Explain to me Why its Good to Pay off Your Mortgage quickly!

grey_lady

"Please note, the above is just a joke - I am not in the business of abusing anyone."

Not a funny joke though, quite unfriendly really. DD has helped a lot of people here with motivation, maths etc, if you look at the sticky at the top of this forum you'll see it was he that started it, and his determination to take on a being mortgage free within 3 years challenge that inspired others to do the same. Hence why he probably replied to your OP.

If you prefer not to pay your mortgage early fine, if you want to start a debate on the pros and cons thats great, i appreciate that achieving a work/life balance may be more important to a lot of people.

But why attack DD over his replies. (Which imho seemed reasonable enough.)Just because you say it's not an attack and not personal doesnt mean that it doesnt come over that way and in this case it seemed that way to me.

But back to your original post, why pay off your mortage early?
i'd say it would be a kind of freedom, to be free of the worry of interest rates going up, to be free of the worry of how to cope with job loss / illness etc
to be free to as an earlier poster replied to do your dream job or to take time out to travel etc. You yourself mentioned that it was a struggle to pay the bills and your other half had to take a second job - if you'd paid off your mortgage in 3 years at the start then things would have been different. Nothing wrong imho with DD encouraging people to do that.

beachbeth

grey_lady wrote: »

But why attack DD over his replies. (Which imho seemed reasonable enough.)Just because you say it's not an attack and not personal doesnt mean that it doesnt come over that way and in this case it seemed that way to me.

I have felt most of the way through this thread that DD has been attacking me over things that he has assumed about me. He didn't just advise and put over his point of view as everyone else has done, he put me and my views down as though only his views are valid. He became personal when he needn't have done.

Instead of saying "I believe in this...." or "I think you are wrong about...." he made remarks such as:

"No doubt your next step will be to post abuse about me onto the MFi3 thread - that seems par for the course..."

"Are you a Daily Mail reader? :rotfl:"

"I often find people who float this particular argument are usually the same ones who shy away from the stockmarket because "the city boys fund a champagne lifestyle with my money. The net result is that they either fritter their money away on crap they don't need or they put it away in a savings account where the principle sum is eroded by inflation. "

What have making remarks like this got to do with adult discussion?

I have read DD's posts and words of encouragement on other threads so why he felt the need to come onto this thread and not only put down everything I say but to get personal by assuming all sorts of things about me I just don't know. Then when I make a joke out of yet another assumption he made, ie that I was the sort of person to place abusive posts (I don't think my "please take him" was abusive!) you, grey_lady, come and say you think I was in the wrong.

So, DD can make derogative jokes and attack me but I can't do the same to him?

grey_lady wrote:

if you'd paid off your mortgage in 3 years at the start then things would have been different. Nothing wrong imho with DD encouraging people to do that.

There certainly is nothing wrong with DD doing this and I wish that is what he had done with me instead of trying to lambast me at every turn. I was hoping for an active discussion without the personal assumptions.

As to your point about paying my mortgage off in 3 years. We were very short of money and couldn't afford savings or a pension for the first 12 years or so of our marriage, so where was the money to come from to pay off our mortgage?

beachbeth

Can we get back to the purpose of this thread which was to discuss the merits of paying your mortgage off early. Is it advisable to do in every case?

Some people squirrel their money away for a rainy day and are good at savings and investments. For others, money burns a hole in their pocket and they cannot ignore money sitting in an account even if it earning high interest. Some people earn a high salary and others just scrape by on what they earn. Everyone's circumstance is different so, is paying off your mortgage early right for everyone?

brownbabygirl

beachbeth wrote: »

Can we get back to the purpose of this thread which was to discuss the merits of paying your mortgage off early. Is it advisable to do in every case?

Some people squirrel their money away for a rainy day and are good at savings and investments. For others, money burns a hole in their pocket and they cannot ignore money sitting in an account even if it earning high interest. Some people earn a high salary and others just scrape by on what they earn. Everyone's circumstance is different so, is paying off your mortgage early right for everyone?

:T you seem to have answered your own question!

djbd1973

beachbeth wrote: »

Can we get back to the purpose of this thread which was to discuss the merits of paying your mortgage off early. Is it advisable to do in every case?

Some people squirrel their money away for a rainy day and are good at savings and investments. For others, money burns a hole in their pocket and they cannot ignore money sitting in an account even if it earning high interest. Some people earn a high salary and others just scrape by on what they earn. Everyone's circumstance is different so, is paying off your mortgage early right for everyone?

Hi Beachbeth. Getting back to your original posting, it cannot be right for everyone, but it can be right for those whose circumstances fit as you rightly point out. I am all for paying of my mortgage as early as I can. I have a brother who also thinks like me, but does not have the capacity to overpay anything just like your situation earlier on in your life asyou mentioned in one of your first posts. In my opinion, I think having an awareness of the extra money that could be saved from early repayment is whats needed regardless of whether it is possible under each circumstance. A 25 year mortgage doesn't have to be for 25 years if there is a choice. But I do agree with you.

davemartin

With the recent down turn / slow down in the property market why is everyone still chasing the dream of paying off their mortgage early. Has anyone though about the possibility of buy to let mortgaging? I have been playing this around now for a while, I have done my research

(check out http://buy-to-let-mortgage.moonfruit.com )

And the more i think about it the more it makes sense as a great investment opportunity which will ultimately pay off the mortgage on my home a lot earlier. There are loads of great mortgage deals on the go at the minute.

