Thank you Cyprus - gave push to pay off mortgage and car loan today. Stupid or smart?

Without a mortgage or car note, you can pay the amounts that would have been the payments into your emergency fund, and it will build up very fast. The peace of mind you will have will be worth it, and if hyperinflation does happen, you will have the amount of money that would have been going to mortgage and car to spend toward the increased cost.

A few years back, the smart move was to leverage your house.

Buy a starter, fix it up and move on, do it again... and again, and again.

Well, I almost bought into that thinking.

But then I though, wait!!!!

That means I will be near retirement age with a new house, a very expensive one probably, and a HUGE new mortgage.

The EXACT opposite is better.

My relatives in Ohio do it that way: buy a house, maybe one a little larger with a pond,

and then STAY PUT.

And you will retire without a mortgage.

This is great advice^

Thank you for it.

Always good to pay off debt. Congrats. You are free now.

HM, where is the one place that you think is safe?

We paid off everything except the mortgage, which isn't possible for us today.
I think what you did is the smart move and we'd do it too if we could.
The Cyprus thing has me nervous. It penalizes the savers, those of us who don't buy the boat and new car, but instead save a little here and there until we have something. That's who's being punished. Why save at all if its just going to be stolen to bail out the banks?

The Cyprus deal was scary enough that they are willing to steal directly from the bank accounts now , but then I saw this news on another site and this is way closer to home , just over the sea .

New Zealand wants to trim peoples bank accounts to bail out failed banks . I mean REALLY how stupid . Will NZ go into a bank run now and crash the economy completely then the vultures all turn up to "save" her and then start demandiong the Islands as payment of their lonas .
I say there are a group of people who want NZ as their place .

All the NZ will leave and come to Australia if they start stealing their money
[link to www.voxy.co.nz]

quote " The National Government are pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts, the Green Party said today.

Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English’s favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank’s bail out.

"Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand - a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts," said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman."

Good for you OP! We have been debt free for couple years now. Just purchased a new vehicle on Saturday and the car guy said why would we want to pay it off? Um so we have no debt. I don't think he understood.

You might be able to do it sooner than you think, you are on the right track.

Yes, savers look like the losers. I hate that. I don't really have an answer since saving is SMART, but if they are going to take a chunk of it away, or give you only microscopic interest on it, it feels like the wrong thing to do.

You are already WAY ahead of the game, if your mortgage is your only debt.

heard about this and yes it pushed us a little too.

I am always debt free . I dont buy stuff unless I can pay for it upfront.
Not good for borrowing money as they want to see how much debt you have serviced in your life before giving you money .

He didn't.

Is this a generational thing?

Good for you, beeches!

I sold my home in Colorado after my wife passed away, moved to Oklahoma to be with my elderly parents, bought another much smaller home and paid cash for it.

Don't have any more credit cards, either. Both cars paid off, and don't want or need a new one.

It sure feels good not to have mortgage, rent or car payments!

Not very many Americans are in this boat unless they are very wealthy. Again, good for you, Buddy!! Enjoy life!

Agree and congrats...

Must be a great feeling, OP. Congratulations and best to you and yours.

I paid off the shark running the slush fund in our neighborhood. Crooked bastard. His vig was 100%. Well, today I paid him in full, vig and all. Felt great. I got up in his face and yelled, "You're not the boss of me, bitch!"

I was on top of the world.

Doc says the swelling will go down in a week, but the kneecap thing might take longer.

Incredibly dumb move, just so you know, assuming the mortgage rate was low (<4%). A house is a place to live not an investment, dumping cash into it before your mortgage expires is stupid on a low rate when you could be using that cash to earn more in the market. You just guaranteed yourself a return on your cash equal to your mortgage interest rate, whereas if you had invested in stocks for the past 3 years you would have had a +30% gain.

Bank is the safest place for your money. Anything else is fear mongering. Cyprus has the GDP of a small louisana town.

Sorry about the loss of your wife....

It puts things in perspective. I wonder what Oklahoma is like, your name says a lot: interesting weather!

Friends of ours have a daughter in another state. She wanted to live closer to the daughter and grandchildren. He was not sure.

Step one: They put their large home on the market. And prayed. It sold in about a week.

Step two: They moved into an apartment ,put their furniture into storage and waited.

The husband then go laid off by Boeing. They were so relieved to be already free of the mortgage, and free of the need to live near his work.

So they went ahead and bought a home with all cash near their daughter, within walking distance to be exact.

Can't beat that.

Sorry about the loss of your wife....

It puts things in perspective. I wonder what Oklahoma is like, your name says a lot: interesting weather!

Friends of ours have a daughter in another state. She wanted to live closer to the daughter and grandchildren. He was not sure.

Step one: They put their large home on the market. And prayed. It sold in about a week.

Step two: They moved into an apartment ,put their furniture into storage and waited.

The husband then go laid off by Boeing. They were so relieved to be already free of the mortgage, and free of the need to live near his work.

So they went ahead and bought a home with all cash near their daughter, within walking distance to be exact.

Can't beat that.

Double post sorry!

You did the right thing.

Putting it in Starks, and Bombs (stocks and bonds)is just perpetuating the Ponzi paper schemes of Psychopaths.

