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3 Reasons Why You’ll Love To Do Your Budget

March 13, 2017 By Omar

I have always been intrigued by millionaires.  It seemed to be the goal every person was trying to reach.  Most seemed to fall short.  I was probably a junior in college when I got really serious about researching what the average millionaire did to get there.  I kept seeing the recurring themes of “budgeting” and “living on less than you make” in my Google searches.  It was at that point I decided to write my monthly expenses down and get on a budget.  By the next week, I had lost my “budget” and spent all my money.  Don’t get me wrong, my monthly bills were paid, but anything left was gone with the wind.  It was then that I realized why millionaires are so rare in our culture.  The discipline it takes to do a budget and live by it is no walk in the park.

Fast forward a few years later and my wife and I have full command of our budget.  We are out of debt except for the house, contributing 15% of our income for retirement, and have plans to pay our home off earlier than the 15-year mortgage term.  Since we’ve been budgeting for quite a bit of time now we’ve realized how the budget has helped us.   Here are three reasons why we love, and hopefully you’ll love, to budget.

3 Reasons Why You'll Love To Do Your Budget

1. Efficiency

It doesn’t matter what the process is.  It’s always better when it’s efficient.  The same applies with personal finance.  When you account for every cent there is no unintentional waste.

Normally, when it comes to personal finances, it isn’t the big ticket items that kill you.  It’s death by a thousand cuts.  When you budget you can PLAN to waste a certain amount of money.  I recommend you do so to keep your sanity!  Kim and I have built into our budget a blow money category.  Kim and I both receive a relatively small amount of money each paycheck to spend on whatever we want.  Hell, even our 2-year-old son receives blow money that we use to spend on things he needs.

As adults, you spend so much time in a state of sacrifice for the good of your family that it can drive you crazy.  Planning to waste lets the inner kid in you out so you can keep your sanity.  However, we don’t want that inner kid to run the show.

Before I started budgeting I had a love/hate relationship with money at the beginning of each year.  I loved that I was going to be getting a tax refund, but hated seeing my W2.  The regret of seeing how much money I earned that year and how little of it I kept tested my gag reflex.  It was upsetting, to say the least.  I can say today that I haven’t felt that way in years.  That’s because I know where every penny is going.  We’re hitting financial goals consistently with the money that’s coming in.  If there are any questions about where expenses went in the past I can always go back and look at past budgets.

2. You Will Feel Like You Make More Money

When you become more efficient with your finances you will feel like you make more money even though the amount coming in hasn’t changed.  Most people make enough to cover their needs.  But when you are able to cover all of your needs and some of your wants there is a sense of freedom and control that comes with that.  Suddenly you realize that you can point your discretionary funds to things that YOU want to do instead of feeling like you are working to pay bills.

For me, that sense of freedom and control drove me to find a new job that increased my income.  This increase in income allowed Kim to work less hours allowing her to be the main caretaker of our son and avoid daycare completely.  In other words, the freedom and control drove us to look for more opportunities to gain more freedom and control by increasing our income.  Today, we make less as a couple than when we were both working full time but because we have mastered the budget we can barely tell the difference.  We feel like we make just as much now as we did back then and our quality of life is even better!

3. Forces Communication With Spouse

This is by far my favorite perk of doing a budget as a couple.  Kim and I dated for 10 years before getting married and they weren’t all pretty.  I found that doing a budget forces us to talk about our hopes, dreams, and fears.  Naturally, this brought us closer together as a couple.  It healed areas where trust had been violated in the past due to decisions not considering the other party.  This trust resulted in more intimacy and a more real relationship with each other.

One of my favorite metaphors is that of a pair of ox.  I know…it’s a little cheesy but stick with me!  The more coordinated the two oxen are the more weight they can pull as a unit.  The size and strength of the individual oxen are LESS important than their ability to work together as a team.  The same applies with finances in a marriage.  It doesn’t matter which spouse is making the most money or which spouse is smarter.  Nor does it matter which spouse has the financial know-how.  What matters the most is that both parties are in coordination with each other.  The more coordinated YOU are as a couple the more you can accomplish with less.

Before Kim and I got married we saw a marriage counselor.  The very first item of discussion was finances.  The explanation from our counselor was that money issues is the number one cause of divorce in the United States.  That honestly blew me away.  How could something that feels so materialistic like money be more important than religion, raising kids, sex, in-laws, AND conflict resolution?  The thing that’s so unique about money is that it touches these and virtually every other area of your life.  Doing a budget together forces you to have to communicate so much that that practice of communicating spills over into all the other areas you share with your spouse.

