Owning your own home

I would pay off early because 1. Your age x the high outstanding amount and 2. Risk of future income.

Idk enough about your specific job and sector, but typically when people are high earners there are fewer available jobs. I know of quite a few eg of it taking a long time for highly skilled people to find alternative jobs. It's not like you're in a gatekept profession like medicine or actuary. And it is at risk of disruption and markets confidence right?

So I would look at it in the following way.... Is it conceivable, that:

1. there is a shift in your sector that renders your valuable skills significantly less valuable?
   
2. That it could take you a long time to find a replacement job which pays substantially the same amount?
   
3. Your windfall doesn't come through?
   

Smashing the fuck out of the whole mortgage 20 years early is pretty good feeling though.

Yeah, looking forward to this... would've had a mortgage for only 8.5 years in my whole life, and never intend to have one again.

I'm old school and boring and in my feeble brain debt is bad. Paying it off sooner allows you to quickly build up cash reserves again for that midget dungeon or whatever you come up with next (we want to redo the kitchen now - 10k not 70k :P).

Old school too, I don't have the network to master the more complex arrangements, will keep things simple.

I would recommend a builder for you but I don't think his labour fits into your budget ;)

haha we have some builders ready to go, we just have to pull the trigger on the 'stuff'. We were saving money by removing the old kitchen ourselves but I now have one arm so smashing the old kitchen out might take a bit longer.

I'll be over to your place soon to cover your door in Eat the Rich stickers :P

Old school too, I don't have the network to master the more complex arrangements, will keep things simple.

That's the thing, there's probably ways to make you earn 20% more over time some other way but what would make you happiest? I know I'd feel much better in my day to day life being mortgage free than knowing I've got money accumulating in some unknown way for an unknown day.

If you can be essentially mortgage free then I'd say it's a no brainier, paying rent/mortgage is the number one cash stress for most of the country, without it you've pretty much won the game.

Edit just reread what you posted, I'd do option 1. As long as you can have some cash savings left over, say 20k, or figure out the overpayments during the rest of the mortgage term to see if that works better?

As long as you can have some cash savings left over

lolz

despite earning a lot I do not have savings. I have run a tithe my entire life, and I donate the vast majority of my disposable income, only not doing so occasionally to buy silly toys for myself like bikes, computers, or a telescope. I never claimed to be financially responsible.

my retirement planning is high risk, and involves generating a lot of wealth working in tech via the shares rather than the salary, in as short a time as possible (hoping to earn 30-40 years of retirement money within a decade of work), and selling off some fixed % every year I'm eligible to do so (after this initial one).

if ever I really crunch in the short-term, I'll stop donating to all the things, and will immediately have a decent disposable income.

I don't really value money, perhaps I should've, but I doubt I'll ever regret putting people and the World before myself.

it would be nice to be mortgage free, so I'll take a shot at that.

I never claimed to be financially responsible.

I don't really value money, perhaps I should've, but I doubt I'll ever regret putting people and the World before myself.

I don't see this as a bad thing, quite opposite and must be very freeing in some ways. I have a kid and now a wife out of work, so I feel an almost crippling sense of responsibility financially. I can afford it, but it is terrifying. Not to the level of feeling the need to pay for private school or university and I may start to feel different the more independent mini_com becomes, but looking at a helpless 5 year old, the thought of not doing what I can to make sure she is provided for for as long as I can afford, is probably making me very unwell. Same also now for ms_com.

Im interested in your tithe arrangements, is that for religious purposes?

Also have you done the sums of chucking a lot of the windfall into pensions, tax relief on the way in, then, using tax relief on the way out use that to pay off what's left?

Then in the meanwhile chip away at the mortgage with income.

Im interested in your tithe arrangements, is that for religious purposes?

Yes and no, I'm not religious but I learned of religions doing tithes and wondered what the secular equivalent is and figured there was nothing really... but why not?

So back when I was earning nothing at all I agreed with myself to give 10% of everything I took home to charity. I didn't really tell anyone, this thread is the only time I think I've shared it on here but I've done it all the time any of you have known me.

I give to generic things like Medicins Sans Frontier, Air Ambulance, Mountain Rescue, Greenpeace, etc, and some charities close to me like Mermaids or Survivors UK, and to lots of things just because and randomly, one-offs, but I also help with lots of mutual aid to random people on the internet so that's entirely unpredictable. Occasionally it's LFGSS too, I don't stick to registered charities, just things where I think it makes a difference or I empathise deeply.

