How I Paid off my House with a Sign in the Bathroom

Last Updated on November 23, 2017 8:27 pm by Steven

Four years ago, I was about three years into my anti-debt journey using the Dave Ramsey plan and You Need A Budget (YNAB).  By that time, we had paid off all of our consumer debt, both of our vehicles, and our RV trailer, and we had a fully funded emergency that would supply us with 3 months of expenses.  We had not paid off our house.  We cash flowed our daughters first year of university tuition (she paid for room, board, & books).   That daughter had just left for an 18-month church service mission that I had committed to supporting (although it was only $400/month).  Things financially were looking really good.

Then on Friday, August 1, 2013, something happened to me that I had previously thought was unthinkable.  I had been working in a very narrow but high demand field as a Solution Engineer for software companies (I demo software).  At 10 AM my boss brought me into his office for our bi-weekly discussion and plan for the demos over the next couple of weeks.  Before I had a chance to say anything – he told me that my position at the company has been eliminated effective today!

In his defense – he did a very unpleasant deed in a very human manner.  He let me sit in his office for a few minutes while I gathered my thoughts.  I had to leave my laptop with him – but he did let me delete my personal files off my laptop.  I gathered a few personal things from my desk and I left work and drove home at 10:30 in the morning.

After the initial shock to me, we took a hard look at our finances.

• We were already living on last month income – so all of our bills were covered for August.
  • We made a few immediate adjustments to things like retirement.  We adjusted the budget a bit – but we were already running lean.  We made these adjustments to save as much cash as possible.
• I was given one-month severance pay.  That severance pay would support us in September.
• We had three months of expenses in an emergency fund – so that would take care of October, November, and December expenses.

Over the next five months I worked some odd jobs, my wife got a full time teaching position (giving us health insurance) and I continued to look for full-time employment.  Thus far we had not touched our emergency fund for any of our monthly expenses.  I was feeling really good managing our money.

Right after 2014 started two things happened.

1. I got a longer term (6 months) contracting job with a previous employer. That gave us some additional stability.
2. I had another very strong prompting to set a goal to have the house paid off in five years.  My initial reaction to this prompting was “That’s Crazy Talk!”

 The Crazy Idea

At the time we were three years into a 15-year mortgage.  I felt we were paying down the mortgage at a quick rate already.  I had also dreamed of having the mortgage paid off and I would sometimes imagine what we could do with the extra money each month if we did not have a mortgage payment.

My wife and I discussed this crazy idea of being super diligent about paying off our mortgage, even though I did not have full-time stable employment.  Could we do it?  The math did not work out.  The prompting did not go away.

So we took the challenge that we were given and we said Yes, we will make a goal to pay off the house in five years!  We didn’t have a plan on how we were going to accomplish this goal, we just knew that we needed to have this goal.

A goal without a deadline is just a dream.

The Sign

Because I’m a very forgetful person – The first thing we did was printed up a  plain sign that said “Pay off the house by December 2018!” and we put it on the bathroom mirror.

Having it on the bathroom mirror made us look at it every morning and every night.  We were reminded of our goal multiple times a day. Having this goal to pay off our mortgage started to become an obsession.  Every money decision that we made this goal was a part of.

Every month over the next year there was almost always extra money that we could put toward the mortgage.  In the Spring of 2015 I, calculated when we would make our last mortgage payment – we were only 18 months away!  I could not believe it.  We were going to accomplish a goal so large!

I attribute being able to achieve this goal to two things:

1. Setting a financial goal that I believed was just out of reach.
2. Putting the sign up in our bathroom – so we were reminded daily of our goal.

 “…and now the rest of the story…”

The Lord’s plan never was for me to live in that house debt free.  But He knew I needed to get the principal paid down so that I would have the equity to move closer to family, which we did in Summer of 2015.  When I purchased my current home, I did it with a 10-year mortgage.  No, I won’t be completely out of debt in 2018, but I will shortly thereafter. There were moving expenses and we upgraded the house size & cost.  Today there is a sign in our bathroom mirror that reads:

Pay off the house by December 2020!

Pay off the house by December 2020! – Click to Download

2020 is the year our youngest will graduate from High School.  We will be empty nesters, and we will own our nest!

Please comment and let me know how setting goals have helped you financially.