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Learning to Enjoy the Process

November 22, 2017 By Omar

Since going through hard times in 2008 it’s been a long road to get where we are today. Before that layoff, I had the dream of owning my own home outright. It’s been 9 years since then and 4 years since we bought our house. And we are about a year from finally beginning to pay extra on our mortgage.

We had some other big goals to accomplish before we could begin to pay extra on our mortgage, including having our 3-6 month emergency fund as well as buying a new (to us) SUV with cash. Kim and I also agreed in various budget meetings throughout the years that we would update the house first before aggressively attacking the principal. We have one more major home update to cash flow!

Thankfully we were in agreement with refinancing to a 15-year mortgage so we could pay the house off faster. Sometimes it’s hard to be so close to beginning this huge dream of mine yet be so far away. However, it’s been a constant reminder to embrace and enjoy the process. This is just as important as reaching the goal.

Living In The Moment

Kim will tell you that I would have gladly lived in our outdated house while paying it off instead of focusing on updating it. But I understand why she wants to update it and hell, I’m enjoying seeing the transformation too. Through this process of delaying my dream for hers, I’ve had to learn to live in the moment. Life is no fun when all you do is JUST think of the future. I had a close friend that gave me great advice. He said, “Omar, sometimes you have to pat yourself on the back”. And I’m learning to do just that. What it means is that although you might not be exactly where you want to be today, you aren’t where you used to be either. Celebrate the things you’ve accomplished and the person you had to become to get to this point.

Reaching The Goal Isn’t Always As Fulfilling As You Thought

It’s the same feeling you have after having your new car for awhile. The luster of it being new has worn off and it’s not as rewarding as it used to be. Don’t get me wrong, paying off the mortgage will be huge. However, it’s not like I’ll retire the day after it’s paid off. I’ll still want to work and Kim will too. I’ll have a little bit more freedom than the average person my age, but I’ll still have the same responsibilities. I guess what I’m saying is that you should try to set realistic expectations of what life will look like after you get to your goal. That way you aren’t let down when you finally get there.

Final Thoughts

Going through this process of getting closer to paying extra on our mortgage has been a struggle and fun at the same time. It’s been a struggle because our savings rate has been between 35% and 50% for the past year. With those numbers, we could probably pay our mortgage off in 4-6 years. AND we could invest 15% of our income for retirement. But of course, we’ve been using that money to update our home. It’s been fun to see our house transform into what we want it to be. What’s been even more fun is that going through this process has allowed Kim and I to work even better as a team. If it weren’t for these updates and having our first child, we probably wouldn’t have even realized that we can live solely on my income and bank hers. This may not be helping me towards my ultimate goal today, but once these updates are done Kim will be completely on board to knocking out this mortgage. In the meantime, we’re both learning to enjoy the process!

Kim’s Thoughts: Although updating our house is my “thing,” I still have to remember to enjoy the process as well. Sometimes it gets to the point where I’m just ready for the project to be over. This is also similar to how when we were trying to get out of debt we had to find different ways to keep ourselves motivated. Once we were debt free though… I can say that the thrill of that still hasn’t worn off! Building up our 3-6 month emergency fund was different because once it was done, I did feel like the excitement dwindled down. It wasn’t for too long though because then it was time to work on our home updates! Now that they’re almost complete, truth be told, I’m looking forward to our mortgage being paid off early one day!

Do you struggle with looking at the bright side of your current situation? How do you cope?

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Filed Under: Life + Home Tagged With: life tips, married life, personal finance

See what’s happening on Instagram…

thinkingofsomeday

#tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mo #tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mortgage free!! Yes, you read that correctly! We are 100% debt free! Like debt free, debt free. 🤣
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To be honest, it’s been a week and it still doesn’t feel real to us yet. But it was real watching that money disappear from our account and no longer seeing our mortgage balance when we signed into our credit union account. We must say, our credit union works pretty fast! Lol.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We didn’t even get around to sharing our mortgage payoff goal for the year with one of the little cute pictures explaining how we were going to do it. But here’s a quick recap of the numbers that we were working with...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• mortgage principal: $54,507.37
• mortgage interest: $35.84
• reconveyance fee: $69.00
• paying off our mortgage... definitely not priceless, but oh so worth it!! 😂🙌🏽
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’ll share more in depth details soon because you’re probably wondering how we came up with that amount of money 7 days into January. It definitely wasn’t from hitting the lottery! Lol. But until then, just know that...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
WE’RE MORTGAGE FREE!!! #piecesofsomeday
So we took some Christmas / family pictures back i So we took some Christmas / family pictures back in 2020 (as if that was so long ago), but I never got to share them. 😩 So here’s one. I actually like the fact that it’s in front of our house. #piecesofsomeday
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And I also wanted to add that we finally did another blog post after quite some time. Maybe we’re the world’s worst bloggers. 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♂️ But if you’re interested, we’re sharing a recap of quarter 3 and quarter 4 from our mortgage payoff journey. We’re also sharing what our mortgage payoff goal is for 2021. We’re a bit excited about it! You can check it out at the link in our bio.
2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of 2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of us will ever forget. While this year has been ok for us for the most part, there are many people that it’s been a really really tough year for. Whether it’s been financially, emotionally, health wise, etc. etc. etc. So here’s to hoping that next year will be much much better, for everyone, but especially for those who had a tough time this year. ✨♥️
We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house a We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house and we now own 69% of it. We had paid off 39% of the mortgage loan and we’re finishing the year out at having 66% of it paid off. (These 2 numbers are not the same for us because of our 5% down payment as well as when we refinanced to a 15-year mortgage.) It’s been really exciting to see these numbers increase this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
(Annnnnd this concludes our December numbers. I can’t believe I managed to share them all before the end of the year!! 😂)
Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the RSUs that we were able to use. However, even if we hadn’t been able to use them, Q4 would have still wrapped up nicely thanks to us still being able to stick to our 70/30 plan.
For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles. This puts our mortgage balance for the end of 2020 at $54,507.37.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• 132 rectangles total
• 88 rectangles colored in
• 44 rectangles to go!!
The total of our mortgage principal payments for D The total of our mortgage principal payments for December was $3514.74.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
$995.13 came from our regular payment and $2519.61 came from our budget.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This put us at meeting our second stretch goal of putting a total of $45,000 towards our mortgage principal for the year! Yes, we did a little magic with our budget in order to get it at exactly $45k, but I’m sure that’s what we all do in when we’re trying to hit a certain number!! Haha.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’re soooo happy that we were able to meet this goal because we really weren’t sure if it was going to be possible or not!
Am I right? Or am I right? Throughout parts of thi Am I right? Or am I right? Throughout parts of this year it seemed like the days, weeks, months were going soooo slow. And then all of a sudden summer was over and school was starting. Then it went drastically slower again, but yet here we are with only a couple of days left in this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And as usual, time has gotten away from me when it comes to sharing our mortgage payoff numbers. So starting later today and over the next couple of days, I’ll be sharing our December numbers in the hopes of getting them all in before January 1st! 😆 We’ve enjoyed seeing everyone else’s numbers though!
Merry Christmas!! #christmas2020 #piecesofsomeday Merry Christmas!! #christmas2020 #piecesofsomeday
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Comments

