Freelance writer

Seychelle Thomas

Principal: This is a portion of your payment that goes straight toward reducing your balance. It’s typically a very small share of your payment at the start of your loan.
Interest: This covers the cost of borrowing your loan. It’s usually the largest share of your payment for the first few years of your loan.
Escrow costs: Most lenders require an escrow account to stow away cash for property taxes and <a href=\"https://www.credible.com/home-insurance/how-much-homeowners-insurance-do-i-need\">homeowners insurance . You’ll pay money into this account each month as part of your mortgage payment.

7+ years as a financial consultant.
3+ years in personal finance.
Certified credit and lending expert.
Work has appeared on MSN, GOBankingRates, Bankrate, and Yahoo Life.

Bio and experience

For over seven years, Seychelle Thomas has been a personal finance writer. She specializes in debt consolidation, budgeting, banking, credit cards, and lending and is a certified credit and lending expert through Nav Technologies.

Seychelle worked at PNC as a regional coordinator until shifting her focus to freelance writing and contributing to Kiplinger, LendEDU, CreditStrong, Lendio, and FreshBooks. She is also a contributing writer at GOBankingRates and a credit card writer at Bankrate. Her work has been featured by MSN, GOBankingRates, Bankrate, AOL, Yahoo Finance, NewsBreak, American Military News, Miami Herald, Yahoo News, and Kiplinger.