Paid off mortgage today, how did you feel when yours ended?

[CheeryOchreCat]

We paid off our mortgage today! I think I will need some time to get my head around it.

Do you remember when yours was paid off, and how did you feel? We were in a position to do so courtesy of an inheritance, so mixed feelings on that.

I felt quiet satisfaction and gratitude. Especially to my two beloved deceased relatives who over the years had helped me get to that place of security. It has been a great comfort in the 6 or so years since then to not have that monthly bill. I regularly appreciate my extremely fortunate position.

When my mum paid hers off I was properly ecstatic. It was a major achievement with so, so many setbacks. By contrast, we're paying ours off in a couple of months, we're lucky, it's never really been in doubt or a struggle, so it just feels like a job that we've been steadily working on will be complete.

I didn’t feel anything. DH paid the small mortgage off with an inheritance and that was that.

We paid ours off six months before DD started university. So the money got re-routed quite quickly.

Relief and glad to be able to re-route the payments into pension which has now become much more of a financial focus.

Well I felt quite rich for the first few months as we'd been significantly over paying to get it paid off. Used an endowment for a large chunk as well so it was all paid off by the time we were 50. We bought in 1998 before prices shot up & paid over 20 years.
It meant we could have savings for the first time in our lives & also money for dc at university.
In terms of feelings: proud & relieved & also very lucky to be buying when we were as its so hard for young people now.

I felt so glad, for most people it is the biggest financial strain and commitment that they will ever take on.
Life can take many turns, so much of it out of an individual’s control. So to come through so many recessions, down turns and to own our home felt like a bit of a miracle!

It was an anticlimax to be honest. I felt the same as before it was paid off.

It was amazing - I screamed down the phone at the guy when it was paid off and he seemed really bemused - I had to explain how happy I was to pay off a mortgage! I was 43. I use the money to pay for school fees now and I have a really middling credit rating because I don’t have a mortgage. Also since I paid it off all I see is financial advice saying it’s daft to pay it off and instead you should invest the money but it’s so nice not to worry that another redundancy isn’t going to leave us having to move house. Well done op!

I've got my deeds and I have 15 months to go

First time, really mixed feelings as we had both suffered bereavements and long and complicated hassle dealing with grief and estates/probate to get us to that point. We had a fairly new baby (our youngest) at that point, I'd just gone back to work and I was still in that daze of holding it all together.

A few years later we bought our forever home and had to get a mortgage as we couldn't move out of our old house until the messiest bits of renovation were done. When we did move and the sale proceeds came through i went to the bank in person to pay off the mortgage. That did feel really thrilling, I got taken up to the top floor and given coffee, felt like a VIP. It's never happened before or since! We then went out for a low key celebration lunch (it was the day after valentines) as the kids were at school. Toasted our long lost relatives. Great feeling.

I did get sent the deeds (this was 2019 so maybe one of the last years they did this). I was imagining a long scroll with a red seal or something but they are literally just a few scrappy bits of paper and a letter about a damp proof course. A bit of a let down!

You've still got loads of bils coming in. It never ends.

Same here, DH had a very unexpected inheritance 4 years ago so we paid a big chunk off with that, then my lovely mum passed in November and my step dad released me and my DB some of our inheritance from her, so we paid off the remaining small balance. I do feel very fortunate though to be in this position 10 years earlier than anticipated.

Straight away I stopped my over time I felt really good. I had been cleaned out in my divorce, so it felt secure again to have a little home over my head

A bit anti climactic, I suppose. It was satisfying but not as satisfying as we thought it would be.

Definitely a weight off my mind! Meant I could start putting proper money in my pension and also afford theatre and opera tickets. Turned out to be a godsend given DH's job instability in past 7 years.

Oldest off to uni this year and we'll be paying accommodation costs, so we'll be back to having similar outgoing to mortgage again , I guess for the next 6 years if DS also goes to uni 😫 OTOH, much better than us trying to pay that on top of mortgage or having to take out a maintenance loan.

Well done on paying your mortgage off. Sorry to hear about the circumstances that led to you being able to do so. We paid ours off a few years ago with some help from family. It’s weird as it’s not something you can really tell people in real life. I’m very glad we paid ours off as I’ve been very ill although now recovering. You really never know what’s around the corner.

Last payment this month. Will feel nice for sure, and it's all just own earned income, so no sad events meaning there would have been inheritance or insurance payments. And yes there are still bills etc, but our monthly payment was 3K so should be able to feel it a bit.

Could you get him excited about stocks and shares isas or something that would make money rather than cause debt?

I’m really surprised at how many didn’t have a strongly excited reaction - I currently can’t wait for the day, not paying out that big lump of money every month would leave us so much better off!

Relief to have paid it off. I still feel that now when I think about the fact we own our home outright. I was a bit flash with cash for a few months after - buying more expensive clothes, trips out and more generous charity donations. Now I'm trying to put more into pension and savings. As others had said, we didn't share with others in real life. We did tell my parents thinking they would be pleased for us. I think they were but are of a mindset that you don't outwardly show a lot of emotion around things to do with finances!

Congratulations its a wonderful feeling .Still remember how excited we were .It let us start saving and reduced the worry .

I paid mine off at 43, through my own salary, no inheritance or gifts, so it was a great personal achievement but nonetheless it still felt like an anticlimax, for some reason. But there is great security in knowing you own your own home completely.

congratulations.
mine would have been paid off last year, but due to divorce, and Liz Truss’s mini budget, it’s now running until I’m 70. However before then I will probably either downsize or pay it off with pension lump sum.

Congratulations OP!
Paid mine off in March 2016. Was very surprised to get a letter from my mortgage lender some weeks later offering me a different mortgage deal. A short phone call to them established that I had actually paid the mortgage off.
It then took another 18 months to get the charge removed from the land registry.
It wasn't such a big deal, to be honest, but made annoying by the inefficiency and slowness in getting things wound up.