What age will you pay off your mortgage?

lasermonkey · September 2020

I was 48 when I paid the final instalment on my mortgage.

Dontgiveupyourdayjob · September 2020

Due to pay mine off by the time I hit 55. Should give me a good 10 or so years of mortgage free time to save up a little nest egg for retirement.

Would have been due to pay it off earlieir as was overpaying when I was with my wife, but since she buggered off and left me with the whole mortgage on my own I can't afford to overpay anymore!

paulnb57 · September 2020

Spent many years overpaying ours by the maximum allowed by the lender, then when I retired at 55 walked into the Nationwide and used some of my gratuity to pay it off completely, been mortgage free 7 years...its bliss!

Hattigol · September 2020

Dave8 said:

If everything stays as it is.. I hope to have mine paid off by the time I’m 40... I’m currently 35.

that is if I don’t move to a bigger house or quit my job/get fired etc... who knows what could happen in thIs post apocalyptic world we live in.

Mainly because of over payments, when I took the mortgage out it was due to finish when I get to 60.

Am I the only one worrying that you haven't spent anywhere near enough money on guitars?

mattdavis · September 2020

All v helpful - so extending to mid/late 50s doesn’t sound like it would be completely mad. Will continue to ponder it (and then distract myself with guitar and Netflix, trying to pretend I can ignore the nagging urge to move and that it will all just sort itself out).

RandallFlagg · September 2020

NPP said:

From a purely economic point of view, this was nonsense and I should have put anything I had available after covering the minimum monthly payments on the mortgage into a pension instead, taking advantage of the tax breaks (i.e. 20% or 40% free money) available for pension contributions.
Speaking of which, not buying a bigger house will leave you with some money to invest into a pension, giving you the option to retire early if you are so inclined.

Dave Ramsey's 7 Baby Steps recommend paying off your mortgage early once you are putting 15% of household income towards retirement (Pensions/Savings) and I agree.

Yes it makes more sense financially in this era of extremely low interest rates to salary sacrifice more into your pension and leave the mortgage but you have to consider surety of income and job stability as you get older.

3 years ago I was made redundant a few weeks before my 50th birthday but luckily offered alternative employment with the same company. That was when I decided that we need to be debt free as there is no chance of finding a job with the same pay in this area. I vowed that should it ever happen again that I want to be in a position that I can take the redundancy payment and be able to take a much lower paid job without fear of going broke.

We're nearly there and from 2022 onwards a significant portion of our income will be disposable as we will be 100% debt free and I will be maximising salary sacrifice to the full annual allowance for as many years as I can hack it or they can give me that 20 years redundancy payment and will run out the door clicking my heels!

Once debt free, with our savings, investments and retirement funds, I don't see the need to borrow money or have a mortgage ever again.

Dave8 · September 2020

Hattigol said:

Dave8 said:

If everything stays as it is.. I hope to have mine paid off by the time I’m 40... I’m currently 35.

that is if I don’t move to a bigger house or quit my job/get fired etc... who knows what could happen in thIs post apocalyptic world we live in.

Mainly because of over payments, when I took the mortgage out it was due to finish when I get to 60.

Am I the only one worrying that you haven't spent anywhere near enough money on guitars?

This is a very good point!

I have a few guitars on my list to get hold of.. along with an amp or two. I went to John Browne’s studio a few weeks ago to buy an amp and had a go on one of his Mayones signature guitars... and man, I want one of those!

WezV · September 2020

Divorce earlier this year meant I had to extend to 69 for the short term gain of lower payments.

I'm not too worried. I am hoping I can knock a few years off each time I switch mortgage deals, and even start to overpay.

thermionic · September 2020

I was about to pay mine off at about 42 but got made redundant and had to live off my savings for a couple of years. I would have just got another (smaller) one anyway as the house was too small and a bit crap. My current one takes me up to 66 or 67 - but I have the endowment from my first maturing in two years which will pay off almost a third. I will use that to reduce the term as the monthly payments are quite managable. I’m also very near (hopefully) to a promotion at work, which will allow me to overpay quite easily.

Sure, it’s nice to have paid it off but many people will be paying rent all their lives. I pay less than what the rent of the identical house next door is, and there’s only one way rents are going.

Iamnobody · September 2020

I moved into my first house at 24 with a standard 25 year mortgage. But two moves later (one a large jump) and having extended the term I would have been 67 when this one is paid off.

I say would have been - we overpay and assuming we can afford to keep doing it then it’ll be cleared somewhere between 55-60.

Looking back, I wish we’d started overpaying earlier on but we are in a good place now with over 50% equity (at current values).

However, I reckon we’ve got at least one more upward move in us, so that could all change.

It it’s financially realistic for you, go for it and don’t look back.

Musicwolf · September 2020

I was 36. I took a mortgage out at 27 (when interest rates were at their peak). Repayment rather than endowment (best choice ever), as interest rates dropped I kept repayments the same so as to pay off the debt quicker and prioritised saving as my career progressed. In 1999 I inherited a sum equivalent to 2/3rds of the original purchase price of the house, by which time I’d covered the remaining 1/3rd through savings. Once I paid off the first house I carried on with my savings plan plus what I would have been spending on the mortgage.

