Here's our Mortgage Pay Off chart, which is a fun reminder that hangs in the corner of my kitchen. I get to color a line in every time we hit a milestone of $4k paid down on the principal of our mortgage.
Our journey has been encouraging so far. It's amazing how much money we were just letting slip through the cracks, simply because we weren't driven towards a specific goal. We have always been good at saving money, but in recent years we got relaxed with our spending. This became especially inflated when we purchased an old house that needed work done. And with an old house in need of renovations, we found ourselves spending more money than was typical for us. Five and a half acres of land, meant we needed a riding lawn mower. Major renovations on the inside of our house just to make it livable. Etc... So after meeting a few savings goals, I proposed the reality that we could start paying a larger amount towards the principal each month. After we refinanced our mortgage last fall (to an unbelievably low rate of 2.75%), we started adding an extra $100 to the mortgage principal each month. The $100 was hardly noticed by us, and after a year would equal about 1 mortgage payment extra per year. We then upped that extra monthly payment and by my original plan we should be paid off by March of 2023. But paying off debt is a little addicting for me, and we have done unbelievably well the past 3 months with beating our budget (not spending as much as we allotted in each budget category). We also applied our tax refund to our principal for the month of May. So the past couple months has been encouraging to say the least in terms of watching the principal melt down more than my original goal. So the original goal of March 2023 is a basis, but I hope to beat that down sooner than later.
If you're following and bringing discipline to your financial health, I commend you and wish you the best as you strive towards your own personal goals! It's totally worth it. And as Dave Ramsey says... "Live like no one today, so that you can live like no one tomorrow". I discovered a place on his website that has testimonials of real people doing the "Debt Free Scream" after they finally reached their goal of freedom. It shares how much debt they paid off, the amount of time it took and the income they were earning to reach their goal. Such inspiring stories to listen to. It makes me long to be in their shoes and wish it were 6 years from now (I am hoping more like 3 years from now), so I could be sharing in the victory of debt freedom. And soon enough, I know we will be there. But it can't come soon enough!
Stats of Redwoodshire Mortgage Pay Off-
Purchased Redwoodshire October 2013
Jan. 2016 --->started paying extra $100 each month to principal
Sept. 2016---> refinanced mortgage to 2.75% @ 14% paid off
Jan. 2017---> mortgage principal balance @ 16.7% paid off
May 2017---> remaining mortgage @ 22.7% paid off
goal by the end of December 2017-----> Be 33.3% paid off
We are on our way!
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