Paid My House Off - No One Else to Tell

[CindyBlue]

We paid off the property last year. It was quite a moment for us.
But it got better and better over time as the realty sunk in that as long we can pay our taxes, no one can tell us to leave. We will always have a safe place to be. This feeling is just priceless to us!

 

[SloHan]

Congratulations on being Mortgage free at a young age! It took 21 years to pay off mine at age 53.

 

[ModestNestEgg]

Congratulations! My personal cutoff is that anyone who pays off their mortgage before they turn 50 is in the upper echelon when it comes to managing debt, but you're so far ahead of that.

 

[kgtest]

I have not had any debt to pay off in a long time, but youse guys make me want to have ice cream too, so I am going out to the fridge now.

I had ice cream tonight because I had to deal with 2 sick kids under the age of 4 screaming/crying all day for the past two days. AND I still have >120 payments left on the note.

DW and I don't share all of the same financial goals, but one we do share is that the note needs to be paid off before either of us throws in the towel.

NICE work OP! Keep it up.

 

[hilltide]

Long time silent member/long time lurker - 37 Years Old



Well, today I made the final payment on my house. Felt mostly anticlimactic if I’m honest. What’s funny is the biggest feeling I had was one similar to a #showhole (look it up if not familiar with the phrase) after I updated my spreadsheets and made the final entry into my amortization schedule/payment tracker. It was like, you’ve been updating this spreadsheet for years, now what are you going to do?



As much as I want to hold a party and shout from the rooftops, it just doesn’t feel appropriate. I understand that I’ve been blessed with employment that is better than many (and don’t want to rub it in peoples faces), but I’d still like a little credit for the financial discipline my wife and I have stuck too!



Yes I would have been ahead just investing that money in index funds, but no debt was truly the biggest goal of mine.



Right or wrong, my approach has been to firstly max out 401k/IRA’s/HSA (all of them) and secondly pay down the house. Now I will replace the second step with index funds in taxable accounts. Never had auto debt.



Thanks for hearing me out. Thanks for all the great content I’ve read here over the years.



Time to refresh my goals and targets

Congratulations! Yeah. It was for us too at 42 years old. We would have made more investing but we always wanted to be debt free as well. . As many have mentioned the feeling gets better. There is really no financial stress now. Money will stack up very quickly for you now. Enjoy!

 

[eryx]

Congratulations! I was in a similar situation near your age. It's a great accomplishment and a great feeling!

 

[MBAVisionary]

Congratulations, glad to see all of the discipline and hard work paying off for you both. At your age especially that is almost unheard of! I can totally relate with hitting different investment goals. A few friends I have are struggling financially, some of which is due to their own decisions. Still painful to watch.

 

[Badger]

Well done! Quite an accomplishment at such a young age. You have a right to be proud of such a major milestone.

It took us until we were 45/46 years old by making double payments. Afterwards we used those payments for our 403b investments since we were used to living on the rest of our income for so many years. We are now "living in high cotton" for our needs.



Cheers!

 

[teetee]

When I was 37 I had less than 40k net worth and just got out of the probation period of my first full time job.

After 7 years I celebrated my first 1m NW milestone but still no house. A house requires too much work that I don't want to do so renting is my way of procrastinating.

 

[Markola]

When I was 37 I had less than 40k net worth and just got out of the probation period of my first full time job.

After 7 years I celebrated my first 1m NW milestone but still no house. A house requires too much work that I don't want to do so renting is my way of procrastinating.

Not to detract from the OP’s choice and major accomplishment, but I can only imagine our wealth today at 56 had we rented for all these years and put the money in stocks that instead went into maintenance and improvements on the 4 houses we’ve owned. We made the choice to own, though, so it’s on us.

 

[teetee]

Not to detract from the OP’s choice and major accomplishment, but I can only imagine our wealth today at 56 had we rented for all these years and put the money in stocks that instead went into maintenance and improvements on the 4 houses we’ve owned. We made the choice to own, though, so it’s on us.

To be fair, those houses' total value also increased over the years so you will need some spreadsheet calculations to get the actual gain or loss for both scenarios.

 

[skyking1]

I was going through old images on the server last night and found the screenshot of when we paid off our mortgage

 

[Rocky mtn high]

Congrats, it is really true “I owe, I owe so off to work I go”

 

[FIREarly]

Right or wrong, my approach has been to firstly max out 401k/IRA’s/HSA (all of them) and secondly pay down the house. Now I will replace the second step with index funds in taxable accounts. Never had auto debt.

Great job, congratulations!

Next step, use the winning lotto numbers from the show Lost: 4,8,15,25,47 and 42