What to do?

Brricktop69

Hi everyone,
First post on the site.
Basically me and my wife have been working to pay off the mortgage for the last 17 years, we have also been building up the emergency fund. We are now in a position where we owe £6,500 on the mortgage and have £10,000 in the emergency fund. We are currently paying £700 a month of the mortgage so we could carry on doing so and be free of the mortgage by July 2021, or we could pay it off tomorrow and use the money to rebuild the emergency fund,
Very tempting to get it paid off but in these uncertain times I am reluctant to do so, but on the other hand myself and my wife have been in our jobs for 18 years plus and so have the security that brings. It would be good to sign off 2020 by being free of a mortgage.
Interested to see what other people would advise.

thegentleway

In principle you shouldn’t use your emergency fund for anything else than, you guessed it, an emergency. Whether £10k is right amount for you is for you to decide: I’m happy with 3 months expenses. I wouldn’t use any of this amount to overpay mortgage. No point rushing it. 

Brricktop69

thegentleway said:

In principle you shouldn’t use your emergency fund for anything else than, you guessed it, an emergency. Whether £10k is right amount for you is for you to decide: I’m happy with 3 months expenses. I wouldn’t use any of this amount to overpay mortgage. No point rushing it. 

I should have added that I believe our emergency fund only needs to be around £5000 once the mortgage is paid off, this is based on 3 months expenses, my initial plan was to pay the mortgage off at the end of February.

thegentleway

Brricktop69 said:

thegentleway said:

In principle you shouldn’t use your emergency fund for anything else than, you guessed it, an emergency. Whether £10k is right amount for you is for you to decide: I’m happy with 3 months expenses. I wouldn’t use any of this amount to overpay mortgage. No point rushing it. 

I should have added that I believe our emergency fund only needs to be around £5000 once the mortgage is paid off, this is based on 3 months expenses, my initial plan was to pay the mortgage off at the end of February.

Cool, end of February then. What’s the rush?