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When Conventional Wisdom About Money Clashes With Conviction

May 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Today, I’m honored to be a guest contributor at My Money Design. I’ll be sharing how I lost my disciplined spending habits through the use of credit cards and the issues that arose because of that.

In the middle of my problems two things occurred that caused me to rethink what I was doing. In those moments, my new found beliefs came in conflict with my behaviors. What would I do?

To read my post at My Money Design, click here.

Next Post: Why We Don’t Give Our Kids Allowances

Prior Post: Stay the Course: Our Success Happened One Step At A Time

Filed Under: Inspiration, Spending Tagged With: , , , ,

Stay the Course: Our Success Happened One Step At A Time

May 9, 2014 by 24 Comments

Hidden Nuggets Series #40 - “The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty.” - Proverbs. 21:5

Man standing at train station, success

One station at a time

It’s been a fun and busy week at Luke1428. On Monday, I shared that we had finally paid off our mortgage early. I followed that up on Wednesday by explaining the four big reasons why we chose that route. Needless to say, there has been a whole bunch of page views this week, more than I expected. I guess this is a hot topic after all.

Of course, those who commented here and on my Facebook page have been excited for us. Believe me, so are we. It’s been a conviction of ours that we have been pushing to complete for over four years.

I couldn’t help but feel that some who shared seemed discouraged. They talked about how long it would take them to pay off their mortgage and that they couldn’t ever imagine reaching that goal. Maybe I’m reading into the comments, which is a really easy thing to do.

If you feel that way, like the end is never going to come, I’d like to say three things:

1. We’ve all felt that emotion.

2. One step at a time.

3. The tortoise always wins.

Diligence Leads to Plenty

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Hidden Nuggets Series, Inspiration Tagged With: , , ,

4 Reasons Why We Paid Off Our Mortgage Early

May 7, 2014 by 28 Comments

A stack of money with house sitting on topPaying off the mortgage early is a hot topic when it comes to money management. There seems to be a good amount of quality logic for keeping it and equally valid logic for paying it off early. So what’s a homeowner to do?

After we bought our first house, I began to study this idea. I read all the opinions and ended up agreeing with the major arguments for not paying off the mortgage early. These points seemed solid to me:

“You have such a low interest rate.”

“You could invest and get a better rate of return on your money.”

“You have money tied up in your house and can’t get to it for a big emergency.”

“You are getting tax breaks.”

“You are hedging against inflation, especially with a fixed rate mortgage.”

Then during 2010, some things started to change in our lives and we began to rethink our strategy. After much debate, we decided to pay off the mortgage early. The reasons may surprise you because only one of them was based on a mathematical concept/equation.

Let me preface what I’m about to share by saying that we could not have paid off the mortgage early unless we had the extra money to do so. That’s seems obvious, but I think it’s an important point to make. We reached that point in our lives where all other debts were paid and the other aspects of financial planning - emergency fund, kid’s college, retirement - were being covered.

So that freed us up to throw extra money at the mortgage. We moved money to the mortgage balance from our excess monthly income, from our rental property income, from tax refunds, from investments and from any other money we could get our hands on. All in all, it was a four year journey to complete once we finally became serious about it.

Here’s why we did it.

Reason #1: A Personal Conviction

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Filed Under: Debt, Real Estate

Goodbye Mortgage and Lender B.O.A. Hello Baby Step 7!

May 5, 2014 by 45 Comments

finished paying off the mortgage

My reaction to paying off the mortgage

Remember the feeling of those significant milestones in your life?

That time you moved away from home.

That day you said, “I do.”

That moment when your kids finally grew out of diapers.

That big job promotion or beginning a new career.

All of these and many more have occurred in my life and in our household. The one we experienced recently surely ranks in the top ten in matters of earthly importance.

We’ve paid off our mortgage! Goodbye Bank of America. It’s been…uh, “nice” knowing ya. Hello Baby Step 7!

This event actually occurred in February. I walked into our local BOA and received the deer in the headlights look upon mentioning I wanted to pay off our mortgage. They appeared happy for me but I knew better. What was really running through their minds was “Rats…lost another one.”

They thought worse than that when learning I also wanted to close all my accounts. The only reason we opened a checking account there was because they purchased our mortgage from Countrywide years ago. It made it simpler to pay down our mortgage as we could transfer money to BOA from our main bank at PNC.

Uncharted Waters

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Filed Under: Debt, Real Estate Tagged With: , , ,

Wrestling Against Something Twice Your Size

May 2, 2014 by 19 Comments

Today my wife Kim contributes to the Hidden Nuggets Series by discussing what we are learning about life from our boys’ wrestling.

Hidden Nuggets Series #39 – “As iron sharpens iron…” – Proverbs 27:17

We have four great kids, two girls and two boys. Our two boys are aged 11 and 6, and they wrestle - boy do they wrestle. All. The. Time. In their room, in my room, outside, at their sister’s soccer game 2 inches from the sidelines — doesn’t matter, they are wrestling.Boys Wrestling

I don’t know how it usually starts, but I have a feeling that one of them pokes the other and then off they go. Now, our 11 year old - (I’ll call him Bubbers - long story) - is about twice the size of the 6 year old — (I’ll call him Doot - longer story). When I watch Bubbers and Doot wrestle, it is really no contest. They are having a ton of fun, but Bubbers wins every single time.

It usually takes about 20 seconds or so. Doot will be almost pinned to the ground, usually with an arm raised up in protest, and then boom – Bubbers grabs his wrist and Doot is pinned down flat. Bubbers lets him up, and they’ll start circling around each other to go at it again.

Brian and I have started noticing something though about the outcomes. Bubbers still always wins, but it is starting to take a little longer. Doot has figured out that if he gets down a little and lowers his center of gravity, then he can last just a smidgen longer.

What do you think will happen when Doot gets to be closer to Bubbers’ size?

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Filed Under: Hidden Nuggets Series Tagged With: , , ,
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