  1. GYM says

    December 14, 2018 at 2:19 am

    Good thing you updated your house before the 2nd one came! It’s so much work otherwise and kids get everywhere! 🙂

    • Omar says

      December 14, 2018 at 12:13 pm

      Facts! Lol. Renovating with 1 was hard. I feel like doing it with 2 would be impossible.

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See what’s happening on Instagram

thinkingofsomeday

#tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mo #tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mortgage free!! Yes, you read that correctly! We are 100% debt free! Like debt free, debt free. 🤣
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To be honest, it’s been a week and it still doesn’t feel real to us yet. But it was real watching that money disappear from our account and no longer seeing our mortgage balance when we signed into our credit union account. We must say, our credit union works pretty fast! Lol.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We didn’t even get around to sharing our mortgage payoff goal for the year with one of the little cute pictures explaining how we were going to do it. But here’s a quick recap of the numbers that we were working with...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• mortgage principal: $54,507.37
• mortgage interest: $35.84
• reconveyance fee: $69.00
• paying off our mortgage... definitely not priceless, but oh so worth it!! 😂🙌🏽
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’ll share more in depth details soon because you’re probably wondering how we came up with that amount of money 7 days into January. It definitely wasn’t from hitting the lottery! Lol. But until then, just know that...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
WE’RE MORTGAGE FREE!!! #piecesofsomeday
So we took some Christmas / family pictures back i So we took some Christmas / family pictures back in 2020 (as if that was so long ago), but I never got to share them. 😩 So here’s one. I actually like the fact that it’s in front of our house. #piecesofsomeday
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And I also wanted to add that we finally did another blog post after quite some time. Maybe we’re the world’s worst bloggers. 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♂️ But if you’re interested, we’re sharing a recap of quarter 3 and quarter 4 from our mortgage payoff journey. We’re also sharing what our mortgage payoff goal is for 2021. We’re a bit excited about it! You can check it out at the link in our bio.
2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of 2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of us will ever forget. While this year has been ok for us for the most part, there are many people that it’s been a really really tough year for. Whether it’s been financially, emotionally, health wise, etc. etc. etc. So here’s to hoping that next year will be much much better, for everyone, but especially for those who had a tough time this year. ✨♥️
We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house a We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house and we now own 69% of it. We had paid off 39% of the mortgage loan and we’re finishing the year out at having 66% of it paid off. (These 2 numbers are not the same for us because of our 5% down payment as well as when we refinanced to a 15-year mortgage.) It’s been really exciting to see these numbers increase this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
(Annnnnd this concludes our December numbers. I can’t believe I managed to share them all before the end of the year!! 😂)
Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the RSUs that we were able to use. However, even if we hadn’t been able to use them, Q4 would have still wrapped up nicely thanks to us still being able to stick to our 70/30 plan.
For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles. This puts our mortgage balance for the end of 2020 at $54,507.37.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• 132 rectangles total
• 88 rectangles colored in
• 44 rectangles to go!!
The total of our mortgage principal payments for D The total of our mortgage principal payments for December was $3514.74.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
$995.13 came from our regular payment and $2519.61 came from our budget.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This put us at meeting our second stretch goal of putting a total of $45,000 towards our mortgage principal for the year! Yes, we did a little magic with our budget in order to get it at exactly $45k, but I’m sure that’s what we all do in when we’re trying to hit a certain number!! Haha.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’re soooo happy that we were able to meet this goal because we really weren’t sure if it was going to be possible or not!
Am I right? Or am I right? Throughout parts of thi Am I right? Or am I right? Throughout parts of this year it seemed like the days, weeks, months were going soooo slow. And then all of a sudden summer was over and school was starting. Then it went drastically slower again, but yet here we are with only a couple of days left in this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And as usual, time has gotten away from me when it comes to sharing our mortgage payoff numbers. So starting later today and over the next couple of days, I’ll be sharing our December numbers in the hopes of getting them all in before January 1st! 😆 We’ve enjoyed seeing everyone else’s numbers though!
Merry Christmas!! #christmas2020 #piecesofsomeday Merry Christmas!! #christmas2020 #piecesofsomeday
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