What age did you pay your mortgage off?

[Reese123]

Out of interest what age did you pay off your mortgage or what age will you be when you anticipate paying it off?

26. Bought a doer-upper very cheap during low house prices with a large deposit and made overpayments.

Just sold that for more than double what we’ve spent on it all together and have used that as a large deposit on our next home with a small 10 year mortgage. So without overpayments will be mortgage free again for 40 with a lot of equity.
We’ve been very lucky.

Jesus, this thread is depressing.

I earn a very good salary, but looking at our mortgage app we're going to be well into our 60s before it's paid off. And we don't even have children to blame!

Thanks, divorce at 35 🙄

50

If we continue to overpay at current rate, we will be done in early / mid 40s (bought at 28 & 30). However, we were lucky and bought right at the bottom of the market for this area in 2013 - just for context, 5 bed bungalow (attic conversion, very 80s needed a lot of cosmetic work, kitchen bathroom etc) with very large garden was 105k, recently valued at £160k.

My younger sibling is in mid 20s and trying to buy in same area. Looking for a 3 bed semi. Very little on for under 170k. Has been told even with large deposit they have been saving since childhood the most they can borrow is 130k on their NHS wage. Wages just haven't kept up with prices and timing / luck has so much to do with it. In 2013 we were able to get a 95% mortgage which we were then able to vastly improve at remortgage due to huge jump in value and overpayments. Sibling, with their large deposit, seems to be getting nowhere as affordability so much harder - no kids yet to reduce theirs, we had one when we bought.

Hope to be 32 (DH 31). We've paid off 2/3 of it in 6 years already, just 1/3 to go! A baby is on the way not so it will get trickier to overpay (currently overpay 15k a year). Also might upsize at some point and have another mortgage again in the future.

We are both 51 and we paid off mortgage when we were 49.

Plan is by early 50s.

In 9 years aged 49 hopefully. I’m so annoyed at myself that I haven’t overpaid more over the years! Love threads like these as they really re focus me on clearing it!

38 but then divorced… selling up now and will be mortgage free when I buy my next property at 52

Would have been late 30s but upgraded so will take a bit longer.

I'll be 53 but we are overpaying now and will put lump sums in too so hoping earlier!! I'm 34 at the mo

I'm quite surprised at how many people are going to be paying their mortgages off at such a young age. We bought our first house in our early 20s but we have moved several times since and took out a 26 year mortgage on our current house 3 years ago which will end (if we don't overpay) when we are 64. But we might move again and increase the mortgage again and take it to age 68 so potentially paying it all the way up until retirement . This in theory didn't really bother me as we would overpay at some point in the future but reading all these replies has made me worry about this plan to be honest. Having said that our next house would likely be a larger propertyand we would then have the potential to downsize quite a bit when our children leave home

I'm 40 and don't even have my first mortgage yet . Hoping to get one soon.

@Myusernameisnotmyusernameno, I am late thirties and in the same boat. I work in an industry, where increasingly fewer permanent contracts are given out. I have saved over the years for a decent deposit, but due to the lack of job security had to keep on renting. I have wasted more than 100k in rent paying other people's mortgages over the years, and also lived with flatmates for 15 years.

Ironically, 30 years ago, in the 'good old days' in the same industry, my dad, on the same job title as I, single-handedly supported a four-person household (my mum was a SAHM), bought a 5 bedroom house in an expensive part of the country, and took us on twice annual foreign holidays. They weren't very financially savvy either, whereas I budget a lot. They are baffled about my situation. He just cannot take in it is not the same world anymore as the one he worked in.

We chose to invest in stocks and shares for a bit rather than focus on paying for the mortgage in this low interest environment and now, as a family, have roughly twice as much invested as we have borrowed and it’s still growing.

*Overpaying

[quote davidrosejumper]@Myusernameisnotmyusernameno, I am late thirties and in the same boat. I work in an industry, where increasingly fewer permanent contracts are given out. I have saved over the years for a decent deposit, but due to the lack of job security had to keep on renting. I have wasted more than 100k in rent paying other people's mortgages over the years, and also lived with flatmates for 15 years.

Ironically, 30 years ago, in the 'good old days' in the same industry, my dad, on the same job title as I, single-handedly supported a four-person household (my mum was a SAHM), bought a 5 bedroom house in an expensive part of the country, and took us on twice annual foreign holidays. They weren't very financially savvy either, whereas I budget a lot. They are baffled about my situation. He just cannot take in it is not the same world anymore as the one he worked in.[/quote]
I am on fixed term contracts too. HSBC is the only mortgage provider that could help us. Maybe try approaching them. They are very flexible for fixed / short term contractors who earn over £30k.

Thanks. I will look at that. We can afford the mortgage payments and have secure jobs it's just the deposit is difficult to save up.

Took a £250k mortgage in 2015 on a 24 year term (London so that's not so high) but hoping to pay it off within 12 years via overpayments when I'll be 52.

Age is a pretty flawed comparator as it depends where you are, how young you were able to buy, and how many times you elect or need to upsize. If I had stayed in my previous property, I would be mortgage free by now. It's probably more how old were you when you paid off the mortgage on your forever home, assuming you believe in such a concept

59

I could have paid it off years earlier but the rate was so low (0.29% at the end) that it wasn't worth it.

Yes that’s true. We had almost paid off our mortgage for the tiny 3 bed we had by 35 as the payments were tiny and so we could overpay. The new home is much more expensive and we only borrowed 50% of it’s value and we effectively do have it paid off through our investments. I do think had we not taken the risk to invest (rather than overpay) we might not be in this position.

Paid off first one by 32 then kept extending the property over the years rather than moving.

We will be 55. Would have been much earlier but I had to give up full time work 8 years later to care for children with additional needs..never know what's round the corner !! I am so glad when we bought our 'forever' home we mortgaged what we could re pay on one salary.

@Ozanj, thanks so much, that is very good to know!

We paid off in early 40s.

At that time, a number of friends chose to upgrade to a bigger house and increase their mortgage rather than being close to paying off. We selected to stay in our moderate family house and be mortgage free.

The thing that this has allowed is quite simply many more options being available over the next 10-20 years. Being mortgage free has allowed us to privately educate our children (might have just about afforded one at a stretch without being mortgage free but wouldn’t have done it if couldn’t do it for both) and it has allowed us to save money and to plan to retire in our late 50s.

Most people won’t be privately educating their kids, but lots would like to retire sooner rather than later. Still having a mortgage in your 60s or especially late 60s is what keeps many people in work after they’d like to stop. Most pensions aren’t enough to pay to live and pay a mortgage and certainly not enough to pay rent and to live. Many people can live on substantially less in retirement if their mortgage is paid off....and this strikes me as the thing which will be the big divider in coming years.....those which an retire around 60 and those who have to keep going u til closer to 70. And much of that will be related to property purchasing earlier in life.

So one thing I think is worth considering when looking to possibly move onto a bigger family home, if your current one is adequate, is what impact it will have further down the line...that’s on funding uni, funding retirement or also being able to help children with property later. Everyone makes different choices, but actually many of the earlier choices have compounded impacts over time.