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We Are Mortgage Free!

This has been an amazing year so far. Both personally, financially and website-ly (not a word, but it should be). Still there is something extra special in getting to share this with you. I’m very proud, and excited, to announce that we are officially mortgage free! This has been a huge step forward in our Family Money Plan. It’s also the conclusion of our last 5 year plan that ended up being 6 year plan.

If you are looking for a more in-depth guide I invite you to check out our Guide: How to Hack Your Mortgage and Save $1,000’s 

 

6 Years of Continuous Action Taking

After 6 years of dedication and planning and revising the same spreadsheet over and over again we are finally mortgage free. It’s been a very happy last couple of days for us. We have been working at this for so long.

Driving down to the bank, to put down our last extra payment amount was exciting. I’ve had a permanent grin on my face the entire weekend. I even did “WOOHOO!” scream at the top of my lungs when I got outside the bank. Much to the shock of a few people walking buy.

 

It feels so good to have this financial marker checked off

In a lot of ways accomplishing this is why I started this site. Over the past 6 years we have been hacking away at our debt. I didn’t want to start a site until I knew what I was doing was worthwhile to share. The last thing I wanted to do was lead anyone down a path that ended nowhere.

Not that the past hasn’t been share-worthy, it’s just been a different focus.

Mortgage FreeWhen I first brought up the idea with my wife, I could tell it was hard to understand. We had two little kids, one income at the time, a brand new house, and honestly no idea if what we were going to set out to do was the right thing, let alone feasible.

 

Looking back it seemed impossible in the beginning, but decided to do it  anyways. Like anything new when you start out its hard, but we kept working at it.

Over time the hard things got easier, and then they became habit. It all boiled down to making some new money habits. Anyone can do it.  I’m just a regular guy with a very awesome and encouraging wife. Together we set our goal and kept at it.
There have been a lot of sacrifices over the past 6 years. Looking back on all of them, I can safely say they have been worth it.

To my beautiful wife I say: “Thank you for seeing this crazy idea of ours through. I promised it would be worth it in the end.”

She couldn’t agree more, it’s definitely worth it.

How Did We become Mortgage Free?

For us becoming mortgage free was a 3 pronged approach.

First part to becoming mortgage free: A Decision

The first part was deciding we wanted to become mortgage free and making a concious decision around that choice. Honestly making the decision is the easiest part. You can make decision in a split second. It’s the action afterwards that is going to matter a lot more.

 

Second part to becoming mortgage free: A Plan of Action

Next we decided what we were willing to give up and what we were not willing to sacrifice. Turns out we were willing to go with out quite a few things. I go into a lot of detail in this post on everything we gave up to be mortgage free, but here are some of the big ones so that you get an idea. Some of the bigger items you can pass up on if you are wanting to work towards being mortgage free.

 

No smartphone.

To save on monthly bills we shared the classic flip phone and we couldn’t even text. We looked ancient compared to everyone smartphones.

 

Cut out the restaurants.

We didn’t eat out and learned to cook good meals. Part of this was out of necessity with our family developing allergies. But it ended up helping our budget quite a bit.

 

How does 6 years of stay-cations sound?

We didn’t travel at all. This was one of the harder things to do. My wife and I love to travel and to stay put was more of a challenge than we thought it would be.

Our mantra changed from “What can we buy?” to “What can we cut?”. We cut costs wherever we could. We stocked up on groceries when they were cheap, always hunted for good deals and often when without. We questioned every expense. From cable, to car washes, from garbage bags to groceries and everything else you can think of.

The question was always: “Do we need this right now or can we wait?” You will be amazed at the amount of things you can pass up on when you don’t really need it.

We also looked for ways to earn money and take advantage of free programs for our kids and us to spend our time. We knew we would have to embrace the whole lifestyle and it was worth it.

 

 

 

Third part to becoming mortgage free: Taking Action Until It’s Done

Seeing it through. There were a lot of doubts along the way. A lot of times we would be driving our old cars and watching our friends buy new ones and we would need to remind ourselves: It’s all worth it once we are mortgage free.

I will be honest this journey towards mortgage freedom isn’t rocket science. You just need to keep at it. If you start to pay a little extra down on your mortgage and find you like it then it can take a hold of you like it did us. Remember to keep at.

Another thing that I think helped us see it through was having a reward system. Every time we hit a goal we would reward ourselves with something. Put an extra payment down on the mortgage, let’s make pizza. Crossed over a new mortgage threshold (say going below $100,000, then let’s go out and do some small reward. Anything that will keep you motivated and on track you should look into.

 

If you are looking for more mortgage related posts check out:

 

Mortgage Free – The New Frontier

I’ll detail every thing in the next post on how we did it and our logic around everything. Next up is the getting rid of the car payments and then we are completely debt free.

Want more mortgage tips?

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