Work hard now to pay off your mortgage by 30, and retire by 40

[Ieattoomuchsugar]

And to buy a house at 19/20 whatever age

Maybe exaggerating with the ages a bit but these are examples I've seen.

People who've gone without holidays, new clothes etc, lived with the bare minimum and worked endless overtime for years in order to achieve the above.

Has anybody actually done this or in the process of doing it?

I do see the appeal but I personally wouldn't want/wouldn't have wanted to spend my 20s and 30s living that way. I do think life is to be enjoyed, I of course want to save but I am not prepared to go without things I enjoy for such a long time. I think it's better to strike a balance, and I'd rather enjoy life now just as much as when I am 50/60.

I venture people raising families who can actually pay off their mortgages in 30s and not work much didn't actually scrimp in extreme but are:

1. not be in SE UK now / never was
2. have family wealth/help to buy initially or struck a business/inheritance windfall at some point
3. was on ladder before the last decade of house/asset price inflation
4. have at least one parent on top 1% income (this group often don't pay it off as they can service the debt)
5. are actually now in late 50+s (later boomer, gold plated DB pensions etc)

Usually some combination of above

Oh, and I "work hard". A single parent with a full time job and no contribution whatsoever to childcare from ex.

It's so disrespectful to presume people who can't afford to get on the mortgage ladder are somehow lazy by default.

@QuiltedHippo

Each to their own, I don't get much joy out of clothes. They're bad for the environment and the people making them will never have such choices to make about how to spend their excess money. I'm happy to forgo them and put that money towards early retirement.

A lot of people in the early retirement community holiday by using travel rewards which is easier in the US. There's ways to keeping expenses low while still living life. I agree it needs a balance and imagine the most extreme examples are an absolute minority.

You forgo clothes?! Your heating bills must be through the roof to compensate

@KhaleesiOfChaos you need a side gig nobody is gonna get anywhere these days with a 9-to-5 Monday to Friday £28,000 a year job, it’s just not gonna happen.

As you get older the risk of ill health very significantly increases. Fact.
Plus your children become more independent and less inclined / less opportunity to spend time with you

Each to their own, but does seem odd to focussed on a money goal that may curtail you in the present when you are less at risk of I’ll health and more family focussed time for a period of time when… well, that’s not the case

I think most of these stories are deliberately disingenous - for example by conveniently failing to mention that the couple is American (and so can offset taxables), 100-200k joint salaries, or distant family inheritances. There was an Australian blogger who even caught on this once by her Mum who reminded her on Instagram that she wouldn’t have been able to buy without her Uncle leaving 500k to her and her brother

We paid off our mortgage at 44.

We prioritised the mortgage, moved over to repayment and cashed in the endowment plan that was not performing ( they tell you not to do this) this gave us 50K off the 83K remaining.
Instead of saving 1K per month we put it towards the mortage alongside the usual repayment and it was paid in 3 years.
Best thing we have ever done and it didnt involve living off lentils or denying ourselves.
Retired at 55 ( Special classes) and now work PT.
We have a great standard of living, enjoy work and have lots of free time.

@Whatayear81

As you get older the risk of ill health very significantly increases. Fact. Plus your children become more independent and less inclined / less opportunity to spend time with you

Each to their own, but does seem odd to focussed on a money goal that may curtail you in the present when you are less at risk of I’ll health and more family focussed time for a period of time when… well, that’s not the case

True. Plus delayed retirement is associated with longevity - so you could also be cutting down your future lifespan.

@bitemyarsenic

We paid off our mortgage at 44.

We prioritised the mortgage, moved over to repayment and cashed in the endowment plan that was not performing ( they tell you not to do this) this gave us 50K off the 83K remaining.
Instead of saving 1K per month we put it towards the mortage alongside the usual repayment and it was paid in 3 years.
Best thing we have ever done and it didnt involve living off lentils or denying ourselves.
Retired at 55 ( Special classes) and now work PT.
We have a great standard of living, enjoy work and have lots of free time.

To be fair you could do this because you initially bought interest only (hence the endowment plan) and lucked out with houseprices. A lot of people who took that decision haven’t lucked out.

We are 48 and worked very hard in our 20’s (especially dh who worked long, unsociable hours at times), paid off our mortgage (4 bed home) at 32. It is definitely worth it.
We are not bothered by materialism though. My car is 11 years old, dh’s is 5 years old both paid for. We don’t want a life where as soon as wages go in all the bills suck it out again. There is a huge comfort knowing there is rainy day money in the bank should we need it.
Our friend worked even harder in his 20’s and basically had nothing as he invested it in property at the time. He is now 54, rents 10 houses and has a fantastic life.
We are all different and hold different values in life but this was ours, work hard when young and relax more when your older because you get to that older age a lot quicker than you think you will.

@doublemonkey

If interest rates were where they should be, people with mortgages wouldn't have much disposable income so wouldn't be living that lifestyle in any case.

Anyone with a mortgage who's living that lifestyle now should be bracing themselves for rate rises.

Really? Our mortgage is equivalent to about 1/7 of our monthly income.

* Retired at 55 ( Special classes) and now work PT.*

Are you retired if you still work?

Most people in this thread are older and bought their first homes a long time ago when the ratios of house prices to salaries were much lower and homes were affordable, and who have benefitted from home price increases enabling them to save in other ways. It doesn’t apply to people younger than 35 today.

@Jessie75 I earn £48k and I'm skint.

