Paying off a Mortgage in Seven Years

A week ago, on our lunch break, my husband and I rode our bicycles to the bank and wrote a check. The line built up behind us as the teller made phone calls, asked his boss questions, and finally gave us our receipt.

We’d paid off our mortgage, and were now entirely debt-free. Yes, we high-fived.

We bought our house back in 2008, after a lot of searching and some unsuccessful offers. It was frustrating. We ended up offering over $30K above asking on the house we eventually purchased—for just under $300K in total.

Closing on our home was one of the best feelings in the world.

So this is the Zillow photo, from before we first moved in because we've been meaning to tear up our front yard and replace with drought-resistant landscaping...so it sort of looks awful right now!

We were house-poor for about a year afterward, and had a low-cost wedding at the end of that (if anyone wants tips on how to do a wedding on the cheap, feel free to ask! It involves ebay, city-owned venues, purchasing our own alcohol, and a lot of DIY).

About a year and a half into owning our home, we decided to start putting an extra $200 toward the principal each month. My husband drew up an amortization schedule, we plugged in numbers, and realized—hey! We’d save a ton of money by doing this, and we’d also pay off the mortgage 7 years earlier!

That got the wheels turning—how soon could we manage to pay this whole thing off?

We started finding little ways to save, because as conventional wisdom goes: the little things add up.

Overall Savings Strategy

Both my husband and I are paid monthly. He works as a personnel analyst for the State, and I work as a contracts manager for the State. As soon as we get our paychecks, we deposit most of the money into our joint account, from which the mortgage is paid, as well as joint bills and vacation expenses. The rest goes into our personal accounts, which we pay for groceries from, as well as various sundries, expenses, and smaller bills (like Netflix and Audible). We don’t stress too much over it, since we spend similarly, and it’s all community property in the end. We each keep our own, personal savings accounts, as well as the joint savings.

But what goes into the joint account doesn’t ever get touched except for the aforementioned mortgage, bills, and vacation expenses.

We don’t even have a debit card for that account.

As our savings built up, we gradually began to put more and more toward the principal each month. Toward the end, we were paying an extra $5K on the principal every month.

A lot of it was long-term strategizing, deciding what was really important to us and what was not, and keeping focused on our end goal.

Transportation

When we bought our house, we had two cars. After some time and discussion, we figured we could go down to one car. One of our non-negotiable requirements for our home’s location was that it be close to downtown, where we worked. We wanted to be close enough so that we could ride our bicycles in to work. Neither of us wanted to do the long commute thing, and since we’re both aspiring authors, at-home time was important to us.

We only needed to use the car to go places that were farther away and/or to get groceries, etc., so after determining that my car was the more reliable one, we sold my husband’s car and became a one-car family.

We also bought a scooter (because riding a bicycle to work 2 days in a row hurts your butt), and eventually upgraded to a nicer one. The scooter gets fantastic gas mileage, and we can both fit on it. Gas prices are a bit lower now, but they were edging toward $5/gallon back when we bought the scooter. The first one we bought used for $600, and it was inoperable at the time. My husband got it working again. The second one we bought for close to $5K, after selling the first one for more than we paid (because it was now operable!).

BOOM! Our sweet, sweet ride. Out of the way, we're important!

The cycling and the scooter saved us money on gas, and insurance on the scooter was cheaper than on a second car. And hey, cycling to and from work is a good way to get a workout in while also commuting (and I tend to listen to audiobooks in one ear, just to eke a little extra productivity out of my day). They’ve put in new bike paths in our city recently, which makes for an extremely pleasant ride. We both own rain jackets and pants, for those days when the weather is stormy.

DIY Repair

Jury’s out on how worth it this one is. I expect this is something that pays out better in the long run due to built-up knowledge, looking at time spent vs. $ money spent. When something in our house broke, we looked up YouTube videos on how to repair it, and we’re fortunately quite close to Lowe’s… There has been many a time where we realized we had bought the wrong part.

