My husband and I were both 22 years old when we married, and for the first two years we lived in an apartment. At age 24, we bought our first house. At that time, our realtor gave us some of the wisest advice we had ever heard. She said that if you have a 30 year mortgage and you make one extra payment a year, you will pay off your house in 15 years. Well, we had a 20 year mortgage, so one extra payment would pay off our house even earlier.
We hate debt. We can’t stand the thought of being enslaved to someone or some institution. What if hard times hit and we couldn’t pay? We could lose everything. So we were motivated from the start to pay off our mortgage as fast as possible.
I was a stay at home mom, and my husband was the chief bread winner. We came up with a plan to pay off our house quickly in a number of ways.
1. My husband was paid every two weeks, instead of twice a month. Since there are two five week months every year, that meant that two months a year he was paid an extra paycheck. We decided to put those extra paychecks against our mortgage, which meant that we were making two extra payments a year on our house.
2. We decided to put any cash windfalls against our house. This included tax refunds, cash Christmas gifts from parents/grandparents, bonus’s from work, and any unexpected money that came our way.
3. We took cheap vacations. We went to visit relatives who housed and fed us for free. I know this sounds like we were taking advantage of people, but they were parents and siblings that we didn’t see that often. We would have visited them anyway, and we never stayed more than three days or so. We dreamed of taking real vacations, you know, hotels, eating out, sightseeing, etc., but told ourselves that this season of denial was only for a short time. Our children were young and didn’t miss a thing.
4. We lived frugally, so that we could put even more money against our mortgage. We only ate out once a week (fast food), always ordering water with our meal. We ate frugally, eating a lot of chicken and ground beef. I shopped a lot at garage sales and second hand stores. We didn’t have any costly hobbies such as golfing or boating, and I didn’t indulge in beauty shop luxuries such as manicures, hair coloring, etc. We only had one T.V., and didn’t subscribe to cable television.
5. We only had one car (not a mini-van). It was a used car to begin with, and we paid cash for it. We only had one car for the first eleven years of our marriage. My husband drove the car to work each day. If I needed the car for errands or appointments, I would load up the kids and drive him to work, and then pick him up at the end of the day.
We were thrilled when we paid off our house six years ofter taking out a 20 year mortgage. This really paid off several years later when my husband took a job that cut our income nearly in half. We were able to easily adjust now that we had absolutely no debt. We still live frugally because we just got used to it and now enjoy it, but we do go on some “real” vacations now and then! Being debt-free is the best feeling.