After going a full year without an entry, I think it's time to officially close the book on this blog.
Before I sign off, here are a few final comments, in no particular order.
First, not having a monthly house payment is a great thing. I highly recommend it. After paying rent for seven or eight years and then making mortgage payments for almost a decade, I can say without hesitation that I would much rather live with no rent and no mortgage than under any other scenario. Our largest monthly expense now is Savings, followed by Food.
I don't regret for a second that we chose to pay off the mortgage instead of funneling our extra "mortgage-killing" cash into investments. We spent just over three years aggressively paying down our mortgage. Now that it's gone, we have a lot of extra cash in the monthly budget to use for saving and investing. And that's what we are currently doing. I can live with the hypothetical "lost opportunity" of not being invested in stocks (or bonds or whatever) during those 40 months. It's much better to see that our long-term liabilities are $0.
Since April 2011, we've grown our savings by more than $60,000. We also fully funded our IRAs using another $10,000 ($5,000 each) and bought a new (used) car -- paid with cash. This is evidence of the increased cash flow that comes from two full-time incomes and no mortgage payment.
We've mostly retained our more-frugal habits that we picked up when we began the mortgage-killing project. On the occasions that we do splurge, we don't feel like we're destroying the monthly budget because we're currently saving more than 50% of our take-home pay.
We are truly homeowners. We are not home-borrowers. We are Home Owners. And we earned that title.
So what's next? I admit, it was tough to get a new focus once the debt was paid. We began dumping money into savings without any clear plan of attack. It took about a year of living in the new mode before we started seriously discussing our next move. But I'm not going to go into detail here. I'll be continuing the journey on a new blog. Perhaps you will join me there.
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5 comments:
Your posts have been motivating. My soon to be wife and I want to also pay off the mortgage, we have a road ahead of us. Best luck of with the new blog, death to the job, hopefully you will find a career of your choice after. Thanks for also directing us to networthiq, it has proved to be a useful tool to see progress. With Esteem J
I just recently found your blog and have read the past entries with great interest. My family is on the path to mortgage-free living, so thanks for the motivation. Loved all the number crunching detail too! All the best with your new blog!
Very nice indeed.
I definitely agree – not having a monthly house payment is a great thing! You were pretty quick with getting rid of your mortgage payment in just 3 years. 3 years! You must have a great mortgage-pay-off strategy. That’s definitely a nice piece of inspiration and motivation for homeowners who are having a difficult time dealing with theirs. We are homeowners, not home-borrowers. Nice! :]
Congratulations that's an admirable milestone to have achieved. I must say I admire the tenacity and focus with which you attacked this goal and the one set out on your new website (which I will be aiming to follow after the closure of this one!).
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