Groceries and Sundries

The first thing we did when we moved in was start a vegetable garden. Unfortunately, we weren’t very good at it. We had NO idea how to garden (see my post about oranges). Things improved from the second year on. We live on 0.1 acres, including the footprint of the house, but we’ve done our best to make good use of that space.

We now have four chickens and two ducks for eggs, and since we eat mostly vegetarian (also cheaper), we get most of our food from our backyard. We’re fortunate enough to live in Northern California, so we can grow food year-round.

Oh HELLO there, ladies! They like to hang out on the compost heap and scarf down kitchen scraps. Such ladylike. So tasting. Wow.

We pulled out the non-producing trees in our yard and replaced them with fruit trees. We now have eleven fruit trees (loquat, mandarin, lemon, nectarine, orange, aprium, pluot, gala apple, fuji apple, avocado, and Asian pear), plus a goji berry bush.

The downside of this is eating seasonally. I am so. Tired. Of. Beet. Leaves. And by the time the end of summer rolls around, we’re scrambling for ways to use our excess squash.

Who needs a lawn when you can totally pwn it and plant vegetables instead?

We also rarely go out to eat, and when we do, we plan ahead and use Groupons or search out happy hour deals. Lunch is always dinner leftovers—we make sure to cook enough to last us into the next day. Breakfast, except on weekends when we break out the eggs, is almost always oatmeal. Oatmeal is cheap, filling, and good for you! In the summer, we dress it up with fresh fruit.

Buying bulk also became important to us. You can buy big bags of beans, flour, oatmeal, and rice at Costco or Winco for much less per unit than the little bags at your local grocery store. They never really go bad, so we just keep them in our closet beneath the stairs.

We make a lot of our own food. We make our own bread (there’s a great 5-minute recipe, if you just run a google search), and I buy organic soybeans in bulk with which we make our own soy milk. It’s so much cheaper to make it on your own. The soy milk machine itself was ~$100, and I buy my beans through Laura Soybeans--20lb box for $39.95. It tends to last us about a year. I sometimes make my own tofu from the soy milk as well, which probably isn’t worth the time, but it just tastes soooo good.

Typical meal in our household--fresh veggies, brown rice or quinoa, and an egg.

We don’t buy juice except for fermenting or mixed drinks (why not just eat the fruit and get the fiber too…?), and we very rarely buy milk.

We can and freeze excess produce. During nectarine and apricot season, I like to buy the $3 bags of fruit from the farmer’s market—the ones that are at the end of ripeness or damaged—and freeze them for use in smoothies. We used to sit down to watch Breaking Bad while we sliced and froze fruit.

We also brew our own cider and mead, because it’s easy. It doesn’t get any easier than brewing cider. Apple juice + yeast + time. We’ve also started brewing our own kombucha tea and kefir, more for fun than money-saving, though.

Most cleaning products are filled with weird chemicals. We mix vinegar and water with a tiny bit of dish detergent to make a cleaner that works equally well on mirrors, windows, and countertops. We make our own powdered laundry detergent (1 cup washing soda, 1 cup borax, 1 grated ivory soap bar). It’s easy and much cheaper than buying it premade.

Electronics and Entertainment

I learned how to build my own computer when I was younger. I bought the components online, and found a discounted copy of Windows 7 on ebay. When something breaks down, it’s fairly easy to replace the broken component. Building your computer is actually pretty simple, and there are a lot of resources to help you.

We don’t have cable. We have subscriptions to both Netflix and Hulu, and that covers almost everything we want to see.

We play video games. Sure, they’re ~$60 new, but you can get used copies cheap at GameStop or the like! And when you consider how many hours of gameplay you get out of some video games, you have a really low per hour cost for entertainment.

We almost never go to the movies in the evening, instead going when the pricing is matinee. And we tend to only see movies in the theater if they’re big-budget, special effects movies. Otherwise, we wait until they release onto DVD.

