I Am Debt Free, My Mortgage Countdown #1 – Equilibrium

I’m Debt Free!  I don’t have credit card, car, mortgage or any other type of debt!

At Equilibrium

 

On the Wells Fargo website I selected the send “Payoff form” option for my last mortgage payment.

I filled it out and printed it so that I can have Wells Fargo to pay our real estate taxes from our escrow.  Now that they did that, I still have to pay our house insurance at the beginning of March, but… I sent in my last official mortgage payment!

Actually the check is sitting on my kitchen counter downstairs, waiting for me to put it in the mail. Tomorrow, I will drop it off at the post office, and then I will be finished with it!!!  (Booyah)

I ended up paying off my house in 10 years.

So how did I do it?

Well, first I created an excellent excel spreadsheet to do some analysis on an amortization schedule.

Primarily, I used primarily 2 sheets in my spreadsheet:

  • The actual payment was recorded to a sheet.  This sheet was the real deal!  As soon as I made a payment on the house, it was recorded in this sheet.  Not much to this one, pretty cut and dry.  At the top, I calculated the reduction in interest paid by pre-paying, the shorting of the life of the years of the mortgage by prepaying, and the total cost of the initial mortgage plus the interest.
  • The “What If” analysis sheet. I used this to create a strategy to pay my house mortgage off early. I was able to calculate how different extra payments would affect the duration of the mortgage and also calculate the reduction in interest paid for the entire loan. I used this sheet so many times to calculation my payment schedule! It might not be obvious, but this was a great tool for wealth accumulation for me.

Next for the first year of the mortgage, I made double payments on the mortgage amount, with the excess going toward paying down the principal.  Then later after my son was born, I lessened the payment amount to only 1.5 times the original payment amount.

I’m still in disbelief!  I’m at a point of balance and having an “equilibrium moment”, so to speak!

As of this point forward, I will be solidly marching on a wealth-building path (or at least I hope, life sometimes throws some wild pitches at you…).

As the last phase of this final numbness wears off, I’ll tell you what it feels like being debt-free in a future post!

-MR

Update:  An equilibrium moment is when something is in perfect balance!  I don’t owe any debt anymore and nothing is owed to me either!  With the “debt phase“, I’m in perfect equilibrium.  This phase is over!  I don’t plan on ever going into debt that I can’t pay in a month’s time again!

Here are some links to former post in the Countdown series