suspect the May the 4th Star Wars Day artwork suggests there’s more to come for Ahsoka Tano in the future.
Without a shadow of a doubt, everyone wanted Ahsoka to team up with Maul to fight their way off the Venator. ↩︎
Unread 2 is my new favourite RSS app for the iPad. It might be my favourite app on this new iPad, period.
A new iPad means going down the path of finding as many app replacements for your mainstay apps as possible. Right? I can’t be the only guy who constantly does this when a new device enters my life.
Reeder has been one of my go-to apps since time immemorial. Scrolling back through my App Store purchases page reveals a Reeder purchase back in 2010, shortly after Instapaper. This makes Reeder the second app I ever purchased.1
Pretty impressive for an RSS app to be one of my main picks a full 10 years later.
But I do admit, Reeder has become stale for me, especially on this 11-inch iPad Pro. For two reasons:
Reeder’s current iteration of keyboard and trackpad support just aren’t — trackpad support in particular requires a physical click and drag to swipe back on a menu.
Reeder’s 11-inch iPad Pro portrait views just don’t speak to me. There is no format or layout in Reeder that provides as comfortable a reading experience as I’d like. From dark mode themes to how information is laid out, I’m just not drawn to reading anything in Reeder.
In fact, Unread 2 came away with my subscription money after all was said and done. I’m deeply impressed with the latest version of Unread due to a variety of reasons, the least of which is the incredible reading view.
Unread 2’s RSS Service Support
Unread 2 supports the whole range of RSS service providers, from Feedly to Feedbin, Feedwrangler, Inoreader, and more. I’ve been a Feedwrangler subscriber since the service debuted (which was shortly after Google Reader was discontinued), but even that service has grown stale in recent years. Feedwrangler hasn’t been updated with the same types of modern features found in Inoreader and Feedbin, and the $20+ annual subscription fee also stands higher than a few other RSS services.
So, I will be discontinuing my Feedwrangler subscription this July, and will instead be opting for Feedly’s free RSS service and an Unread 2 subscription. If I have $20 or so to throw at RSS each year, I’m going to throw my money at Golden Hill Software in 2020.
Unread 2’s Beautiful Themes
I’m not exactly sold on Unread’s prolific use of Whitney. Whitney is prevalent across the web (you’re reading it right now!), but I’m no longer convinced it’s the very best font for reading longer-form content. I’d prefer a serif myself.
But visually speaking, Whitney is beautiful, and it showcases front and center inside Unread’s light and dark mode themes. The reading views show off the font in a few different sizes based on your preferences, but other reading variables like line height, column width, and image size are all locked into place.
By keeping everything fairly proprietary, Unread’s themes are able to colourfully come to life. Back in Unread 1 days, I was a “Chippy” guy. That time has passed though, and I now prefer either “Day” or “Chicken White” by day and “Night” and “Blue Train” by night. The true black theme found in “Black” is one of those trends I could never got onboard with, despite the true black “Black” app icon being the best icon available in the app.
There are a whole range of themes for you to try and you’re sure to find a theme that suits your eyes no matter your lighting and preferential situation. Whichever theme you choose to go with, Unread 2’s use of Whitney will remain beautiful to look at, albeit ever-so-slightly compromised in the reading department.
Unread 2’s Gesture System
Way back when Jared Sinclair first designed Unread for the iPhone, he made it clear that Unread was designed to be used with one hand on the iPhone. If I remember correctly from one of his blog posts, he designed the app to be used in one hand while feeding a baby with the other.
This gesture control system continues its way on the iPad, but in a slightly different format: Unread 2’s gesture controls are best used with two hands.
Let me explain.
The 11-inch iPad Pro is the best iPad size and aspect ratio for reading; I’ve already explained myself at length about this on The Sweet Setup. In general, I find myself using Unread on the iPad in portrait mode with two hands. As you move through the feed lists, it’s incredibly easy to swipe left with your left thumb and use your right thumb to choose from any of the swiped-in actions.
The swiped-in actions have grown in length since Unread’s earlier days, but their usability hasn’t decreased by any stretch. You can now pin your favourite read-later service right to this menu, or you can change ordering, change themes, or mark all articles as read with the tap of your right thumb.
I always thought RSS apps like Reeder and NetNewsWire were the superior apps for triaging RSS feeds. However, this two-handed gesture control system is the most efficient, most comfortable, and most genuinely fun way to triage RSS feeds that I’ve found to date.
Unread 2’s Utilization of the Latest iOS Technologies
I would have never expected Unread to be one of the App Store’s leaders in adopting the latest iOS technologies. RSS as a whole is an old, traditional way of reading and has generally been slow to adopt any new iOS technologies. Unread 2 has bucked that trend, making it one of the leaders on the App Store.
For one, Unread 2’s adoption of proper trackpad, cursor, and swiping support are heads and tails ahead of its competitors, especially when using the new Magic Keyboard. Two fingers to swipe back is so much easier than having to click the trackpad before swiping to go back. It’s amazing how terrible this specific gesture is to pull off with a trackpad inside apps that haven’t been properly updated.
Unread 2 also has Split View and Slide Over support. Slide Over support isn’t the most helpful for an RSS and reading app in particular, however I foresee Split View being really neat in Unread’s future. By tapping (or clicking) and dragging an article out of the article list to the right or left side of the display, you can push Unread into Split View mode, with the article loaded on the side and your article list loaded in the other. A quick swipe of the Slide Over apps to put them in a 33/67 split provides you with Unread’s great reading view beside a nicely spaced list of articles.
The only hiccup I’ve found with this Split View implementation so far is the ability to swipe a second article into the Split View window after you’ve finished reading. Once you’ve finished reading an article, you actually have to close the second instance of Unread in order to put a new article into Split View (or you have to navigate back to the article list in the second instance of the app). I’d like to see Golden Hill Software somehow allow you to keep the article list on the left and tap and drag articles into the right instance of the app, one after the other. Perhaps this is an iOS limitation. Perhaps it’s an issue with the app. Whatever the case, I think it’d be great, and it’s the one hiccup I’ve found with Unread 2 so far.
Wrap Up
TLDR; A new iPad meant I needed to try out all the latest and greatest RSS apps. I landed on Unread 2, changed up my RSS subscription services to ensure I was utilizing my dollars correctly, and I’ve read more RSS articles in the last week than I had at any point in the prior year.3
Unread 2’s themes are beautiful and consistent. Unread 2’s use of gestures — specifically two-handed gestures — is actually the best way to both triage and read RSS articles. And Unread 2’s adoption of the latest iOS technologies make it not just a leader in the RSS app category, but in the App Store as a whole.
I know some other friends that went down the path of looking for the best RSS reader for their new iPads and many (many!) folks continue to come back to Reeder. I think I’m now an Unread guy, after 10 years of Reeder use.
