Re: At last
Yep congrats from me also. I definitely think it's one of the best things to get rid of in life as early as possible. If you had an endowment you might have been eligible for endowment mis-selling of course.
When my wife & I were younger we fell into the mortgage game like all youngsters did, it was just the defacto accepted thing to do. Later we realised what a nuisance they were and switched to an Offset mortgage and piled all available money in there and that shaved many years and £thousands off it. Like others here I was lucky enough to get a good VR pay-off and used some of that to finally wave goodbye to mortgages.
This was all well and good until a new problem arrived. . .
The wife keeps looking at bigger houses in better locations and wants to move and start up a new mortgage. I am sadly having to fight this. I don't ever want another mortgage in my life.
Having no mortgage creates freedom. I have no debts so I am free. I don't HAVE to work but I can if I want to and if/when I do from time to time, I can do so knowing that I don't NEED to be there and can walk away at any time. That makes working an entirely different experience and proposition. I will never again acquire debt that forces me into a life of slavery.