Most of my life has been dedicated to enjoying each and every day. This philosophy never became clearer that when my lovely bride of 34 years was diagnosed with breast cancer. It wasn't until this day that we both sensed our real mortality and realized that time would run out if we didn't seize the moment. So starting that day we spent a larger portion of our budget on travel. This was four years ago as my bride appears to be in complete remission.
Also, at this time our lives required some tweaking with regard to our retirement planning. We had to decide between "living for the moment" and "living below our means" (LBYM)... difficult to say the least. The first real decisions we made were to take one really big trip per year, to fly out east in the spring at least once a month to watch our athletic daughter play sports for a division 1 school in North Carolina , and we decided to pay off our house as fast as we could. A mix of living for the moment along with a smattering of frugality allowed us to do this.
The simplest way for us to reduce our expenses and pay off our mortgage really fast and early was to pay double our Principal and Interest. By paying double we reduced a 15 year mortgage by over 60 percent in months of payback. Paying this way reduced our disposable income forcing us to make life style changes to accommodate our new budget. This worked for us... as a result we now own our home outright!
More to come....
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