This month I’ve finally broke thru the $5,000 dollar mortgage barrier!

I still have about $4,989 left to go.  That’s almost the cost of our upcoming Disney vacation (ouch.. thinking about it still hurts a bit)!

With my mortgage, I created “Mortgage Milestones“, each time I cleared one, we would go out to a nice restaurant to celebrate.  You can see from the list below, I increased the number of milestones as I get closer to $0 owed.  This added a bit of incentive to stick to the schedule, and reward the family for their patience and sacrifices.

• $75,000
• $50,000
• $25,000
• $10,000
• $5,000
• $0

Once we get to $0, We’re going to go to the nicest place I can think of in my area.  I’m expecting the freedom from a mortgage payment to be a huge change in my life.  Already, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the money saved from the mortgage.

If you plan on making extra payments on your mortgage as I did, I’d definitely recommend making “Mortgage Milestones” as I did.  If I had to do it all over again, I think I’d make the earlier milestones $10,000 increments instead of $25,000.  Keeping the $5,000 decrement amounts once you hit $10,000 in the end just to spice it up a bit.  This also keeps your whole family focused on the goal of paying off your house early.

So a better revised “Mortgage Milestone” configuration would be:

• $100,000
• $90,000
• $80,000
• $70,000
• $60,000
• $50,000
• $40,000
• $30,000
• $20,000
• $10,000
• $5,000
• $0