Paying Off the House Part II: How We Did It

Warning: This really isn’t all that dramatic.. but it’s not that hard, either.

Here's what we did:

• We paid off our credit cards every month and never had to pay interest on them.
• We lived slightly better than we did as college students.  We avoided lifestyle creep, where you gradually buy nicer and nicer things, go on bigger and better vacation, have to have the latest greatest bill-in-the-blank because you are able to.  I think lifestyle creep is a huge reason that many middle-class folks people don’t save much.  (“Let’s buy it because we can afford it now” is such a bad idea!)   We pretty much do it our way, and spend money where we value it, and not where everyone else says we should.  That is enormously liberating and really cheap.
• A lot of being able to pay off the house early came from a total lack of interest in keeping up with the Joneses.  Our friends are ordinary folk, many of whom are also pretty frugal, usually so that they can afford to have a stay-at-home parent.  I don't try to keep up with our wealthier friends.  It helps that I don't particularly want expensive clothes or electronics — I’d just get chocolate on the clothes and break or lose the expensive toys!  (I’m very fond of chocolate — and really, really clumsy!)

Example: I work in an office with lots of elegantly dressed women. However, I own only two pairs of black shoes, black flats and sketchers.

• We spend money on the stuff we truly enjoy like travel and board games, and sometimes biking and gardening. We don't spend it mindlessly or on autopilot. I have thrift store clothes but I joined my mom and sister on a trip to Europe one year and the next spent five weeks in Croatia, including nine days on an island in the Adriatic with my in-laws.  The fact that I do the one makes the other one much easier to afford.  Plus I don't feel deprived because I get to do want I really want to do.
• What we do to entertain ourselves is more active.  We create things.  We do projects.  A bonus is that that helps us solve problems, like we’ll build our own shelving that is custom-designed for what we want to put on it.
• We don't spend money we don't have. We save up or do without.
• We avoid monthly bills.  I have a smart phone, for example, but it was a gift from a wealthier relation who is upgrading, and I've never gotten a plan for it because I don't want to pay that data plan every month.  We don't avoid monthly bills entirely, of course – who could?  But our little flip phone doesn't cost much.  (Actually, we should probably reevaluate that at some point and make sure that that is still true!)
  
• Leisure doesn't have to be pricey.  We enjoy books and movies from the library, which is free.  My hobbies, at least, tend to be pretty inexpensive like crafting from recycled materials, as opposed to shopping, golf, etc.  We like to geocache, which is free after you've bought the GPS.  (We have had the same one for 20 years.  It still works.)

Example: On Sunday we spent time with our dear friend Anne.  We talked, we went for a walk around a lake, we got groceries and then made dinner together.  After dinner we played a board game. It was a lovely day and far less expensive than dinner and a movie for three people, or chatting over cocktails.

As far as the more extreme things, like gardening to grow some of our own food and sewing to make some of our own clothes, I think those helped more as a reminder of our frugal identity than as a whole lot of actual cash savings.  Yes, making or growing what you want instead of buying it is cheaper.  But it's more along the lines of: "If I'm the sort of person who spends all day Saturday making a skirt, it doesn't make sense to blow $200 on leather boots.” Plus I enjoy sewing and gardening, and I have deliberately cultivated hobbies that save money.

Paying off the house was really slow, really steady, really not all that dramatic.  If it is something you would like to do, you can start the way we did — by putting a little extra towards the mortgage every month.  We made exactly two normal mortgage payments the entire time we paid on the house, and that was because my husband was out of work.  Every other payment was something extra, even if it was only $100.