I want to hear what you guys think... I think it could be a winner..

Cheers

Dave

grey_lady

You may have felt like DD was attacking you, but i dont agree. In fact i dont think that he became at all personal until after you had done so, possibly because you had interpreted his posts that way, But i understand that everyone can interpret the same thing differently, me included of course.

But the way i see it, you kinda attacked people wanting to pay off their mortgage early when that's exactly what DD's challenge is all about.

But back to the important bit - the paying off the mortage in 3 years, what you say about 'where was the money to come from' etc surely that's the whole point of these forums :-) i know that your not in that same position now, but if you were short of money and wanting to be shot of the mortage then posting here would hopefully have helped you think of ways to do that!

Ok that's not a detailed reply so lets pretend...
The debt free board would have helped not only to make sure that you were becoming debt free, they would have helped you figure out how to budget which IMHO is one of the most important MSE lessons, and in that
budget you would have had a surplas, for emergencies, a rainy day, Christmas etc The money saving old style board would have helped you live within that budget and to find all the best deals.

I bet that if this website was available you would have been less short of money in your first 12 years and created a surplas to pay for treats, savings for holidays etc

So what are your goals now? even if they dont include being mortgage free, i bet that the forums can help in some way, so that you achieve those goals faster. (goes off to reread OP's other posts in this thread)

grey_lady

hhmmm - your daughter at uni will just have to get used to beans and value spag bol its what we all did :-) and dammit its character building, along with all the 50p a pint at the student Uni nights. Can i recommend Sal's kebabs in Southampton at this point? :-)

Good on you for questioning the pensions advisor - to many people agree with banks FA's and IFA's without questioning the alternatives.

It seems like you and your partner made the call that you would have kids
and he would work full-time and you would possibly work part-time but you would be looking after the home and kids primarily. When interest rates increased you struggled to stick to that because your partners wages didnt increase in line with 'inflation?' as in the general rise in the costs of living.
But... you didnt change the plan.

That's irelevent though, now you have a surplas and you wonder if you should overpay the mortgage or finally enjoy having more of a monthly surplas and less of a struggle? Or if you should find a balance between the two? only you can answer that though, hopefully you have generated the debate and ideas you wanted though, personally i still think that paying off my mortage early will give me the financial freedom to achieve my other goals.

Although, if time is short then sod paying off the mortgage.

[Deleted User]

davemartin wrote: »

With the recent down turn / slow down in the property market why is everyone still chasing the dream of paying off their mortgage early. Has anyone though about the possibility of buy to let mortgaging? I have been playing this around now for a while, I have done my research

(check out http://buy-to-let-mortgage.moonfruit.com )

And the more i think about it the more it makes sense as a great investment opportunity which will ultimately pay off the mortgage on my home a lot earlier. There are loads of great mortgage deals on the go at the minute.

I can't speak for anyone else nor am I an expert, but it seems to me that if there's a glut of BTL properties chasing tenants and property prices are set to stagnate if not fall in the short to medium term, I'd be better off investing in just about anything other than property right now. And then there's the old maxim - if you spot a bandwagon, it's too late to jump on.

beachbeth

grey_lady wrote: »

But the way i see it, you kinda attacked people wanting to pay off their mortgage early when that's exactly what DD's challenge is all about.

This may have been people's misinterpretation of this thread or my posts but believe me I have never attacked people who wanted to pay off their mortgages early! I apologise to anyone who may have felt this but I really never intended any of my posts to imply this. I say well done everyone who has paid off their mortgage and to everyone who is trying to do it - good luck!:T

grey_lady wrote:

I bet that if this website was available you would have been less short of money in your first 12 years and created a surplas to pay for treats, savings for holidays etc

How many times have I wished and wished that this website had been around in those days!!! However, we were already scrimping on everything we could. We had a cheap old car with no loan and no loans for anything else (except the mortgage) and were trying desperately to do everything as cheaply as possible. I homemade every meal (which I prefer anyway!) and very rarely had new clothes, went out for a meal or bought luxurys such as cd's videos (no dvds then!) or trips to the hairdresser. We had cut down on absolutely everything and yet were still sinking. I can remember certain relatives thinking my husband was being mean because we couldn't afford the petrol to join them for a day out. (He still has this mean label with them today!:mad: ) I had just decided that we would sell up and either move in with a kind relative or buy/rent a small flat in order to get ourselves above water again when my husband got his new job and it looked as though things were on the up again. It took quite a few years for us to get caught up with things even though he was earning about £100 a week more. This website is wonderful but I don't think even this would have helped me really in those days.:o

I agree with you that when our circumstances changed that we "didn't change the plan" but even now with hindsight I don't see how we could. But I am proud that we didn't bury our heads in the sand and pretend nothing was happening. If hubby hadn't have got that job than we would have sold up and got ourselves back on our feet. I didn't expect handouts from anyone, whether a relative or the state. If we had moved in with a relative we would have paid our way.