I'm happy to say I have a fair bit of cash and I'm not even 37 yet

Hmm. If I don't spend anything at all for the next 5 years, I'll have that sort of cash.

I know I got a bit of a bargain 'cos it needed some work and it was a while ago, but that's slightly more than I actually paid for my house in full .

So I hope that you have cleared your mortgage by now.

I was reviewing my finances and in five years I can save that amount.

Well thats the average so it includes the cost of buying a house in the SE / London area

More or less. Couple of years left IIRC.


True, but there is a balance to be had between paying off a mortgage and having a life...

Jon

Yes but if you over pay now and can clear it then you do not have to pay that out for a couple of years. My cousin used a PEP that I set up for him to clear his mortgage seven years early. He has saved a fortune in mortgage payments for seven years. He now only works part time and only when he wants to. He is a lot happier as a result.

I have a simple choice - live like a pauper for a year and pay my mortgage off in a year, or live a fairly normal life and pay my mortgage off in (I think) three years. Personally, at this point in proceedings, the 'live like a pauper for a year' doesn't meet the cost/benefit analysis. I have about as much cash as I need and will pay it off in a relatively short period of time. That's fine by me. essentially paying my mortgage off as it stands represents no hardship to me, so paying it off early has to represent a significant benefit for the inconvenience it would cause in my daily life.

For example - at relatively short notice I'm off to Florida next week to watch one of the last remaining Space Shuttle flights lift off. I could do that, or I could put the cost of that against my mortgage and pay it off two months early. But then I won't have seen a space shuttle lift off and there won't be any more then so I never will. I don't consider that anything approaching a worthwhile exchange.

The caveat on all this of course is that I'm in the final stages of a repayment mortgage and have therefore paid the vast part of any interest I would have been charged over the lifetime of the loan, since obviously repayment mortgages front load the interest. So paying it off early doesn't actually benefit me that much. Especially given interest rates are at a historical low, so the interest I'm being charged right now is only a fraction of what it was at various stages past.

A woman I knew somewhat a while back was effectively living like a pauper for the first couple of years of her mortgage on the promise of paying it off five or so years early 20 years later on. That's her decision but frankly it made her a very dull person to know because she could never do anything fun because she was always skint. There are always choices to be made in life and frankly, I'm happy with the ones I've made thank you.

Jon

The stupidly annoying thing is that I could easily have paid a deposit in 2007, but am gonna struggle now. I've decided to save up around £50k to cover deposit/fees/moving.

Even more annoyingly is that according to my calculations, if I spent absolutely nothing last year (I live with parents and don't pay rent/bills unless they need a bit of help), I would have had the deposit.

I think this weekend, I'm gonna look into how much I've spent where and figure out where the hell the money's gone when I have barely a fifth of what I should have.

Jon, seeing the shuttle is the right choice.

Yes it does depend on personal circumstances.

If we lived on my wife's income, I could save the money in less than a year, but (apart from the fact that we've just had a baby, so she can only bring in ten pounds a day) that wouldn't buy the sort of house I'd want to live in. Nor as nice a house as I live in now. And the mortgage would be 300 a month more than my current rent.

No matter which way I slice it, I can't make it work.

When I pay off my mortgage (ETA 2031), I'm going to have the biggest party ever.

Our house was our best buy ever. Bought it before prices, and the area's intrinsic value, rose and is still roughly twice the price we paid for it about 7 years ago. It was more but then the market's down at the mo.

Just under 5 years left on the mortgage. Well, maybe, it depends if we borrow some more and by a 2nd smaller bungalow outright to rent out which is a possibility .