Thanks to being generally frugal, ex-h and I were able to and did pay off our mortgage in six years.
It depends where you are with house/property taxes, the type of house you have (does a lot go unused all the time, it is extra costly to keep up outside and inside, or convenience for family/visitors make it worthwhile with perhaps extra costs). We have just over 4 years to go to retirement. We don’t want to downsize and stay in our geographic location because it would be wasting a lot of money and causing a lot of effort - getting the $$ out of current home but then buying something nice enough to make the effort worthwhile (low property taxes either way). Just now our neighborhood has been ‘discovered’ and the lower priced homes are selling quickly. Our current home improvements will pay off - and when we do want to geographically move (that may be a way out - to see where DDs finally settle to take into consideration) - I want to time with the housing market to get the $$ out of this home.
I went back to work after 18 years SAHM (and surviving aggressive stage III cancer) and my income is helping with home improvements (necessary after building 25 years ago; replaced downstairs HVAC last year and this week replacing upstairs HVAC along with extra work to improve duct system/reduce noise). It feels good to use my extensive education/prior work experiences. It has always been a bit of a worry getting to retirement, but also has been good we could pull $$ out after 59.5 - which we have done. One portion of our retirement portfolio gained more than H’s income last year.
Time. Energy. Money. Always using the resources at one’s disposal.
Faith, family, friends. Keeping those things in mind and balancing.
Reading some of these posts, I’m starting to feel guilty. We have a 15 year mortgage, and maybe 8 years left to pay. I have decided balance is really important for me. We paid for undergrad for all kids, save a fair amount for retirement, and we are enjoying taking multiple trips per year. While we are still young enough to enjoy it, I’d rather travel, and continue to pay mortgage.
Don’t feel guilty! We paid off the mortgage on House1. Had to get a mortgage to get into House2 without contingencies. I need to run the numbers to see if we can get any meaningful tax savings because of that interest (and also property taxes)… if it does reduce our overall tax liability in a meaningful way, we might keep the mortgage and park the cash from House1 sale elsewhere.
" While we are still young enough to enjoy it, I’d rather travel, and continue to pay mortgage." - That
a reasonable approach. A few times we’ve started to talk about home improvements… but opted to travel instead. The 1993 house is a little tired, but it does not yet bother me enough to deal with the expense and hassles of renovation. But travel… yea, we like that 
Our case was probably a six of one, half-dozen of the other situation. My ex lost his job a year or so after we paid off the mortgage, and he did not get another one for six years. It might have been good to have the dollars equal to the early mortgage payments in the bank or in investments. But it was also good to not be making interest payments. Sometimes one doesn’t know if a decision was good, bad, or neutral in effect until many years later.
I’m definitely in favor of some travel and even some home updates along the way. Enjoy your life while your living it. Part of enjoying life is knowing that you are saving for retirement, but an excessive focus on saving is no healthier than an excessive focus on spending.
We just paid off our out of state lake home after four years as we look towards future retirement. Our in the cities home will be paid off next year. We look forward to no monthly payment! I mentioned up thread that he keeps pushing his retirement date back as he is really having fun with his job.
We have about 8 years left on a 15 year mortgage and have debated paying it off but we have a super, super low interest rate on the loan. After doing a few calculations we determined it really didn’t make a lot of sense to pay it off early.
We’re in a similar situation, @janiemiranda, and made the same call.
Hey if you have a good retirement nest egg with ability to make the house loan payments, do what works for you.
Medicare eligibility for both of us is our retirement timing. We will have the house paid off by then under the payment schedule. Very low interest rate so no incentive to pay off early.
ditto janemiranda’s situation, and decision for us as well.
we are a bit older[ already getting medicare] but we both are still working.
if our income drops to the point that it makes no sense to keep the loan on the books in order to educt the interest payments[ or if the mortgage interest deduction gets eliminated via tax reform] then we’ll pay it off.
Yup. No rush to pay off a loan that has such a low rate and that’s mostly principal payments.
It’s more about cash flow, and what you are doing/going to do with the extra money. If you are just going to put it in the bank at essentially 0%, you might as well pay off that mortgage at 4% or whatever.
To us, it was psychological. We just felt better going into retirement knowing we wouldn’t need to make any mortgage payments. Our interest rate was lower than it had been over most of our mortgage but it wasn’t 0% and we had peace of mind knowing that our fixed expenses were as low as we could get them before we retired.
Ours will be paid off in eight years, but DH plans to work at least another 15 years. The mortgage payment is really low anyway, which was a big part of how we paid for college – we had good cash flow.
OTOH, we will need to spent a lot on deferred maintenance before he retires, as we didn’t do much of that while paying tuition!
Yes, in retirement, H is doing a LOT of deferred maintenance for our aging home. He refuses to let anyone be hired as he feels they won’t meet his high standard (and he’s probably right). It takes him a very long time, but he does exceptional work.
HIMom, that’s where my dad is disappointed in my choice of spouse. 
DH has no mechanical inclination or talent for anything involving home or car repairs. Zero. Dad is the original Mr. Fix-It (and has the tools and parts all over his house to prove it). We are at the tender mercies of contractors and repair people. I have found that by hiring contractors who live in our neighborhood, we tend to get better service. They don’t want the neighbors hearing complaints – it’s not good for business!
Mr. B passed my dad’s handyman test. We are now dealing with a lot of work on the “new” house, and having Mr. do various small jobs is super helpful as herding contractors is a daunting task. I am the general painting contractor and master scheduler for those jobs that require outside help, like countertops and siding. Sure things take more time… And tools and parts are scattered all over the house.
It has turned out that two of my brothers had latent do-it-yourself talents that surfaced when they had their own homes to maintain. I personally am good at hiring and supervising good help, though not actually doing much of it myself. My father has NO handyman skills to pass on, though his dad was excellent at building and growing about anything. I would be just as happy if H allowed us to hire good folks to do the work, but if he prefers to do it, that’s OK too, as he is neat and does great work. He actually doesn’t save us any money as he buys the perfect tools and materials, but it makes him happy and satisfied and that’s priceless.