Last mortgage payment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Exciting!

Wonderful prospects, Reyn!

Hold your dominion.

i need to borrow like 20 bucks...is that possible?

Thanks guys! Not too bad for having bought this place back in November 1992.

We went on a bit of a buying spree last year. New furnace, laminate flooring for kitchen, carpet for living room, some new light fixtures, new toilets.

And, not to be forgotten, a nice fairly large extra mortgage payment which helped to speed things up, I'm sure!

Hey, do I look like a bank?

Actually, we just bought some investments at our bank, so that's the next step, I guess.

Invest, invest, invest. Since you were spending the money before, you won't miss it, and you can salt away a nice bundle to use when you do retire!

Yup! Considering rolling GIC's. As I mentioned before, we just took out a rather large one. Kind of like the idea of having investments mature every 6 months, so interest comes in on a regular basis. :wink:

Reyn, what is "pre-retirement leave"?

The concept escapes me.

might be like early retirement

Hi Eva! Pre-retirement leave is a combination of banked annual vacation, current vacation, and "reduced work week leave" days that I have available to push ahead to reduce the time I can leave my job permanently!

Officially, I retire 1 May 2006, but with various accumulated leave, I can say "bye, bye" at the end of this year.....if current contract negotiations don't screw that up, that is.

Congratulations Reyn!!
One payment less from now on

Oh, that's interesting! No such thing as banked annual vacation here. It's strictly "use it or lose it" for us. So we use every single day of it.

I look at it that I'm saving $700 each month!

That's one advantage to belonging to a union. Although, the "current company" is trying to change that, like you say above, through the labor contract negotiations that are underway right now.

What's happened is that the "old company" that I used to work for was a crown (public) company. The government here privatised the customer service portion of said company, thereby moving about 1/3 of the employees to the private sector. Unfortunately, as a meter reader I was part of that move.

The new, private company now is trying to negotiate some very radical changes to our collective agreement. So, I hope to get out before any strike, which appears inevitible, occurs.

Some of the changes to leave could affect my pre-retirement by a few days. Hopefully, being this close, perhaps I would be "grandfathered" in.

Reyn
Reyn, congratulations, you paid it off very fast in only 13 years. Good for you.

It is so comforting to own your home free and clear. I cashed out my California home nearly three years ago and paid cash for my new Albuquerque home. No mortgage payments make retirement so much easier.

BBB

Yes, agreed! What worked out in our favor was the fact that it occurred just before my retirement was to take place. This wasn't deliberately planned that way, although I had hoped that it would coincide in that manner. Icing on the cake, for sure!

Now, tonight, our 649 Lottery is up to $14 million. I can dream.....

Having a child at 40 changes your financial plans! We figure our mortgage will be paid off at about the same time he goes to college. Then we should be able to retire about the time he graduates. If all goes as planned, we hope to avoid too many big payments at the same time. Big IF, though.

Still have about 12-15 years until retirement, so a lot could change.

Life can sure be one big 'IF', can't it? I hope your plans work out well.

<fingers crossed for Eva>