Kim’s thoughts: Omar stated that out of his 3 reasons for loving to do a budget, his favorite reason is communication with me.  I agree that it definitely makes us communicate with each other about our money, but it has also helped with communication in regards to other things.  However, my favorite of the 3 reasons is that it makes me feel like we make more money. Doing a budget gives new meaning to the phrase “living paycheck to paycheck.”  I wait for payday thinking, “Ooooo. What are we going to be able to accomplish this pay period?!”  And this feeling is directly related to doing our budget!

Do you do a budget?  How has doing a budget helped you?  How was your spending before having a budget and after?

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Filed Under: Personal + Finance Tagged With: budgeting

See what’s happening on Instagram…

thinkingofsomeday

As of 1/8/2022, it’s been one year since we beca As of 1/8/2022, it’s been one year since we became mortgage free. What better way to celebrate than a date night in our paid off home?! 😏
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
So how does it feel?
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Financially, we invested the most money we've ever invested. We also increased our lifestyle a bit as well to keep a healthy balance.
 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Kim’s Perspective: 
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It’s been great. For the longest it felt surreal and unbelievable that we actually did it. I never really worried about paying off the mortgage because I knew that worst case scenario, it would be paid off in 15 years, which would’ve been when we were 45 (and that’s not a bad age at all). However, it’s been nice to know that it’s not something that Omar is stressing over anymore. And since it was one of his biggest dreams/goals, it’s nice knowing that I was able to support him 100% of the way in making this happen for us and our family. I’m glad this is something he wanted to pursue and that I was actually on board with it. What I’ve enjoyed most about it is being able to spend more money (of course 😆) because a lot of things were put on hold while we focused on the payoff. So now I feel like I’m at that point where I can make our house more of a home for us. It literally feels like we’re in a new space (mentally and physically) and we’re loving it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Omar’s Perspective:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This past year has probably been the best year I've had in life. I've been the least stressed I've ever been, but took on the most responsibility at work I've ever taken on which lead to a promotion and an increase in income. This boggles my mind as more responsibility at work usually means more stress. I feel like I’ve been able to focus on other areas of my life more (my health/weight as well as making more of an effort to maintain my relationships with friends/family). Most importantly, I realize the strength of my marriage.  With the state of dating/relationships these days, I realize I won the lottery with Kim.  She's an amazing wife and mother. We've always had a good relationship but we're stronger than ever.  We started from the bottom now we're here (in my Drake voice). 🎶 #thislifeafterdebt
After taking some time to think about what we want After taking some time to think about what we wanted to focus on for this year, we decided that our word for the year is health.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Overall we both want to continue making healthier choices when it comes to eating. And we both want to focus on exercising more than we have in the past and be way more consistent with it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
At the end of the day, what’s money, financial freedom/independence and wealth if you’re not healthy? And we definitely have high blood pressure, diabetes, etc that run in our families. We have kids to live for and that’s what we plan to do to the best of our ability!
This is what our financial goals ended up looking This is what our financial goals ended up looking like for this year. We’re pretty pleased with the outcome and the fact that we still enjoyed ourselves throughout the year and even made some pretty big purchases (like that whole couch saga I shared in my stories 😆). We’re looking forward to seeing what the next year holds! #thislifeafterdebt
We didn’t officially choose a word for 2021, but We didn’t officially choose a word for 2021, but if we had to say a word that was our word for this year it would be “intentional” by far.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
At the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 we were very intentional about pulling money from an inherited IRA so that our tax bill wouldn’t be ridiculous like it would have been if we pulled a lump sum at one time. We then used the money to help pay off our mortgage 8 days into 2021.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
What we were even more  intentional about was our plan for what we were going to do with our mortgage payment once we didn’t have a mortgage anymore. We didn’t want to frivolously spend that money. So we actually came up with our plan a couple months before making our final payment. But literally after that payment on January 8, 2020, our new mortgage-free budget was in full effect! So yea, “intentional” is definitely a good word to sum up 2021 for us. #thislifeafterdebt
Some of the things we automate are:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Our Budget:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
For the longest we use to type everything we were going to spend or save into our budget template. It wasn’t super time consuming but it wasn’t efficient when it came to our regular bills/expenses. Then one day we decided to prefill the template and copy and paste it month to month for our regular bills/expenses. All we have to do is add anything else we spend.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Savings / Investing:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Most of our savings/investing and even our gas and spending money our automated transfers. It beats having to go in and make multiple transfers to our personal accounts and our sinking funds. The 529 accounts for the kids and the Roth IRAs are automatically transferred. But for the brokerage account we have to manually transfer the money because it’s never the same amount each paycheck.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Bill Pay:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I’ve never been a fan of bill pay because I don’t like companies having that type of access to my money. 🥴 And whenever they mess up and charge you too much, they’ll try to just credit your account instead of putting the money back in your bank account. 🙄 However, I’m a tad bit more trusting these days. Lol. Our home alarm had no option but to be auto drafted. Since the amount wasn’t much and is always the same price, I agreed. And the only other bill auto drafted is our cell phone bill after many many years (gasp! haha). Some of the other bills are paid via online bill pay via our banking account. #thisfinancialconfession
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Doing all of this has been a game changer and time saver. Are you team automate or team manual?
It’s been a minute since I’ve made a charcuter It’s been a minute since I’ve made a charcuterie board. So I figured Christmas brunch was the perfect time. And plus, that meant less time in the kitchen for me with cooking because I knew I was going to be cooking dinner today. #piecesofsomeday
Merry Christmas! And 2 pictures because it’s gua Merry Christmas! And 2 pictures because it’s guaranteed that someone isn’t going to be looking. 😆 #christmas2021 #piecesofsomeday
We purchased our house for $168.5k (after the down We purchased our house for $168.5k (after the down payment). We refinanced at $165k.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
If we took 30 years to pay it off, our total would’ve been $293k.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
If we paid the 30-year mortgage like a 15, then it would’ve been $225k.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
After we refinanced to a 15-year, if we took 15 years to pay it off, then our total would’ve been $205k.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Instead, we paid off our mortgage in a little over 7.5 years.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We ended up paying a total of $200k with interest.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Paying $200k for this home with how it looked when we purchased it sounded a lot better than having to pay a total of $293k if we end up being here for 30 years! This was yet another factor that helped us decide to pay it off early. #thislifeafterdebt
Part of the reason we decided to refinance and eve Part of the reason we decided to refinance and even pay our house off early is because of the amount of money we were paying in interest on our mortgage. So of course, several months after we paid off the mortgage I began to wonder just how much did we really pay in interest. So I asked Omar if there was a way to figure it out. At first he was like, “Really Kim?” 😳 And of course I was like, “Ummm yea.” 😬 Lol.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Jun 2013 is when we bought the house. So there wasn’t much interest paid then.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
2014 and 2015 is still when we had the 30-year mortgage. It’s also the years that we paid the most interest. We refinanced at the end of 2015.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
2016 is when we made our first payment with the 15-year mortgage. It’s crazy how the amount of interest decreased based off that alone.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
2019 is when we decided to pay off our mortgage early. It was supposed to take 6 years. But instead we used RSUs and sped it up tremendously.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Jan 2021 is when we paid it off before our first payment would’ve been due. $27 was the last bit of interest we paid on our mortgage.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Grand total: $35,102.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
If we had continue to just make regular payments on the 15-year mortgage, we would’ve paid a total of $56,279. A difference of $21,177. 🙌🏽 🙌🏽 #thislifeafterdebt
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Comments

