Hope for your financial life and beyond

Stay the Course: Success Happens One Step at a Time

Are you unable to stay the course? Many people have difficulty with this when it comes to completing a task. Somewhere along the way, for whatever reason, they give up, never to reach their goal.

stay the course

It happens for big things and small things. For things we would consider hard and even for things that might be easy. Whatever the goal, it’s challenging to push through and achieve the success you are looking for.

I remember years ago when I shared that we had finally paid off our mortgage early and the four big reasons why we did that. Many people on this blog and on my Facebook page were excited for us. Believe me, so were we. It had been a conviction of our to push through that final debt and knock it out in the span of four years.  

But I also remember some of the comments shared with us were from people who were discouraged. They talked about how long it would take them to pay off their mortgage and that they couldn’t imagine ever reaching that goal. To them, our victory was a reminder that their end was nowhere in sight.

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

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4 Reasons Why Paying Off the Mortgage Early Was Right for Us

Paying 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?

paying off the mortgage earlyAfter we bought our first house, I began to look into this issue. I read many opinions and ended up agreeing with the major arguments for NOT paying off the mortgage early. These points seemed solid to me. The logic goes like this:

“You have such a low interest rate.”

“You could invest instead and get a better rate of return on your money than putting into extra mortgage payments.”

“More of your money is tied up in your house and you can’t get to it for a big emergency.”

“You are getting tax breaks for carrying a mortgage.”

“A mortgage is a hedge (protection) against inflation, especially with a fixed rate mortgage.”

Then during 2010, my wife and I went through some life changes. We began to rethink many money related things including our mortgage. After a lot of back and forth, we decided to pay off the mortgage early. The reasons may surprise you because only one of them is based on a mathematical concept or equation.

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

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 Financial Waters

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5 Common Rental Real Estate Mistakes Landlords Will Make

rental real estate mistakesSo, you are ready to take the rental real estate plunge and become a landlord. Awesome! I hope that you have come to that decision by desire (you really want to do this) and not by necessity (you were forced into it because your house wouldn’t sell). One of those scenarios (hint: the first one) generally works out better than the other.

My wife and I have been renting properties for some time now and our landlord experience has been positive. I believe our success comes from a desire to run a quality business, as we never considered this to be a whimsical adventure. We spent over a year studying the idea to make sure rental real estate was right for us because we knew it has its darker side. I believe we set ourselves up for success as landlords by doing that because we went into it with our eyes wide open.

Rental Real Estate Mistakes Landlords Should Avoid

Even with all our preparation we made some mistakes with our rental real estate. Here are five big ones I want to help you avoid.

1. Paying too much for a property

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