Again, Groupon has provided some really cool entertainment opportunities on a budget—falconry class, anyone?

FALCOOOOOOOR! *cough* Falcon. OKAY, it's a hawk.

Buy Used, Buy Cheap

We don’t buy clothes very often, and when we do, we buy them on sale, at cheaper places like Target, and used from the thrift store. I’ve bought items I’ve particularly lusted after on ebay, slightly used. I’ll freely admit I don’t have the coolest wardrobe in town. I could probably do better with more effort, but it’s not a priority for me. I wear shoes until there are holes in the soles and I generally only own one purse at a time.

I’m subscribed to a lot of lists that send out coupons or special deals. I’m in love with the secret weekly deals I get from our local grocery store, The Nugget. 25% off of whiskey? YASSS! I get a lot of spam, but there’s some gold in that fleshy pulp of empty calories.

Things like garden tools and furniture you can also often find on craigslist. Most of the furniture in our living room we got for free on craigslist. The coffee table was a hand-me-down. We bought the couch lightly used. My husband also happens to enjoy frequenting yard sales. We’ve bought things like glass and metal drinking bottles, tools, and furniture.

Look under your chair... EVERYBODY gets a free piece of furniture! Except that dude. He has to pay $700.

Both of our bicycles we bought used. Both prior owners had upgraded to nicer bicycles, though their hand-me-downs were plenty nice for us!

Vacation on a Budget

When we go abroad, I do a lot of comparison shopping. We try to stay in hostels or an airbnb place. Even if the hostel isn’t that great, we rarely ever spend much time there. We try to eat on a budget, buying groceries from stores and using the hostel kitchens to cook breakfast--eggs, yogurt, and oatmeal are all cheap staples. When it comes to eating out, I’ve found the Let’s Go travel guides to be fantastic for finding low-budget, incredibly tasty food. We tried to spend our money on experiences--museums, sight-seeing, and activities. Getting SCUBA certified added an awesome extra dimension to tropical vacations.

We didn't deprive ourselves, vacation-wise. We went to Mexico, Canada, Spain, China, England, New Orleans. We just did it cheaply.

Barcelona selfie! My husband is very serious about his traveling.

Spending Wisely

Scrimping on some things only leads to having to replace them in the near-future, or ending up with a low-quality item that doesn’t do what you paid for. We did our best to find a balance. For example, I don’t buy cheap pet food. I buy the more expensive, better-reviewed food for my pets because I figure it saves on vet bills later. Appliances and electronics are also places where it’s usually better to read a lot of reviews and spend a bit more to get something that will last. In the long-run, you’re spending less money.

Windfalls

We did happen into some windfalls. My car was hit a couple of times, with only cosmetic damage--we didn’t bother to put the insurance money toward repairs. It went toward the mortgage.

I got hit by a car while on my bicycle (NOT RECOMMENDED), and put the settlement money toward the mortgage. My husband also got hit by a car, though his accident was less severe. WEAR A HELMET WHEN YOU BICYCLE. Given the dents in mine, I’m pretty sure my accident would have been much worse if I hadn’t. As it was, I had to recover from a concussion and go through a couple rounds of physical therapy.

Inspired by my friend’s pregnancy and subsequent twins using donor eggs, I did a couple rounds of egg donation. It’s not worth it from a monetary standpoint, but I have a letter from the first recipient parents that I will treasure forever. Changing someone’s life for the better was awesome. It also got me over my fear of needles so I was able to later donate blood (I used to umm...pass out). The money went toward the mortgage.

In Conclusion...

My husband and I watched this commencement speech by Neil Gaiman. We subsequently would ask ourselves--by doing xyz, are we getting closer to our mountain, or farther away?

One mountain down.

So keep your eye on the prize. Ask yourself what really makes you happy, and what you can live without and still be happy. Push harder. Some days you might feel too tired to pack a lunch and save money. Do it anyways.

It pays off.