To those who have passed the MFW finishing line...

pawlala

There are a lot of people still striving to be a MFW (including myself) so the question I want to ask to those who have paid off their mortgages is....

How long have you been MF and what kinds of things have you done or been able to achieve in that time without having a mortgage?

I hope to share my MFW story so far so if anyone has any tips on how to start a thread and what kinds of info would be beneficial to myself and others please share!

Regards,
Paul

george_jetson

pawlala wrote: »

There are a lot of people still striving to be a MFW (including myself) so the question I want to ask to those who have paid off their mortgages is....

How long have you been MF and what kinds of things have you done or been able to achieve in that time without having a mortgage?

l

I've been mf for almost a year. To be precise my mortgage is 100% offset, I just haven't taken the "technical" step of clearing it yet. I view it as a line of credit safety net that would cost me only a minimal rate of interest if required.

I promised myself a year of spending after becoming mf, only then after 'calming down' would I reassess my savings and work priorities.

Travel's my thing and over the past year I've been lucky to visit Vegas (4 times), NY, Miami, Tokyo, Denmark and Poland. Even so I've also managed to accumulate a respectable savings pot without even trying.

However I would say that the main advantage of being mf is the incredible feeling of freedom it gives. I don't feel chained to my job anymore. Although I have no intention of doing so, the knowledge that I could just 'walk' if I wanted is incredibly liberating.

My year of 'spend, spend, spend' is almost up and it's time to start thinking about saving for the future and whether I want to cut my hours at work. However I may decide to have another year just living it up and put these decisions back another year.

I think I should stress that many of the 'good habits' I picked up on my mf quest I've kept on with. I don't have a car, cycle to work, make my own bread and get my basics from Aldi. I would say I'm still quite careful with money day to day, but enjoy the occasional 'splurge'. Now I'm able to have more frequent and extravagant splurges.

Just to stress - the material things don't really matter. The sense of wellbeing one gets from being mf is quite indescribable and impossible to put a price tag on.

hth

weezl74

thank you george_jetson for your very motivating post. Did you achieve being MF without finding this place first? What inspired you?

pammyj74

I would love to know what MF people are doing and can only imagine the great free liberating feeling it gives you.
I am so determined to do my best, almost to the point it is addictive but I have always been frugal with money anyway.
Would love to be able to travel when the kids leave home etc and not have that bind of having to work full time, actually live a little. so for now I am knuckling down (altho still living a bit ) and hoping the rewards will be mindblowing.
Saying that you never know whats around the corner!

george_jetson

My "lightbulb moment" was getting a fd offset account and realising that my mortgage was just a debt to be cleared rather than a 25 year millstone.

I had been on my way for sometime before discovering this site. It was helpful to find a bunch of like minded people.

As pammy notes you never know what's around the corner. I think it's important not to get obsessed and to make sure you have plenty of money allocated to enjoying yourself.

mumcoll

We should be MF by the end of this year.

We had a good income (around £40,000 with benefits and company car etc) until 2002. Husband lost his job and has had jobs for less than £20k since then. (Currently on £14k!). We downsized and had a mortgage of £32k in November 2004, when I lost my job too. We opened an offset account and have tried to overpay most months. We lent our son (to pay his debts off) £15,000 with our endowment money and he's been paying it back (on and off!) since 2005. I found 2 part time jobs, earning about £13k combined. We've been really careful, no overseas holidays. But we have had to replace our boiler, bathroom and car over the past few years. However, we are so excited that we are nearly 'there' and won't have a mortgage. Our plan is to put the same amount into ISA's for retirement. We are 52 and 53.

black_taxi_2

george & mumcoll great posts

gives us all hope

pie81

We've been mortgage free since May this year - I must admit that we achieved this only partly due to our own savings, quite a bit of it came from some inheritance money.

Although we are MF it is only on a small flat, so we will be getting a mortgage again soon when we buy a house. Being MF for nearly a year has allowed us to save up our earnings to get a bigger deposit for when we buy the house.... which in turn means a smaller mortgage on that house... and becoming MF sooner next time round. It's at that stage that the real benefits of being MF will kick in, hopefully I will be able to take more time off work when having kids, we will both have more flexibility about whether to stay in our jobs/go part time/etc.

In summary, for me the benefit of being MF is not about being able to spend more but about being able to earn less if we want to.

pawlala

sound response pie!

SammyD_2

I have been mortgage free for two years. It has actually been really strange. I had a huge goal, which I achieved. Since then I do not really have anything to show for the extra money. We have a couple of extra pieces of furniture and have increased our savings in a couple of areas. My father in law had a heart attack and we have paid his mortgage until he could get back to work (which has only just happened).

But I feel mostly the money has sort of been frittered away, much to my shame.

We have had piece of mind knowing that in these difficult times we cannot lose our house and we could help out an ill family member. But I feel lost without a goal. So 2010 I need to set some new goals and stop the frittering away.

gjchester

Was mortgate free around three years ago at 35. Let me just say it was all timing, I'm not paid a fortune, I bought my first house at 25 just after the 90's crash for £35K (and it was a 2 bed victorian terrace within 100m of the seafront!). When I moved the first house got sold and the money all put in to the new one so I never had a huge mortgage.

Thing is I can't say we noticed the extra money once we were MF, then again as George_Jetson said travels nice, but we did that with the mortgage so it's wasn't a big thing (we have no kids so we can do it off peak times). We too did Japan, (2 weeks backpacking around) and the first big splurge was 3 weeks in Equador, Peru and the Galapagos islands. We also started saving more, we kept the same sort of outgoings but the mortgage money paid for travel or got saved.

Then last year we decided to move to a bigger house which finally happened in April, property prices were low, and we bought within a month or so of the bottom of the market. the rest of the time was the chain and laywers and we are no longer MF, although to be fair the money saved from not paying the mortgage for a few years and other savings means that we had the luxury of not having to sell in depressed times and we currently rent the old house which covers the lions share of this place's mortgage. We do plan to sell and clear this mortgage once the market recovers, so we effectivly will get a "free house upgrade"
We know if the worst happens we can sell the old house and clear this morgage so in a sense we are still mortgage free in that it's not a millstone, but then it is and I'm pondering going back to an offset mortgage (I had a Woolwich account that I used to get MF in the first place) once the market is back on a stable footing. When we moved the mortgage market was poor, we currently have a so so deal, historically low and fixed for 5 years but not fantastic and as the market was so crap offseting wasn't an option when we were looking to move. We also put almost all of our savings into the deposit so we had very little so spare anyway (hence wanting for the recovery so selling the old house clears this mortgage and replenished the savings we used up on the deposit).

There is a lot to be said for peace of mind we have, if either of us get made redundant we have a safety net of a house we can sell and clear the mortgage and that alone is (as the commercials say ) priceless.