To feel like I have to pay this off for DD’s sake? How can I do it?

[Hyre]

This situation is making me feel unwell. I have 200k left on a mortgage. I’m 36. If I don’t pay this off by the time DD is at school (ie by the time I’m 40) I feel like she is going to be at such a huge huge disadvantage in life as I am a single parent with cms that as everyone knows is unpredictable. This is causing me a lot of stress. I try and overpay but sacrifice my own eating to do this.

i don’t feel like she will have the same opportunity as a child in a two parent household otherwise. How can I achieve this? I feel constantly stressed

Nothing in life is certain. The best chance of giving your daughter stability is by staying as healthy as possible and looking after yourselves. Ensure you both eat well. But also don't fixate on the mortgage and waste her childhood - use some of the money to give her good life experiences too. And don't punish yourself for not being a two-parent family.

Did you not realise whilst you were pregnant that you’d be on your own?

Do you get CSA support

YABVU
my single mother had very little money, worked extremely hard to put food on the table, and a mortgage until I was at uni. What did I go without? Extras, toys on demand, luxuries, 3 foreign holidays per year. In other words frivolous things. What did I have? Love, consistency, an excellent example, sense of hard work.
You need enough to feed your child and pay you bills. You don’t need to be mortgage free and rich to be a parent. Values are a thousand times more valuable than money.

@Hyre yes it is an extra level of worry, I get that. Due to various reasons we took out a mortgage equivilent to yours based on my salary alone - and I was made redundant a year or so after we bought. We are still here, we still have somewhere to live.

There is income protection and mortgage companies will help if you are in difficulty.

£200k at 36 is nothing, as people have said you have 30 years to pay this off and it is easier in small managable monthly chunks.

I would advise overpaying what you can afford (I overpay by £300 per month) as it can help to see that balance reduce a bit quicker. But NEVER go without food or other essentials to overpay your mortgage. That way madness lies.

Remember mortgages are designed to be long term debt.

Your daughter lives in a home you own. She’s massively ahead of many children growing up in two parent families in that respect

Agree with this. My son's primary class has children in council accommodation, private rented accommodation, military housing, refugee housing. Being in a house with a mortgage on it is really not a disadvantage.

Jesus, what is this mumsnet obsession with paying off mortgages early?!
The vast majority of people pay off their mortgage when they are close to or at retirement age. Unless you inherit before then it really isn’t worth prioritising.

Our mortgages are massive and we are 46 and 51. Don’t give a shit. They will be paid off when we are mid 60’s - life is for living.

Prioritise a pension over the mortgage- I’ve got a stonking pension but any spare money is going in to that. The mortgage be buggered.

Ha yeah all those smug "we're mortgage at 38" posts can give a false impression. At 38 I was 2 years in to my mortgage!

I'm really glad you felt able to consider the bigger picture.
I really recommend asking your GP for a referral for some talking therapy / counselling. It honestly can help clarify things and get them in perspective.

The mortgage is something tangible, measurable that you feel you can have some control over. That's easier to look at than the other factors that you don't have any control over. If you didn't plan to be a single parent, then you've experienced a massive life event out of your control. And that makes you hyper vigilant to the possibility of other scary things happening.
That's not a failing, that a self preservation tactic! But as others have said it can completely get in the way of simply living and enjoying your life with your precious dd.
Getting some help to sort out those thoughts can be really helpful.
Good luck!

I'm 42, a single parent and owe 173000 on my mortgage. My child is fine and I buy him everything he wants/ needs. He doesn't care if I have a mortgage or not. I don't think it's normal to have a mortgage paid off by 40 unless you have had considerable help from family/ inheritance etc.

Life for a child when there is not much disposable income will not make her unhappy. I grew up with little spare cash around and also brought up my to children with even less spare cash. I was a stay at home mum so we had a family of four on a single income, the mortgage rate went up to 15% so we had very little spare. Clothes were second hand or hand me downs and presents bought second hand. On the other hand, living with a parent who is desperately trying to achieve the impossible and skipping meals to do this will cause far more stress. Please calm down and realise that you are not letting your daughter down by having to say no to expensive treats. My son was disappointed not to be able to go on the school skiing trip but he has grown up with a better understanding of household finance than if I had been able to give him anything he wanted. A useful skill for adult life I feel.

It Isn’t easy being a single parent - there is a lot of responsibility - but you are taking your anxieties to an extreme.

Your daughter won’t suffer because you haven’t paid the mortgage off by 40. You are setting yourself a completely arbitrary and unachievable deadline. Whether or not you’ve paid off the mortgage by this point will make no difference to her, but having an overly anxious and stressed parent will. You need to prioritise the right thing.

Bear in mind that most families with SAHMs are working from one income.

And that most people with two incomes will probably have taken a larger mortgage which requires them both to be in work.

