Ten things I am doing to pay off my mortgage by Christmas

I’ve got a mate who swears that the grass feels different under your (bare) feet when you make that last repayment. During the boom times of the last 50 years or so, most people didn’t have to worry about paying off their homes – the breathtaking growth in property prices did all the heavy lifting. But those days are long gone. Anyone buying a home today is taking on a bloody big commitment – and therefore every little bit you can save helps. Paying off your mortgage faster is the key to helping you build wealth. And it’ll save you a lot of money – and a lot of time. I have bought a house recently too. I plan to make an extra house payment each quarter and increase my payment when I get a raise or bonus. But surely need to check if there is any prepayment penalties. Best of Luck

Mr Money Mustache

Look it up.

Kim F said :

It’s easy to pay off a mortgage if you already have investment properties and shares to sell. What if you haven’t got these assets or any other big ticket items?
We don’t have a granny flat or a spare room in our house, so we can’t get boarders in to help.
We can’t refinance because our work and payment history has been screwed up by injury and health issues.
When your mortgage is over half your take home income, there is realistically nothing you can do to make your budget situation good enough to pay the mortgage any earlier, it is a struggle to keep on top of it the way it is.
It must be nice to be wealthy enough to have the freedom to shop around for finance, not have to be concerned every week about if there is enough left of the pay packet to meet the cost of housing and utilities, before considering the weekly grocery budget.
I still laugh at $10 a day food budgets. Our kid’s lunches alone are that much every day and I am not into starving them to death because we can’t afford to eat properly. They are active and need nourishment but meats, fruits and all the healthy stuff they need is so overpriced.
Without decent wages, most people won’t pay off their houses until they reach retirement age, by which time they will have to sell their home to afford the cost of health care for their tired, overworked bodies. There are two classes of people in this world, the rich and the poor. The middle class has been policied into extinction by government. You are nowadays either a wealthy business owner/high paid executive, or you are a blue collar slave, there is no in between. Wages have been stagnating if not going backwards for about the last ten to fifteen years, whilst housing costs have consistently risen out of reach of the working class.
I’m coming across as a tad bitter about all this, only because life has been giving me lemons for so long. The home, the mortgage, is the biggest concern for many people and if that looks to be in jeopardy then it is hard to look at anything in life with optimism. Governments have been consistently attacking the welfare system, robbing people such as myself of the only crutch that has supported their dreams of home ownership. Reductions in family tax benefit, removing first home buyer grants, increasing rates and utility bills far in advance of inflation and income indexation plus making welfare benefits harder to access and maintain are forcing people out of home ownership. It is hard enough to find a decent paying job and you can’t find affordable housing through buying or renting in Canberra either, especially if you have a family to support. Without a roof over your head you are technically homeless.Housing should be affordable for the poorest of us. Homelessness should be eradicated. But governments want money and developers want money and builders want money. Where is at all going I ask you? Big business, the banks, the government.
It all comes down to the old saying, “The poor get poorer while the rich get richer”.

I’m reading this in the voice of Casper Jonquil from Mad As Hell.

Kim F said :

When your mortgage is over half your take home income, there is realistically nothing you can do to make your budget situation good enough to pay the mortgage any earlier, it is a struggle to keep on top of it the way it is.
It must be nice to be wealthy enough to have the freedom to shop around for finance, not have to be concerned every week about if there is enough left of the pay packet to meet the cost of housing and utilities, before considering the weekly grocery budget.

It all comes down to the old saying, “The poor get poorer while the rich get richer”.

A timely reminder that there are many people in our society that struggle to do the things that many of us take for granted. I have no answers and have been fortunate in that I haven’t had to face the up-hill battles that you have had to. I am grateful for the life-chances I’ve been lucky enough to have.

Thank you for the reality check.

It’s easy to pay off a mortgage if you already have investment properties and shares to sell. What if you haven’t got these assets or any other big ticket items?
We don’t have a granny flat or a spare room in our house, so we can’t get boarders in to help.
We can’t refinance because our work and payment history has been screwed up by injury and health issues.
When your mortgage is over half your take home income, there is realistically nothing you can do to make your budget situation good enough to pay the mortgage any earlier, it is a struggle to keep on top of it the way it is.
It must be nice to be wealthy enough to have the freedom to shop around for finance, not have to be concerned every week about if there is enough left of the pay packet to meet the cost of housing and utilities, before considering the weekly grocery budget.
I still laugh at $10 a day food budgets. Our kid’s lunches alone are that much every day and I am not into starving them to death because we can’t afford to eat properly. They are active and need nourishment but meats, fruits and all the healthy stuff they need is so overpriced.
Without decent wages, most people won’t pay off their houses until they reach retirement age, by which time they will have to sell their home to afford the cost of health care for their tired, overworked bodies. There are two classes of people in this world, the rich and the poor. The middle class has been policied into extinction by government. You are nowadays either a wealthy business owner/high paid executive, or you are a blue collar slave, there is no in between. Wages have been stagnating if not going backwards for about the last ten to fifteen years, whilst housing costs have consistently risen out of reach of the working class.
I’m coming across as a tad bitter about all this, only because life has been giving me lemons for so long. The home, the mortgage, is the biggest concern for many people and if that looks to be in jeopardy then it is hard to look at anything in life with optimism. Governments have been consistently attacking the welfare system, robbing people such as myself of the only crutch that has supported their dreams of home ownership. Reductions in family tax benefit, removing first home buyer grants, increasing rates and utility bills far in advance of inflation and income indexation plus making welfare benefits harder to access and maintain are forcing people out of home ownership. It is hard enough to find a decent paying job and you can’t find affordable housing through buying or renting in Canberra either, especially if you have a family to support. Without a roof over your head you are technically homeless.Housing should be affordable for the poorest of us. Homelessness should be eradicated. But governments want money and developers want money and builders want money. Where is at all going I ask you? Big business, the banks, the government.
It all comes down to the old saying, “The poor get poorer while the rich get richer”.

Thank you for sharing the post. I just took a home loan and I think it will be quite helpful.

Glad you took time out to eat at Molto!

rommeldog56 said :

When I looked into taking in student boarders, I was worried that I would be hit with land tax in the ACT:

‘If you own a residential property that is rented, you are liable for land tax on that property. This also applies to boarding houses and multiple dwellings, including dual occupancies and granny flats that are rented. Rent can include cash, services or any other valuable consideration earned in respect of a property for which any form of tenancy arrangement exists.’
http://www.revenue.act.gov.au/duties-and-taxes/land-tax/general-information

In addition to that, people are very quickly going to start piling in to tell you about the capital gains tax implications of renting out part of your property, but if your goal is to pay it off presumably you want to live in it for the foreseeable future so it’s not an immediate concern.
In any case, the tax liability would be offset by the interest savings from having a fully paid off house!

Obviously not all the suggestions are applicable to everyone but the list does prompt some outside the box thinking so well done.

When I looked into taking in student boarders, I was worried that I would be hit with land tax in the ACT:

‘If you own a residential property that is rented, you are liable for land tax on that property. This also applies to boarding houses and multiple dwellings, including dual occupancies and granny flats that are rented. Rent can include cash, services or any other valuable consideration earned in respect of a property for which any form of tenancy arrangement exists.’
http://www.revenue.act.gov.au/duties-and-taxes/land-tax/general-information

Nice work there Serina and some good tips.

I dig what you are doing there. Negative gearing, equity access, investment loans are all inventions of the banks to get you into and keep you in debt. There’s nothing like the freedom of having no debt and a year’s worth of money in the bank. It opens your eyes to all the possibilities that debt slaves never have.