  1. Jessica says

    March 13, 2017 at 5:05 pm

    This was so insightful. We do not currently write out a budget and stick with it in my household, but I feel that doing so could help out a lot. Lookinf forward to this budget template to see how you guys get it done!

    • Omar says

      March 14, 2017 at 12:21 pm

      Thanks Jessica! Let us know if you need any help with the budget template! We’d be happy to help! 🙂

    • ejnosillA/RedefiningHERstory says

      April 15, 2017 at 4:24 pm

      I really enjoyed reading your blog… I am a firm believer in budgeting and not wasting money… I know a few people that I am going to suggest read your blog on a daily basis… okay… I will be sending this out to my children… thanks for sharing!

      • Kim says

        April 15, 2017 at 9:42 pm

        You’re welcome, and thank you for checking us out!Sometimes kids might not take the info/advice from their parents, but they will from other people. Gotta love when they do that! Lol. I’m sure we were all guilty of it at one time or another. So please do send anyone this way who you think will benefit from the information!

  2. Chad Belinfanti says

    March 14, 2017 at 12:30 pm

    Do you have any tips handling the standard monthly expenses?

    • Omar says

      March 14, 2017 at 4:30 pm

      Sure. If you subscribed and received our budget templates I would recommend building a template with your standard monthly expenses already in it. If not, find a way to maintain these values in your budget from month to month. That way all you have to do is determine what is NOT standard for that month and fill in your budget. This will make the process of budgeting less time consuming!

  3. Luke says

    March 14, 2017 at 3:19 pm

    Great read, I always get stressed out talking about money or budgeting tho, any tips on how to avoid those feelings ?!

