What is your mortgage-free inspiration?

rd07

One word- choice!

Overpaying as much as possible now while we can. We don't watch every penny and have a good lifestyle but at the same time try to be sensible (e.g. overpaying, 10% pension contribution, no debt other than mortgage).

What really drives me on is plugging the figures into a calculator and seeing the figures you save by overpaying. I now have a spreadsheet to calculate this to a more detailed level and set myself more ambitious targets.

We could pay off more by being careful (e.g. shopping somewhere cheaper, not buying a new car, not having Sky) but I think it is important to keep focus on living rather than existing while still aiming for your goals.

When we pay it off, current plan is to buy somewhere more rural and start the process all over again, but in 7 or 8 years, who knows what will happen. The main thing is I will feel secure in the knowledge we have a choice!

tootoo

love this thread!

dh is self employed. no guaranteed wage which is hard. It will be tough for him to do his job in twenty years time so I would be nice to know our home is paid for.
We don't have a huge mortgage, but if in future we decided to move, the smaller the mortgage here, the smaller mortgage we would have later!

inigma

KBL completely agree with the postman comment. I try and pre empt my service charge and ground rent by saving £x every month, the only problem then is the heart break of having to pay it out each September! Next property will be a freehold! All my other bills are monthly and I can estimate what they will be and I have DD set up for all of them and as close to the start of the month/pay day as I can.

kbl

You're where I want to be inigma, organised! At the moment, I'm still borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and sometimes not paying Peter back, and it may seem daft to start oping the mortgage, but if I don't start now, I'll still be talking about it 5 years from now, and prob still in debt!! At least with the (very small) ops, I feel like I'm taking control, and it will spread to the debt and bills aspects of my life, that's the theory anyway! So hopefully this time next year, I'll be on top of my bills with the millstone getting smaller, and not dreading the postman

SillySod

Fairly mundane reasons for me, as our mortgage is quite affordable.

1. Easy way to "invest" at 4.2% - beats savings accounts.
2. Sometime we'll be upgrading from a flat to a house, when we'll probably need the same size mortgage all over again.

This won't be my last MF journey, hopefully the penultimate one!

castlelough

Twiggy_34 wrote: »

This has become particularly poignant to me after my dad was admitted to hospital on his 65th birthday and spent the whole month of his retirement in a hospital bed prior to passing away.

Twiggy I'm really sorry. I meant to sympathise and I didn't. It certainly makes planning for an early retirement more of a priority. Hugs, x

castlelough

Thanks everyone for all your contributions to the post! It's been really enjoyable reading all the different reasons and responses. And it's been great for getting motivation.

DH and I are taking steps to get a mortgage at the moment. DH had wanted to be a MFW from the start - he wanted to build the house, bit by bit, and not borrow money at all.
But I'm afraid, six years on, I've gotten a bit impatient :rotfl:. We've done really well though. We've managed to put in €90k+ ourselves and we are hoping to borrow €80k to finish the house off. I think the finished value should be quite a bit more, but that aside, we will have provided 53% down payment finance-wise.

DH hates that we are going to have to pay back a mortgage, but we've had a chat about making overpayments and trying to pay it back faster, while still maintaining a good standard of living. So I hope I'll be able to join the rest of you here on the MFW board by Christmas. Fingers crossed! :j

Thanks for all the inspiring posts.
Castle xx

uzubairu

rd07 wrote: »

One word- choice!

Overpaying as much as possible now while we can. We don't watch every penny and have a good lifestyle but at the same time try to be sensible (e.g. overpaying, 10% pension contribution, no debt other than mortgage).

What really drives me on is plugging the figures into a calculator and seeing the figures you save by overpaying. I now have a spreadsheet to calculate this to a more detailed level and set myself more ambitious targets.

We could pay off more by being careful (e.g. shopping somewhere cheaper, not buying a new car, not having Sky) but I think it is important to keep focus on living rather than existing while still aiming for your goals.

When we pay it off, current plan is to buy somewhere more rural and start the process all over again, but in 7 or 8 years, who knows what will happen. The main thing is I will feel secure in the knowledge we have a choice!

I'm pretty much in the same place.

The mortgage will be paid off next month, but last month, the OH decided that he wanted us to move to nicer location, detached house (currently in a semi), lovely views with a country park on the doorstep.
We like to go walking and cycling at weekends/days off and our inner city residence isn't doing it for him any more.

Our house is on the market at present and we've had some interest, but cannot be sure when it will sell, but are hoping it sells soon.
Without overpaying, we would never had dreamed of looking at other locations and having to get another £100K+ mortgage.

Using MFW principles we would want to get that cleared in 7/8 years.

Only debt is the mortgage, cars paid for and no loans, so hopefully early repayment is achievable without living on bread and water.

castlelough

Just bumping this again.
Wondering what motivates you successful mf wannabes?
Hope to start on the road to joining you all soon.

Also, the loan we are paying the highest anount of interest on is our mortgage, even though it is at the lowest rate of interest. Would it be worth turning my attention to overpaying the mortgage instead of overpaying the other loans? Or should I focus on becoming debtfree first?