Leaving it in the Bank and getting Zero interest is just as lame.

The basic things a person NEEDS are Water, Food, Shelter.

You don't have to worry (much) about shelter, so now you can commit ALL your time to water and food.

I also took (what little) Money I had saved in IRA crap and paid down on the Mortgage, I also bought Silver, and Long Term Storage Food.

If I had enough to pay off the Mortgage I would have.

The Mortgage down near 50K and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The piece of the puzzle you didn't know is that my cash flow WILL be taking a nosedive about this time next year.

That is 100% certain.

Unless our outflow changed, I would not be able to remain in my house. Assuming the stock market could make up the difference in my case would be folly.

I'd love to know where you got that gain, since the usual number bandied about in this part of the world is closer to 4-4.5%.

Cyprus may not happen here, but you would be wrong to assume it will not touch your investments.

It gave us the push to eliminate the mortgage today as opposed to next year.

Funny, our tax accountant told us we would be dumb to wait.

Last Edited by beeches on 03/20/2013 06:42 PM

I agree.

We have an annuity, not a huge one, that will function like an additional pension payment.

The IRA guy we bought it from said "this thing is only good if the S doesn't HTF. If the payments can't reach you by mail because there is no mail,
or by electronic transfer because there is no more electronic transfer
you are just plain out of luck.

I remember how excited I was too at some point - some figure on the mortgage statement that just looked "doable", and we felt great.

You will get there too.

Time to call it a day for this OP.


2 stupid votes, many smarts,


Right about now I feel so lucky.

Never really thought a mortgage would be paid off on an house I ever owned. And here it is.

Smart move. Get out of debt. Stay out of debt.

two schools of thought on this one.

The one that you belong to that believes that the economy will keep plugging along, and the worse possible thing that is going to happen is that we see another stock market crash, a little governmental intervention and confiscation of private funds, just like giving tax dollars to banks in the form of bailouts.

or option number 2. the school I belong to. debt will have the same exact value as the currency- zero. Look we live in the largest debtor nation in the history of all of mankind, topped with a bond bubble, a school loan bubble, a derivatives bubble, and a dying currency that is being dumped all on top. If you want to know how bad things are, we now live in a system that cannot legally stay solvent, so we've reverted to wealth confiscation, stealing, MF GLobal style taking, libor market rigging, the rigging of the metals market to hide the collapse, and outright lies about our wealth, our GDP and what is to come. We have placed a private family in the position of GOD, thinking there is no limit to how many mortgage backed securities they can buy, how many treasuries they can purchase, or how much money they can send over seas to bribe other bankrupt nations to worship at their alter of a dying currency. Looking towards the great depression will be like looking at the good old days, when all that happened was that a few people lost their homes. We are drugged out, cracked out, medicated up on anti-psychotics, armed to the teeth, and all pitted against one anther based on what kind of sex we have, what god we pray to, or the color of our skin.

The debt you paid off if I am right, will absolutely be the last thing on your mind whenever everything comes unhinged. So in my mind all you did was transfer useless money from an account to pay off a useless debt. If it comforts you to make you feel like you have accomplished something that so be it. The money that was lent to you never existed anyway. I'm not trying to be tacky, but I probably would have had the opposite strategy,

RACK UP AS MUCH DEBT AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE to purchase real assets, because the value of the debt even if it still exists will be paid off in a couple of days whenever the average destroyed wage salary worker is bringing home 5,000 a day and a loaf of bread is 2,000. You will probably be able to pay back that debt with one or two days labor if their is still such a thing.

Just a thought, good luck, god bless, and congratulations.

The worst thing about having your mortgage paid off is that the IRS drools over the prospect of getting a tax lien against your property. While you have a mortgage, they know it's an uphill battle against a bank, but you are just a little guy and they know they can come get you if you give them any excuse.

Satan hates people who might resist taking the Mark of the Beast. That's what the whole war on individualism and self-sufficiency is all about. The war on the 2nd amendment too, as well as all the camera surveillance, satellites, computer databases, facial recognition, etc...

Your average idiot atheist STILL doesn't believe, even while the last major prophecy (before the end) is unfolding right before their eyes. The control grid is tightening all around them, and the STILL can't see that it was all prophesied long ago.

To them, it's all just a coincidence. Or (and I LOVE this one) the Powers That Be are "intentionally fulfilling Revelation".

lol...

....a stock broker is NOT a financial planner...FP get paid by the hr not commission..that's why annuities are HORRIBLE...spend a few months, learn IRA/401k/403b etc..you can invest in a diverse group of assets ..don't chase last years winners...Gold is great until it's sold off...ask yourself why broker's are selling their gold to you?..paper is worthless,GOLD is king...yet they will trade it for your worthless paper money ! wonder why?..apply that to ALL investments. A FP should NOT make a cent off whatever you buy, IF they do..WALK OUT....they should advise you on investments NOT have any interest in their purchase.

i hope i dont get sued by gobias for revealing this but

its from the show arrested development
here is the clip of the video for his avatar.

[link to www.hulu.com]

its for hulu and you probly have to watch a commercial but its about a 2 and a half minute video and it will explain it lol

yup