    • Omar says

      March 14, 2017 at 4:45 pm

      I definitely understand those feelings. I don’t know if they are avoidable honestly though. I think if you really want to change your situation with money you have to face those feelings and push through the uncomfortable parts of it. The other thing to remember is that you aren’t going to fix it all in a day. It’s going to take time.

      • Kim says

        March 14, 2017 at 5:26 pm

        Hey Luke. I’m sure that you aren’t alone in your feelings. Assuming that you’re talking to your spouse about it, I would suggest that you make sure you’re talking about it at the right time and without any distractions. Maybe even give your spouse a heads up that you want to talk about your finances/budget at some point during the day. That way she can be somewhat prepared as well. Also, until you’re more comfortable discussing it, try limiting the conversation to 10-15 minutes. That way it’ll give you enough time to get your thoughts out there, but it’s not so much time that one of you lose interest or become overwhelmed.

  4. Sharmaine says

    March 14, 2017 at 5:11 pm

    Awesome and intriguing read! I totally agree you when you say budgeting forces communication between you and your spouse. When there are money issues it can spill over into every area of your marriage. Communication is key. Once again awesome job guys!

    • Kim says

      March 14, 2017 at 5:27 pm

      Thanks Sharmaine! It definitely can spill over into other areas of your marriage, and doing a budget can help avoid that at times.

  5. Nathan says

    March 15, 2017 at 4:51 pm

    Great posts! And great teamwork!

    • Kim says

      March 15, 2017 at 7:58 pm

      Thanks Nathan!

  6. Yvonne says

    April 6, 2017 at 1:04 pm

    Very well said!! My my my, I can definitely see how it would help across every area of your relationship. I just started budgeting in January 2017 and it is the best thing I have ever done in my life. A big yes to everything above. I could have saved myself so many headaches in our relationship. I manage the finances in the family and for years I struggled with talking about it with my hubby fearing he might think I am checking up on him or he might ask me too many questions, or feeling he is not interested so I will not say anything. But now, in just a few months we are in it together. Thanks for helping in so many many ways.

    • Omar says

      April 6, 2017 at 1:15 pm

      Amazing! I’m glad it helped! 🙂

    • Kim says

      April 6, 2017 at 4:43 pm

      I’m glad that using our budget template has helped you in more ways than one. Regardless of when you started, the most important thing is that you did start!

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Hey! We’re Omar + Kim.

A married couple making someday a reality all while balancing family + finances + avoiding debt. Find out more about us, here.

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See what’s happening on Instagram

