Principal balance, in regard to a mortgage or other debt instrument, is the amount due and owing to satisfy the payoff of the underlying obligation.
Amortized mortgage loans automatically pay a portion of each monthly payment to the principal balance with the rest being paid as interest.
An interest-only loan does not require any monies be paid toward the principal balance each month, but is allowable.
Famous quotes containing the words principal and/or balance:
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry]. He said he didnt know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidates coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (18591964)
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
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