Mortgage Paid Off!

Well the deed is done! We did it, we paid off the mortgage! We scrimped, saved, sacrificed and dreamed for two years about the possibility of killing the mortgage and we did it! We know there are a lot of people out of work and struggling just to pay their bills let alone try to get "ahead". We got fired up to become debt free after two "reorganizations" and staff reductions got us thinking, "What if it happened to us?"

We sat down and decided to forgo some wants and some fun stuff in the short run to get our financial house on solid ground. We found ways to cut some costs and reduced our spending on food & clothing to create some extra cash. We took any extra cash along with bonuses and some side income and threw it all at the mortgage.

We severely restricted our use of a credit card (except for set expenses) and paid cash for nearly everything; if there was no cash allocated for it we didn't do it!

We continued to give to our church, never went without because the Lord made everything go farther! We went on two family vacations to the beach, a 3 day cruise & most importantly He blessed our efforts and allowed us to take a mission trip to Romania and remain on track with our plan!

You too can accomplish this, be weird, "live like no one else so one day you can live like no one else."

My new mantra, "There is no such thing as good debt!"

AND THEN THERE WERE TWELVE - REVISITED

In my blog post last May I wrote about our decision to accelerate the payoff of our mortgage. We had experienced a couple of financial close calls with our jobs and wanted to position ourselves in a less vulnerable place. We looked at the remaining balance of our mortgage and decided to throw everything we could scrape together at the principal balance of our mortgage. In May our goal was to pay off our mortgage by June 1, 2011.

Here is our update: We are nearing the end of 2010; we have revisited our goals and adjusted the date we think we can make the final payment. Our loan balance has been reduced to $26,250 and our revised goal is to cut it down to $20,500 by the end of the year. This will exceed our original goal by $4,500!

We are now looking at our last mortgage payment being May 1, 2011. This is a mere six months away and it will continue to require a significant sacrifice on our part. There is no guarantee that we won't have a setback that may require an adjustment but Lord willing we'll be celebrating with our last payment on May 1, 2011!