This is a post that many of my readers have been asking for forever now. So here it is – how we’re attacking and working towards paying off our mortgage in the next year. 

Now here’s the background info that’s super important so make sure you read this…

Our home was built in 1979 and it was a foreclosure. And when I tell you that it was bad, it was baaaaaaddddddd. As in we had rats living in the basement drop ceiling and all the drawers in our kitchen were completely missing or broken. The tile in the kitchen was broken in several places and the hardwood floors (which was real pine hardwood) were not installed correctly so there were HUGE gaps in the floor. 

Sorry for the small picture – it’s the only one I got…

Also our living room look strange…like real strange. It was very boxed-in feeling and off-centered with there only being one window next to the fireplace. 

Living Room Now: Okay in all honesty, this picture was taken right after the renovation – so before kids…when my house was clean.  

There were even small “punch” holes where apparently the child that lived in  our home before us just walked around punching the wall…

Not to mention that our roof is and still is badly damaged. It even leaks in some spots. And we have the original, completely inefficient windows from 1979. 

Kitchen before:

Kitchen after: Once again, before kids…

Okay, so I say all of this so you understand that we didn’t purchase a brand-new home. We purchased a home that required a LOT of work before we could even move in. 

In fact, we invested $30,000 of our savings (well, that was from my husband selling off his first business – so it was paid for in cash) to get the house ready for us to move in. Oh and did I mention that I was pregnant with our first child? So yeah, you know my paranoid first-time-mom-self wasn’t moving in a rat infested, no drawer kitchen. 

Seriously though. My husband slept in his boat in our garage while him and his best friend remodeled our home for two weeks so we could move in. They’re amazing y’all. 

Okay so now on to the financial stuff. 

We purchased our home in May of 2011 for the price of $90,000 – tax, tag, and title as my Daddy used to say. We invested $30,000 cash to get the house looking a whole heck of a lot better. We also put down $8,000 so we only financed $82,000

The current amount of our mortgage (12/20/2016) is: $27,938.08 so we’ve paid off $54,061.92 in 5 1/2 years. How we’ve been able to do this is by throwing everything extra we ever received towards the mortgage. 

Now I know that many of y’all have been following our journey and know that we’ve paid off over $55,000 of debt in two years – that does not include our mortgage. We didn’t include our mortgage in our debt plan of attack because our plan of attack (which included our credit cards, car loan, and my student loans) took precedent to paying off our mortgage. 

We’ve stalled. 

So this is me being real with y’all. We’ve stalled this year (2016) on getting our mortgage paid off. I hate admitting that because I’d love for you to think that I’ve got everything figured out and that I’m some amazing kill-off debt guru, but I’m not. Nope, not even by a long-shot. 

Truthfully, this is what happens when you don’t make a plan and life sort of…well, happens. In 2016, my husband left his steady paycheck corporate job to once again start up his own business. And due to the “getting back into the swing of irregular income” way of life, we haven’t been able to apply as much money towards our mortgage. 

Not to mention, that my business took a serious beating this year and I’ve had to pay a lot out of my business account (which before was mostly used to pay off debt) towards an attorney and other major expenses to shore up my business. 

So what’s next?

Okay so I’ll be honest with you, this is a BIG goal that I don’t really know if we’ll be able to make happen but we’re going to try. We’re going to try to have our mortgage paid off by the end of the next year (2017). That’s just over $2,300 a month having to put in towards the principal of our mortgage. 

Again, I’m not sure we’ll achieve this goal but I know that when we set goals, we tend to get super close to achieving them if not, surprising ourselves and completely checking that goal off our list. 

After all, we started 2016 with $33,835.25 as our mortgage balance so we’ve managed to pay off nearly $6,000 on our mortgage. 

Some other things you should know…

We finally got PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance) off our mortgage so that $60 that was going towards that is now going towards the actual principal. Granted that’s not going to make achieving our goal that much easier this year, but it’s something. And I’ll be updating our goals post every month with the progress. 

Okay so you tell me – have you paid off your mortgage? If so, how’d you do it? And if you haven’t paid off your mortgage yet, do you plan to do it in the next few years? If so, tell me your plan!

The post How we’re attacking and paying off our mortgage this year. appeared first on Jessi Fearon.