There's a huge problem with society if the only way to get beyond just surviving is having to work 2 jobs.

5 days a week I leave the house at half 7 and don't get back until half 6. By the time my son is asleep it's gone 8.

That leaves 2/3hrs a day to myself. A side hustle will take up all that. I can't do it. I don't care that me, Beyonce and Molly Mae all have the same number of hours in a day. It's what we have to do in those hours that separates us.

I'd rather not have another breakdown trying to run a side hustle on top of my actual life.

It would be nice but the 20s and 30s were my wafting around years - festivals, holidays, nice dates before settling down and being married with a child. I think it would have been fairly miserable scrimping and saving to such an extent you couldn't do these things. My dad died at 50 - he had spent so long working all the hours paying off the mortage and had just taken early retirement, He was dead within the year. Always have a bit of a nest egg but enjoy life each day without always thinking of tomorrow x

We're had our mortgage paid off by 30 as we were lucky enough to buy at under 50k.
By then the house was too small for our family of 5.
We moved to a larger house. With Northern house prices our mortgage is a fraction of our income. We could flog ourselves to have the house paid off, but what would we live on once that's taken care of if we retire?!

And those in their late forties and older saying they worked very hard and scrimped when in their 20s also doesn’t apply today.
Younger people today can cut back a lot of expenses and work very hard doing multiple jobs but that isn’t enough anymore to get on the housing ladder or build up big saving pots/pensions. Family wealth/inheritance is now what is required.

We're mid 40's only have £25,000 left on our mortgage. We recieved a windfall last year that could have paid off the mortgage but chose to invest it elsewhere.
Even if we had cleared the mortgage we'd be in position to retire, household bills just keep on growing and our children are still primary school age so will require our financial backing for a number of years yet.

I have never been in a position to save and consider retiring early but I'd have thought it easier just to live below your means? Have a 2 bed instead of the 5 bed you could potentially afford and use the money to have experiences, nice holidays etc and perhaps drop to part time later in life. I'm not driven by material assets though.

To be fair you could do this because you initially bought interest only (hence the endowment plan) and lucked out with houseprices. A lot of people who took that decision haven’t lucked out

The endowment and interest only was a complete disaster!
We didnt luck out as we lost out when house prices crashed and were in negative equity.
Its a myth that everyone lucked out.
I know many people who actually lost their houses.
I also didnt luck out with a serious life threatening illness.

@Fretfulmum

And those in their late forties and older saying they worked very hard and scrimped when in their 20s also doesn’t apply today. Younger people today can cut back a lot of expenses and work very hard doing multiple jobs but that isn’t enough anymore to get on the housing ladder or build up big saving pots/pensions. Family wealth/inheritance is now what is required.

@Fretfulmum - i’m sorry but that simply is not true I had to start again from scratch and I mean scratch, we did not have cutlery, bedsheets or saucepans in 2018. I’m hopefully about buy my second property having bought the first one with a 10% deposit in 2019 12 months after I restarted work. My ex pissed all the equity away from our family home on lawyers so I didn’t get a penny there. Without putting on the spreadsheet to give you a complete breakdown of my finances you’ll just have to take my word for it can be done it’s not easy and yes side gigs, second jobs etc have to happen but that was always the case I went for British gas in 1997 and then left the day job and went and worked in a bar I literally spent the money I got on tips on food. I also acknowledge that I am lucky in that I do get child-support but I save every penny of it because I know the bastards planning to start works before my child’s 18 so it can’t be relied upon. He might get a shock though when he finds out that the CSM take it out of your pension because he’s got quite a nice one 🤣

Are you retired if you still work?

Yes Im a Midwife.
Many hospital trusts do Retire and Return to avoid a massive loss of skills.
Im officially retired and draw my pension but work PT.

I think it’s about balance too. You need a bit of security, which saving and: or buying your house brings, but you don’t want to waste your younger years having a miserable life.

You don’t want to be llle the poster who came on yesterday- she and her husband had always rented a six bed house and enjoyed life with holidays etc. Then he lost his job and there was nothing to fall back on.

@Toadsinholes we are in our fifties. the reason we paid off so early was we took a high risk investment that paid off our mortgage in our mid thirties, we had only had it for a couple of years, it had no early redemption clause either. Both of us started investing as teenagers.

DH sat his A levels when he was 16 so worked for 2 years before attending University at 18. I worked from age 13, I remember having a thousand pounds saved by the time I was 16 back in 1982.

Jobs wise we certainly earned well enough but it was our investments that made us. We had a few bad trades obviously there was a day about 15 years gap where we lost 25k, it was DH fault though. These days it’s is in lower risk stuff as we have our nest egg. We worked in academia, DH still does and made it to Professor, I retired early a few years ago due to poor health.

We were both self taught about money and investing, we are clever in a way that puts us firmly in the bit odd camp but people like us. DS is an adult now and says we both have strong autistic traits. I’m just the girl who can remember almost every telephone number she has ever dialled and was surprised to discover people couldn’t do this :)

MN has made me realise just how far away from being NT we are, in academia so many people were like us it did not matter.

@GoodnightGrandma

I agree. And I think retirement is overrated. All of my colleagues have come back on a temporary basis as they’re bored and welcome the money. I suppose it depends upon what you plan to do and how you’re going to fund it.

retirement (provided one is comfortably circumstanced) overrated? On what planet? There is so much you can do when you can choose what you can do.