Although I was naturally a saver what really drove me was when a couple of colleagues were made redundant in their early 50’s. Both very competent guys but I guess that they didn’t fit and this came at them out of the blue. It made me realise that you couldn’t rely on making it to retirement age (65) and so I made a plan that would allow me to retire at 50 should I have to (you could access your private pension at 50 in those days). Then the retirement age moved to 55 but, more significantly, my son came along when I was 41.

I retired through choice at 56. I’d reached my savings goals, we’re happy with where we live, I could have bought more guitars but what I really wanted was more time to play the ones that I already have. I'm very happy.

RandallFlagg · September 2020

Musicwolf said:

I was 36. I took a mortgage out at 27 (when interest rates were at their peak). Repayment rather than endowment (best choice ever), as interest rates dropped I kept repayments the same so as to pay off the debt quicker and prioritised saving as my career progressed. In 1999 I inherited a sum equivalent to 2/3rds of the original purchase price of the house, by which time I’d covered the remaining 1/3rd through savings. Once I paid off the first house I carried on with my savings plan plus what I would have been spending on the mortgage.

Although I was naturally a saver what really drove me was when a couple of colleagues were made redundant in their early 50’s. Both very competent guys but I guess that they didn’t fit and this came at them out of the blue. It made me realise that you couldn’t rely on making it to retirement age (65) and so I made a plan that would allow me to retire at 50 should I have to (you could access your private pension at 50 in those days). Then the retirement age moved to 55 but, more significantly, my son came along when I was 41.

I retired through choice at 56. I’d reached my savings goals, we’re happy with where we live, I could have bought more guitars but what I really wanted was more time to play the ones that I already have. I'm very happy.

Well done. Good work that man.

Bod · September 2020

I'll be 46 hopefully - February next year. We bought our first house in 2001 on 100% mortgage and have moved on once since. We were fortunate to not need to extend the term and instead pay extra. I had a big redundancy pay-out 5 years ago which I've been holding onto in an offset mortgage account until the current deal expires so I can pay off the balance. Just in time for the eldest to go to uni

tone1 · September 2020

I’ve paid my mortgage off twice. 1st house was paid for at 35 and 2nd house by 39....I’ve probably got another house move left in me, so I wouldn’t rule out borrowing again though. It is a nice place to be and I never take it for granted. Life can throw all sorts of crap at anyone. Redundancy, illness etc....I never saw it as a finishing line where I could just put my feet up and relax. Bills still need to be paid.. Kids at Uni etc.etc....We’ve never had daft blowout holidays, but rather a week in Majorca, and I hate spending on myself....

fastonebaz · September 2020

I've two kids i hope go to uni, so some how in the next 8 to 10 years I need to save up around £50k per kid plus aim to pay of the mortgage. Seems impossible. Hence the bank robbery plans.

lovestrat74 · September 2020

I would say the here and now is what is important. I like you over-thought the whole mortgage/borrowing thing for a while, but life is not static. We change, our kids grow up, we want different things from life.

Circumstances and priorities change over time. I had to extend my mortgage term a couple of years ago which means I will hopefully be mortgage free (pending any further changes to our current situation) in my late as opposed to early 50s.

Many of us will be fortunate enough to receive some form of inheritance in our lifetimes (unlike many families from the previous generations). My wife did and with it we chose to invest in our home and extend it to make it the space that we would like our family to live and grow in. After all this is the place where you spend most of your time. We could have chosen to pay off a chunk of the mortgage but we feel that we have made the best choice for our family. Live for what you know I guess and not for what you don't.

We know that we will be here until our kids are through school. Then we will make a decision for what is right for us as we move on to the next chapter. Somewhere less busy, somewhere near the sea, who knows, but definitely somewhere different to what we have now.

Danny1969 · September 2020

I let the ex wife have the house a few years ago and now rent a large detached 4 bed bungalow. I can't afford to buy the kind of house I like to live in but can afford the rent. No plans to buy another house as I want to live in warmer climates for the winter when I turn 60 ... so the plan is to move abroad around late October and come back in March when it starts to warm up.

There's a few sites locally which are kinda like posh trailer parks. You can buy one for about £30k and then you pay £400 a month plus electric and gas. So live in one of those in the warm months, Spain and Tenerife in the winter

thermionic · September 2020

I have found that both times I’ve taken mortgages that the worry about stretching your finances (I’m conservative with a small c when it comes to money) very quickly disappears. The last time my budget almost doubled by the time I’d found the house but six months later I couldn’t understand why I was worried.

TTBZ · September 2020

Probably not til I'm in my 70s unless we somehow run into a big sum of money, which is a depressing thought. We moved around too much a few years ago which cost shit loads of the equity in each house on the moving and legal fees. We've never had enough spare money to make overpayments etc so we're in it for the long haul.

drofluf · September 2020

56 and paid mine off earlier this year by a mixture of being lucky with a long term low fixed rate that my wife had when we met, overpayment (another benefit of that deal was that we could withdraw the overpayments so with low savings rates it was a no-brainer) and downsizing.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

Become a Subscriber!

What age will you pay off your mortgage?

Comments