Home Sweet Home!

Buying a home is still considered one of the great American dreams to strive for in one’s lifetime.  For many newly married couples, starting a family and buying a home are two highly sought after goals.  And my wife and I did both as newlyweds.

It was in 1981, less than two years after getting married, that my wife and I purchased our first home, a three-bedroom, 1400 square foot ranch-style home with a concrete driveway.

In comparison to the size of our earlier one-bedroom apartments, it seemed huge.   I can recall one of the first times our phone rang in the kitchen (remember when we had landlines), that it seemed to take forever to get to it from our bedroom.  It was in this home that we welcomed our first two children.

Five years later, with two growing kids, we decided that we needed more room.  Our second home was a two-story brick and wood four-bedroom, 2000 square foot home.   Not only did we gain more room, but it came with a two-car carport to protect our cars from the weather.  No more scraping windshields in the wintertime!

Here we brought home our third child and watched them all three grow for the next 13 years.  We witnessed our two oldest grow into teenagers and embark on some of their first dates.

They entered high school and in fact our oldest son graduated from high school while living here.  In this house, all four bedrooms were upstairs off the same hallway.  With two teenagers in high school and an almost teenager, it seemed none of us really had much privacy.  So, my wife and I decided it was time to move to a new home with a different floorplan and more room.

It was in July of 1999, when we moved to the home we currently live in, a 2-story, four-bedroom home with 3,600 square feet.

In 2019, I wrote a post about the 20^th anniversary of us moving here and I detailed many of the events that had occurred during that two-decade span of time.

In July of 2023, we achieved another milestone—we paid off our mortgage!

While buying a home is still a big part of the American dream, actually owning it mortgage-free is another significant achievement.  With most home loans having a 30-year term, it is probably fairly rare for someone to actually live in the same house for 30 years to pay it off.  But, if you are doing the math, you’re probably thinking, wait, they haven’t lived there for 30 years yet.  So, what gives?

Well, in 1999, as most home buyers do and as we had done on our first two homes, we took out a 30-year mortgage to buy this home.  After several years, mortgage interest rates had dropped, and we were able to refinance our loan and take out a 20-year mortgage.  Having lived in our second home for 13 years, I envisioned a 20-year loan was one we might actually pay off.  Assuming I didn’t change jobs and move our family somewhere else.

Then in 2013, with retirement looming on my horizon rather than a job change out of town, we were able to refinance again and this time, taking out a 10-year loan.

So, ten years post 2013 is—2023!  And August 2023 was the first month since February of 1981 that we did not make a house payment (other than when we refinanced which gives you a month off between loans).  What a nice feeling to take that item out of the monthly budget.

Of course, now rather than our mortgage company, I was responsible for paying our city and county property taxes as well as our homeowner’s insurance, items most home buyers pay monthly into an escrow account along with the principle and interest payments on the loan.

Knowing this day was coming, I figured we could either set aside money each month to pay those lump sum items when they were due; much akin to paying into an escrow account.  Or just take the money out of savings.  Our city taxes were due the very next month after the loan was paid off, so I did not get a chance to figure out which way.  And the county taxes will come due just a few months later.  Maybe next year, I will set up a monthly escrow payment to cover these items.

But in the meantime, I am going to enjoy home sweet home relaxing by the pool without making a monthly mortgage payment!