Last month, we paid off our $400,000 home in just under 4 years.
It took a lot of diligence, patience and teamwork between my lovely bride and I, but we’re proud to check this important family milestone off our list at 35 years old.
We spent some time celebrating this fun moment in our lives this weekend. Instead of burning the mortgage, my wife Nicole had a really great idea. We put together a paper mache piñata out of the mortgage documents.
After the Mortgage Piñata was ready, we let our kids and our friend's kids hit it with a bat until it burst with candy, toys and quarters. The kids had a blast.
It was an awesome metaphor actually; if we destroy our mortgage, we get rewarded!
After our kids came down from their sugar high and went to bed, Nicole and I had a chance to review our budget for December. This is the first time we’ve done our budget together in the last 7 years where we didn’t have a mortgage payment anymore. It was nuts! This month, we had an additional $2,300 to play with.
We have to be careful that we don’t just upgrade our lives immediately. Yes, we’ll vacation more and Nicole will finally get to decorate her house after waiting 4 long years. We also need to start saving for real estate and investing so we continue building wealth and permanently change our family tree.
And we’ll be able to do this in large part to our monthly budget parties. Nicole, thank you for keeping this party going 7 years later!
Coincidently enough, I received a question on Twitter about the very subject of budgeting with your spouse.
Q&Andy: How Do I Get My Spouse On Board with Budgeting?
MARK:
Hey Andy!
I found your article on finances due to fatherhood really moving and pertinent. I’m new to learning about FI and listen to a lot of podcasts related to it. Yours is going on my list.
As a 28-year-old married man who will have another mouth to feed by this time next year, is there anything you can share with me beyond the articles? Any budgeting goals or ideas? I love the idea of the budgeting parties but my wife doesn’t care much about finances. She has a “We have enough to pay bills and live decently, so why make a budget” mentality; or that budgets are set in stone and don’t allow for flexibility. Any insight or advice is appreciated.
Thanks!
Great question Mark!
I'm so glad to hear you're enjoying the site and you're jumping into the podcast.
This is an extremely common question that I get a lot. One spouse gets all jacked up about saving, investing and building wealth and the other is sort of … meh.