I went to the bank today and put a payment down on my mortgage. It wasn’t as much as I would like. It never is. But I did pass an important milestone. With the mortgage I have, I am allowed to pay 20% of the initial amount in advance payments. So if I had taken a plan for $100,000 (I haven’t), I would be able to pay $20,000 extra in a given year.
I am now at the point where I have less than 20% of the mortgage left. So in theory, next calendar year I would be able to pay it off completely at any time.
Assuming I had the money.
I’ve given myself a goal to pay it off by May 20th. That would be the three year anniversary of my home ownership. Now I probably don’t earn enough by my salary to pay that much. But I do have a large chunk of US dollars sitting around, being unproductive. I’ve been waiting for the Americans to stop tanking their economy so that I can use them to pay off my debt. But those silly Yanks keep electing dumb presidents. I may just have to bite the bullet and convert the currency at a less than optimal rate.
That still won’t be enough. The other option is to be very careful about any purchases I do. Live frugally. The thing is, I can probably do that and not even notice. I don’t buy many toys for myself these days. The only frivolous items I get are DVDs and books. And I already have a lot of those that I haven’t done anything with. So saving money shouldn’t be a hardship.
Let’s see what happens.