I've virtually never given less than 10% of what I earn, and never felt it because I always did it. Recently (last 4 years) I've been earning more, and so it's been closer to 30% of take home some months.

It's just entirely random, I don't seek any attention for it, I share that I do it in response to things but without ever pushing it down people's throats... it's something I do, I feel a part of society and the World even if I also feel isolated and lonely, and so I feel I need to act as a part of the whole and not be too individualistic about things.

It's both a big thing I do (I've not really heard of others doing this if religion didn't compel them), and also a nothing thing to do. I just feel, for me, that this is what being part of a whole is.

Also have you done the sums of chucking a lot of the windfall into pensions, tax relief on the way in, then, using tax relief on the way out use that to pay off what's left?

No, I saw the video linked earlier, watched it... but truly, just to be able to be mortgage free in a few years is a huge deal and similar to the client in that video I wouldn't want to be on the emotional rollercoaster. I'll pay the mortgage, continue to live simply, won't hoard money, and when the mortgage is paid I'll be able to feel less of a financial burden in life.

my retirement planning is high risk

At least you have a plan, I'm a 41 year old freelancer and have fuck all plan. My wife has a plan so I guess my plan is hoping she doesn't bin me off (also high risk as I'm a twat)

I don't really value money

What's to value, it's a made up token to make people believe there's some sort of fairness in how things are earned. If you can earn enough so you can have a goodife without fucking people over then do it and get out.

If you carry on earning as you are until retirement then happy days but tbh if you cash out a full paid off London gaff there's plenty of places in the UK and abroad you can live out a very happy retirement with that and a basic state pension.

Thats a really nice thing to do.

I suspect that you might be better off loading up the pension, especially if you are over 40 and would only need to wait 15/16/17 years to get at the tax free element but id also understand your reasoning for not doing so.

Fwiw i spent ten years scurrying around paying off my mortgage and got there in the end.

A few months later my wife announced she wanted to move so im saddled again with a mortgage. But im not paying it off at the moment, im loading up my pensions instead. I think the key is a balance with what you have, a bit of pension, a bit of mortgage, a bit of fun money.

.

I've not really heard of others doing this

giving regular amounts to charity?

Secular people operating a tithe.

I assume (perhaps wrongly) that everyone does gives to charities... but more the "10% of income" thing which I think is more specific to some religions.

Pay it off, @Velocio.

Losing my job and not being able to pay the mortgage keeps me awake at night. I'd love to have paid it off.

I suspect that you might be better off loading up the pension

I'm over 50, and only got a work place pension 6 years ago and they only contribution match to a low %... I'm largely fucked... but getting rid of debt and mortgage, and then focusing on higher risk things like stocks and the share windfalls, and hoping to directly purchase annuities from those is my plan given the time I have remaining.

Downsizing and moving somewhere less expensive is also a great option if you've paid off your mortgage I'd say.

my plan

Don't forget about the sale of lfgss to Amazon.

What is the average % households are spending on mortgage? From what I can see 25-30% seems to be the quoted number which seems high to me

Figure 2.1 here may help:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/chapters-for-english-housing-survey-2022-to-2023-headline-report/chapter-2-housing-costs-and-affordability

Shows 25%-30% for top 60% of household incomes.

The averages are heavily skewed somehow:

"In 2022-23, the average (median) mortgage payment was £173 per week. Median mortgage payments were higher in London (£256) than in the rest of England (£162). "

My wife was off work with a serious illness for the last 3 years. At that point it was 34% of our combined income, she's back at work this week, which will get us to about 21% of our income.

A few people I know do this in a secular way. I don't set aside 10% but I use it as a nominal figure to eyeball my donations etc every so often and adjust accordingly.

That’s very cool that you do that!

Nearly had a heart attack til I realised this was weekly.

I came across this a long while back -

Giving What We Can

I got an MA place to study applied moral philosophy, and would have been interested in this sort of area, but didn’t have the money to fund the course. Anyway.

It is similar - a secular tithe - but (unless the last 15 years have changed things) they advocate being public about it, to try to normalise it.

I am not as good as you, and gave 5% for a long time, but that fell by the wayside in job changes… I should really pick it up again. I also wasn’t super public about it, just if it came up, but I’m not sure why.

I also note now that it is related to effective altruism which has been given a bad name of late thanks to Sam Bankman Fried- back then it just seemed sensible.

What are the rules on buying a small commercial building to use as a personal workshop? The particular thing I was looking at (and this is a pipe dream) was a building with no water, no electricity and no sewer connection, but would work as a carpentry workshop. Would you have to pay council tax? Any other charges or costs?