So a drop in income in either scenario would be similarly stressful. This is something that single parents, single income families and many dual income families live with every day without setting themselves crazy targets to pay off their debt early. Most will be paying their mortgages well into their 50s and 60s.

The bigger problem here is your anxiety, and your fixation on paying off your mortgage by 40 which is an inappropriate solution. The notion of your daughter being disadvantaged if this target is not met is a fiction, and if you can’t appreciate that from the scores of similar comments on this thread I think your, and your daughter’s, best interests are served by having your anxiety treated.

OP, unless you earn an unbelievably high salary, like hundreds of thousands, or earn huge bonuses, you're simply not going to be able to pay it off in a couple of years. Virtually nobody could, so it's just completely unachievable.

Much better to focus on what you can do and staying healthy both mentally & physically, that's the best thing that you can do for your DD.

I’m struggling to understand your logic. The pre school years are expensive with child year costs. We’re aiming to pay the mortgage off by the time the oldest is 18 so we can help out with uni costs.

OP you need to reframe this in your mind. Your dd will not suffer due to you paying off your mortage longer than 4 years down the line. She will suffer if her either becomes sick from not eating and putting unnecessary demands on herself. Plan to pay it off by 50. Be more reasonable. Your child will be a teen then, will need help with driving and uni costs. Reframe totally. You are in a good position in comparison to many single families.

This. Sorry but you sound a bit crazy. Why are you stressing yourself out over this! It’s absurd behaviour. Are you ok generally?

I think you are leaving your daughter a lot more than some will be able to. As long as you are repaying your mortgage your daughter will have an inheritance. She could still have lots of equity In the property even if you have not managed to pay it up. She may have a really good job and not need your inheritance either. You are being a fantastic mum thinking like this but honestly it's not worth worrying g about. You could take out extra life insurance if you really are worried about this. There are loads of people renting these days with no hope of ever having a mortgage. They won't have anything to leave their kids unless they have good life insurance. Pay the repayments and enjoy your life with your girl

I'm sorry but you're being ridiculous. I'm a lone parent and I'll never even own a home, I rent. It doesn't bother me at all. This level of stress about something like this is not normal.

40 years ago it was normal for one person to be paying the mortgage.
Many of us were sahm's.
Although I always worked part time to fit round dh's very long days.

If you try and gradually build up some savings, enough to pay your mortgage for a year then would that give you enough of a buffer that you can relax a bit? That seems like a usual, careful sort of approach?

Get decent income protection insurance (which doesn't have to cost the earth - we recently got new quotes and we could get £2,500/month cover for 25 years for about £35/month).

Then breathe.

A mortgage isn't the same as most debt - if you didn't have a mortgage, you'd likely have rent to pay. Its an asset which is unlikely to decrease greatly / become worthless. Its nothing like having a load of credit card debt from overspending, holidays etc.

If you can overpay a bit each month then great, but don't think you are letting your DC down in any way by having a mortgage.

This is one of the most bizarre Mumsnet posts I've read and that's saying something!

OP, if you genuinely feel like this then I think you need to speak to your GP as this is a severe, unnatural anxiety and will impact your daughter.

I'm sure I've read this before

What’s with all the weird threads at the moment!

What difference does it make to anything having it paid off by the time she’s at school?
what kind of disadvantage do you think she’ll have? I think having a secure home, love and food in the table is what a child needs. Not a mother stressed out of her mind trying to do something she doesn’t actually need to do.

Even if she had 2 parents paying a mortgage is not to say it would be paid off? As long as you can pay the set amount each month and some extra if that is your choice surely that’s ok? What help will you be to anyone if you become sick because you aren’t eating properly and are ill due to stress? you are making a choice here, many single mothers have far far less - I have 4 children so plenty experience of having little but my children are all healthy happy and thriving. Perhaps speaking to someone about your anxieties and worries may put things into perspective a bit, it’s easy to let stress steamroll into something more.

OP, I don't know anyone who is mortgage free by the age of 40. If your DD has a roof over her head and everything that she needs, then you are doing OK.

I became a single parent when DD was 4. I was 40 when XH left, with a mortgage of £110K. I had left a secure job of 20 years the year before to work self employed around DD's preschool hours. I had to re-mortgage and was then mortgaged until I was 67.

I had to pay the mortgage and everything on my own. Initially I got WTC and as I built up my part time business into a full time income, the WTC decreased and I became totally self sufficient within a few years.

I overpay the mortgage now, but have only been able to do that for the past few years and DD is 16 now. I am on target to be mortgage free by 62 now, and hoping to even get that down to 57.

When DD was young, the priority was mortgage, bills, food, DD's clubs.

Stop stressing and worrying about it. While DD is young, you need to concentrate on bringing her up. Pay the mortgage. Pay the bills. Give DD as good a life as you can afford.

Save money if you can towards the future, or towards paying a lump sum off the mortgage once a year, but don't go without food or anything else to do that.