Choosing a Simpler Life and Paying Off Our Mortgage in 7 Years

We paid off the mortgage of this modest townhouse in seven years. Today we're debt free. This is how we did it without winning the lottery or working 80 hours a week. Come on in. We were featured in many articles talking about how we paid off our mortgage in seven years. By the time I was in my early 30s we were debt free. A huge stress was lifted off our shoulders. I think it resonated with a lot of people especially nowadays because the cost of For context, we bought this townhouse back in 2007. It has four bedrooms and four bathrooms. Granted the price of housing is a lot more expensive now but I believe the lifestyle we lead is how we paid it off really quickly. My husband and I met when we were in school. He was studying software engineering and I was studying professional theater. I really wanted to be an actress. We got married pretty young. We didn't have a lot of money but we had enough savings to put a down payment on our first condo. A really small condo. Once we accumulated enough money and we were old enough to start a family then we decided that we would take that money and put it into this place. Our townhouse. We bought the home initially. We didn't like the kitchen but we knew that we would be renovating it. We also thought the insulation wasn't very good so we changed all of the windows. Initially we put the down payment on this home. Also changed the windows and a few years down the line we renovated the whole kitchen. We saw its potential. We treated our debt as an emergency. We felt that when we were in debt we were more stressed and we couldn't live a really happy life. That was our main goal was to pay off the mortgage, pay off the house really quickly. I think because we were so young when we got together we were not used to having such a luxurious high-class lifestyle so living a frugal minimal lifestyle was just second nature to us. We paid off our living expenses but whenever we had extra we put it directly into our mortgage. We eventually had two kids so we did have some expenses to incur but we didn't go on family vacations. We didn't go out to eat. Remember $27.40 a day that's $10,000 a year and that adds up and saves up to be put into our mortgage. Mindsets that made it possible. We lived below our means and we treated debt as an emergency. Every time we got some income we spent on our usual living expense. We didn't go overboard or spend on luxurious things and then everything else went into the mortgage. This way we knew we were closer to our goal. We expressed gratitude daily. We're very happy for what we have and not focus on what we don't have. We don't try to keep up with the joneses. This is my most favorite place to be in the house. It's our kitchen and we do a lot of our savings here as a family. Instead of eating out every day or getting coffee on the go it's made over here. Over time I learned how to make a lot of things like kombucha, sourdough and we make a lot of our meals from scratch at a fraction of the price. A lot of my clothing is second hand like this is my sister's old dress. It doesn't fit her anymore so she gave it to me. Might as well extend its life. My whole outfit is pre-love. Even the necklace. This is my mother-in-law's old necklace. I love old pieces of clothing and jewelry because it has personality and history and it saves me money too. I don't follow trends but I follow what I personally like and if I like it I'm gonna wear all the time and just enjoy it as much as I can. Picnics are our thing. It's our sort of free entertainment. Instead of going to restaurants we're over here relaxing. It's one of our favorite things to do. It gives us a change of scenery and time to connect. Being in nature helps us relax from our busy lives. It's been good for our soul too. We like to take advantage of our community's free events like the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and our city's green spaces. We embrace the under consumption core trend. We only buy what we need or think would bring value to our life. We're pretty simple people. We don't have a very big outdoor space to grow and our backyard doesn't have much sunlight so we added this raised bed to grow vegetables and during the summer and fall months we eat almost entirely from our garden. It saves us money from going out to constantly buy fresh veggies and it gives me a reason to slow down and enjoy nature. Next I'm going to talk about what we spend on now that we're financially stable. I mean we paid off our house over 10 years ago. We got to renovate parts of our house like the kitchen, two of our bathrooms, the lobby and all of our windows. Just a few years ago we started going on tropical vacations with the family to escape and mostly to connect with our teenage boys. They're old enough now to really appreciate what we can do together. I hope you enjoyed the video and saw that frugal living isn't that bad. Even if you can't pay off your mortgage in seven years, small frugal habits do add up. It has given us the freedom to enjoy life and live a little bit slower. If you like this kind of video, I have a video talking about my parents' under-consumption core lifestyle or even my under-consumption core lifestyle. Remember, frugal living isn't about giving up joy, it's making room for more of it.