Quote:
Originally Posted by Schraderbrau
I have a dilemma and I dont know what the best move to make is. I am in my mid 30's and I am about to have my mortgage paid off on my current house. It is nothing special probably an average house in Calgary worth about 500K. Me and the wife have now been contemplating moving into something bigger for the family but that would mean getting back into a mortgage after finally getting mortgage free. Right now we are in a 1890 sq ft home but we have been looking at some nice 2500 sq ft plus places.
I know most people work to being mortgage free for retirement and I feel fortunate that I have been able to get there well in advance of that. So my question is should a person be happy to be mortgage free or is it worth going bigger and mortgaging up again? I see advantages to both situations:
A new mortgage would not be an issue money wise by being Mortgage free gives us the freedom of not worrying about that mortgage payment and opens up a lot of money for other things.
Having a mortgage on a newer house gives us something that we have always wanted, a nice new big house, that we can grow our family in.
What would you do?
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Congratulations, what a great place to be. Could you, or would you want to wait another 3-4 years and save up that much more and still be mortgage free in a new place? Once your current mortgage is paid off you will be able to save that much faster. Really though, owing 170k on a 600k home is still a good place to be should you want to pull the trigger now. As well, if you are considering renovating or upgrading your current place instead of moving, I would move. I hate going through all that BS, dealing with all the contractors etc... You could still be mortgage free by your mid 40's which isn't too bad.
The thing with where you are now luxuries will come easier for you which you may want to enjoy for a year or two as well. I guess it really depends what your priorities are. You could also just go for another year and see how you fell about things then, after a year of debt freeness you might want to stay that way.
The downside to waiting; my sister and her husband did this, they wated to not owe anything on their new place. They saved, and saved and worked and worked, the more they saved the bigger and more expensive their house became they were gonna build all along). When they finally moved thier kids were 15 and 17 so now three years later they have this huge beautiful house for the two of them as the kids have moved out and on to college.