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We have a 30 yr mortgage that will be paid off in 23 years. I throw a couple hundred a month extra at it, but I have no plans to pay it off as long as my investments are earning more than the mortgage rate.
We could have paid cash for this house, but with interest rates so low, it makes no financial sense.
I'm still trying to decide what I want to do. We have a 30 year mortgage @ 3.375%. The finance person in me says after deducting the interest that's a cheap loan, but we are also to the point where we could easily afford to pay it off in another 10ish years. I'll probably start making extra payments this year.
Our first home we had for 6 years (bought in 2010) and had a 30 year mortgage however we ended up selling it last year, using the profit from that and our savings we bought our 2nd home with cash! It was amazing, loved not dealing with a bank!!
We are both happy with our experience of paying off the mortgage. We have no debt now other than everyday expenses on the card which gets paid off the end of each month. We are both relieved to be rid of the rental which was aging and even after 5 years of renting it needed much updating and fixing, even with our constant upkeep. We might be a bit house rich / cash poor, but on the other hand cash flow is much better. There's a bunch left each month when we pay our expenses.
We're too old to be taking on investment risk and after being burned twice in the market we're not going there any more. For us this was the right thing.
I closed in 2009 and paid off the mortgage in 2012, so on paper it was three years. The back story however was that I had been building up equity in my previous homes over a number of years and rolling it over, so in reality it was first mortgage in 2000 and over the stretch of three properties, paying off in 2012, so 12years really. However you gauge it, it feels #%#$%#$% great to own the thing outright.
We bought ours on a 30-yr 10% loan in 1986; refinanced it to 15 years at 8% in 1993 and paid it off in 2003 -- under 17 years. Towards the end, nobody would give us a great deal on refinancing because we owed so little.
14 years now with no mortgage -- probably one of the better decisions I made. Insurance and taxes are about $3300 a year, or about what we paid for apartment rent when my wife and I got married. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
and give up how much in opportunity costs ? odds are even a cd over all those years will end up returning more .
over time that debt becomes more meaningless .
that 35k our first homes cost us back in the 1970's was a ton of money . today that is not even the price of a decent car . a 30k mortgage payment likely would not cover a months utility bills here .
so think things through very carefully . a dollar today is worth a whole lot more than a dollar tomorrow so advance paying off a mortgage at these rates that you can stretch out is financially not such a great idea from a return stand point . there may be other reasons for doing it but from purely a financial point it likely is not going to be the best idea .
even cd's at historical norms pay 5-6%
Uh, I got a decent car for about $7,000.
Avoid debt wherever you can!
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