Nickel over at FiveCentNickel has accomplished what I would really like to do. He has paid off his mortgage in about 7.5 years. You can feel the excitement and satisfaction in his writing as he explains how he did it. I’m impressed.
We are also paying additional towards our mortgage since it’s really the only debt we have. My goal isn’t quite as aggressive as Nickel’s but I do intend to be able to pay the mortgage off when my daughter enters college. We’re off to a great start!
Currently we are paying an extra payment each year by participating in our credit union’s FREE biweekly payment program. (They don’t charge a fee for it like most banks). We are also paying additional blocks of money towards the mortgage each month once we see how much we have left over after all the bills are paid. The critical part of this is that our bills only account for less than 50% of our take home pay. That leaves us with a sizeable chunk of cash to put in savings and towards the mortgage each month.
The other part of the equation for us is that we own (no mortgage) the lake house that we built a couple years ago. We have no debt against that and, even in this market, estimate that we could sell it for about $150K. My goal is to pay the mortgage down far enough that we would always have the option of selling our second home so that we own this one outright. Our primary house is much larger and is located close to the city where all the jobs are so we wouldn’t want to sell the house we are in and move out to the lake, although it’s always an option and would make us mortgage/debt free instantly.
Anyway, go check out Nickel’s posts on being debt free and how he did it. It’s well worth reading!