pay off my mortgage

Even though we have made great strides to pay down a great deal of our mortgage over the past 3 years, we still have 3 1/2 years to go before this goal will be completed. Living on one income for awhile while my spouse was looking for a full-time job was quite a struggle, but it taught us to start being much more careful with how we spend our money. There is always a lesson learned with each challenge that we face.

We might be able to get our house paid off in a little under 4 years! yayyy! Looking forward to that and paying off our other debts and then start thinking about retirement. ;)

What disappoints me is that if we had been a little more prudent and thrifty over the past 10 years, we could have had the mortgage just about paid off by now. My spouse being laid off from her job, after 28 years of service, was not part of the plan. Plus, we didn’t know it would take her a full 3 1/2 years to find another full-time job. Her current salary is nowhere near what she used to make, but we are able to get by.

I also want to financially continue to help my sons with their post-secondary education, which is so expensive these days. Also, the Ontario Student Loan process assumes that parents are going to fund a large proportion of student tuition and living expenses. We have to divulge our income so that the student loan people can determine how much money they are willing to loan to my sons, sigh. It is such a relief to have two incomes again in our household.
Three years ago, I worked almost 400 hours of overtime to try to help make ends meet. It’s so easy to burn yourself out that way.