On paying off your house
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A perspective that might be resonating now more than before.
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I was fortunate and bought in 2021 and got a 2.75% rate. Most financial folks say not to spend a dime more on mortgage payments and instead use the market, I get it. But the "peace of mind" thing is real, so I'm not going crazy but I am paying a bit more each month so it can be paid off in about 18 or 19 years. I actually did the highly complex math to basically have it paid off when my 2nd kid graduates high school. (At the time I thought it would be my last kid so that's how I timed it)
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Agreed. We paid ours off 10 or more years ago and I've never been happier. It reduces the income required which gives you more choices. Maintaining a mortgage commits you to ensuring more income.
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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My wife cannot handle money and she doesn't know how to tell the kids "No".
It has run me nuts at times and delayed my paying off my home until I was 52. And to be honest, it doesn't help that we've had a lot of medical bills for a lot of years.
But whatever excuse, having the roof over your head is a blessing beyond measure. Living in a state with no property tax on my primary domicile is a cherry on top.
I highly recommend having your home paid for as soon as you can.
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Path-dependent reasoning is a fallacy that is under-recognized.
When my old company had its IPO, partners were locked up for 8 years except during organized sales that typically let us get rid of 10-15% a year. Invariably the stock would dip a little prior to these pre-announced sales.
Often partners would say ‘I don’t want to sell now at 20, it was 21 a few weeks back’.
And I’d ask, if you owned 10% less than you do now, would you buy another 10% today at 20? The answer was always no.
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We left a relatively small amount on ours, as otherwise we'd have needed to borrow for home upgrades at a higher interest rate. I'm currently only paying a couple of hundred a month on the mortgage, and will probably pay it off when I retire with a lump sum from my very modest UK company pension.
TBH, I'd have preferred to pay it off completely, but the Mrs. talked me out of it.
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Agreed. We paid ours off 10 or more years ago and I've never been happier. It reduces the income required which gives you more choices. Maintaining a mortgage commits you to ensuring more income.
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Same with us although we still have a little bit left on that Okanagan Lake property in BC. Not too concerned about that as the value of the land is now 5x what we paid for it 9 years ago.
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No, welcome to the Okanagan Valley and location, location, location within it. We simply lucked out on the undeveloped acre lot and the fact it did not burn in the 2022 wildfire that devastated the surrounding area around the rural subdivision. Demand in the area is very high and growing.
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@blondie said in On paying off your house:
You were very smart @Renauda . And you timed it right.
My spouse timed it right. I was very sceptical about the purchase and probably would not have pursued it. She, on the other hand, had been doing her homework and came to the rightful conclusion it was either pull the trigger then or forget it as land prices in the valley were about to soar. She was, of course, right.
Besides, I had already vetoed one property deal just above the road into Naramata three months earlier because there was a 10’ wide surface right of way for a buried and active gas distribution line right through the middle of the .75 acre lot. I therefore decided that being too much of a stick in the mud was not advisable as there were zero defensible technical reasons to say no again.
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We paid off the house and never looked back. My wife isn't a big fan of owing anyone anything even at low interest rates (nothing wrong with a low interest mortgage--actually it's a better use of the money, we're just queasy about not owning.) Anyway, never looked back.