thinkingofsomeday

As of 1/8/2022, it’s been one year since we beca As of 1/8/2022, it’s been one year since we became mortgage free. What better way to celebrate than a date night in our paid off home?! 😏
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
So how does it feel?
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Financially, we invested the most money we've ever invested. We also increased our lifestyle a bit as well to keep a healthy balance.
 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Kim’s Perspective: 
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It’s been great. For the longest it felt surreal and unbelievable that we actually did it. I never really worried about paying off the mortgage because I knew that worst case scenario, it would be paid off in 15 years, which would’ve been when we were 45 (and that’s not a bad age at all). However, it’s been nice to know that it’s not something that Omar is stressing over anymore. And since it was one of his biggest dreams/goals, it’s nice knowing that I was able to support him 100% of the way in making this happen for us and our family. I’m glad this is something he wanted to pursue and that I was actually on board with it. What I’ve enjoyed most about it is being able to spend more money (of course 😆) because a lot of things were put on hold while we focused on the payoff. So now I feel like I’m at that point where I can make our house more of a home for us. It literally feels like we’re in a new space (mentally and physically) and we’re loving it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Omar’s Perspective:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This past year has probably been the best year I've had in life. I've been the least stressed I've ever been, but took on the most responsibility at work I've ever taken on which lead to a promotion and an increase in income. This boggles my mind as more responsibility at work usually means more stress. I feel like I’ve been able to focus on other areas of my life more (my health/weight as well as making more of an effort to maintain my relationships with friends/family). Most importantly, I realize the strength of my marriage.  With the state of dating/relationships these days, I realize I won the lottery with Kim.  She's an amazing wife and mother. We've always had a good relationship but we're stronger than ever.  We started from the bottom now we're here (in my Drake voice). 🎶 #thislifeafterdebt
After taking some time to think about what we want After taking some time to think about what we wanted to focus on for this year, we decided that our word for the year is health.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Overall we both want to continue making healthier choices when it comes to eating. And we both want to focus on exercising more than we have in the past and be way more consistent with it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
At the end of the day, what’s money, financial freedom/independence and wealth if you’re not healthy? And we definitely have high blood pressure, diabetes, etc that run in our families. We have kids to live for and that’s what we plan to do to the best of our ability!
This is what our financial goals ended up looking This is what our financial goals ended up looking like for this year. We’re pretty pleased with the outcome and the fact that we still enjoyed ourselves throughout the year and even made some pretty big purchases (like that whole couch saga I shared in my stories 😆). We’re looking forward to seeing what the next year holds! #thislifeafterdebt
We didn’t officially choose a word for 2021, but We didn’t officially choose a word for 2021, but if we had to say a word that was our word for this year it would be “intentional” by far.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
At the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 we were very intentional about pulling money from an inherited IRA so that our tax bill wouldn’t be ridiculous like it would have been if we pulled a lump sum at one time. We then used the money to help pay off our mortgage 8 days into 2021.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
What we were even more  intentional about was our plan for what we were going to do with our mortgage payment once we didn’t have a mortgage anymore. We didn’t want to frivolously spend that money. So we actually came up with our plan a couple months before making our final payment. But literally after that payment on January 8, 2020, our new mortgage-free budget was in full effect! So yea, “intentional” is definitely a good word to sum up 2021 for us. #thislifeafterdebt
Some of the things we automate are:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Our Budget:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
For the longest we use to type everything we were going to spend or save into our budget template. It wasn’t super time consuming but it wasn’t efficient when it came to our regular bills/expenses. Then one day we decided to prefill the template and copy and paste it month to month for our regular bills/expenses. All we have to do is add anything else we spend.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Savings / Investing:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Most of our savings/investing and even our gas and spending money our automated transfers. It beats having to go in and make multiple transfers to our personal accounts and our sinking funds. The 529 accounts for the kids and the Roth IRAs are automatically transferred. But for the brokerage account we have to manually transfer the money because it’s never the same amount each paycheck.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Bill Pay:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I’ve never been a fan of bill pay because I don’t like companies having that type of access to my money. 🥴 And whenever they mess up and charge you too much, they’ll try to just credit your account instead of putting the money back in your bank account. 🙄 However, I’m a tad bit more trusting these days. Lol. Our home alarm had no option but to be auto drafted. Since the amount wasn’t much and is always the same price, I agreed. And the only other bill auto drafted is our cell phone bill after many many years (gasp! haha). Some of the other bills are paid via online bill pay via our banking account. #thisfinancialconfession
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Doing all of this has been a game changer and time saver. Are you team automate or team manual?
It’s been a minute since I’ve made a charcuter It’s been a minute since I’ve made a charcuterie board. So I figured Christmas brunch was the perfect time. And plus, that meant less time in the kitchen for me with cooking because I knew I was going to be cooking dinner today. #piecesofsomeday
Merry Christmas! And 2 pictures because it’s gua Merry Christmas! And 2 pictures because it’s guaranteed that someone isn’t going to be looking. 😆 #christmas2021 #piecesofsomeday
We purchased our house for $168.5k (after the down We purchased our house for $168.5k (after the down payment). We refinanced at $165k.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
If we took 30 years to pay it off, our total would’ve been $293k.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
If we paid the 30-year mortgage like a 15, then it would’ve been $225k.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
After we refinanced to a 15-year, if we took 15 years to pay it off, then our total would’ve been $205k.
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Instead, we paid off our mortgage in a little over 7.5 years.
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We ended up paying a total of $200k with interest.
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Paying $200k for this home with how it looked when we purchased it sounded a lot better than having to pay a total of $293k if we end up being here for 30 years! This was yet another factor that helped us decide to pay it off early. #thislifeafterdebt
Part of the reason we decided to refinance and eve Part of the reason we decided to refinance and even pay our house off early is because of the amount of money we were paying in interest on our mortgage. So of course, several months after we paid off the mortgage I began to wonder just how much did we really pay in interest. So I asked Omar if there was a way to figure it out. At first he was like, “Really Kim?” 😳 And of course I was like, “Ummm yea.” 😬 Lol.
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Jun 2013 is when we bought the house. So there wasn’t much interest paid then.
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2014 and 2015 is still when we had the 30-year mortgage. It’s also the years that we paid the most interest. We refinanced at the end of 2015.
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2016 is when we made our first payment with the 15-year mortgage. It’s crazy how the amount of interest decreased based off that alone.
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2019 is when we decided to pay off our mortgage early. It was supposed to take 6 years. But instead we used RSUs and sped it up tremendously.
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Jan 2021 is when we paid it off before our first payment would’ve been due. $27 was the last bit of interest we paid on our mortgage.
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Grand total: $35,102.
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If we had continue to just make regular payments on the 15-year mortgage, we would’ve paid a total of $56,279. A difference of $21,177. 🙌🏽 🙌🏽 #thislifeafterdebt
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