Hi Folks
Thought I'd share with you what I did on my summer vacation. Well, not really but this story does sorta start in early summer.
Actually, if I were to be honest I'd start with Once upon a time there was a wish.
I bought a house... one that had a cherry tree in the back yard and a grand view of a valley in the middle (North-West central actually) of Toronto. This was scary too. The payments were initially outrageously expensive, what with 14%+ interest rates, but with income from the basement rental and a little belt tightening I could manage. It was 1990 and I was almost 40 years old.
As time went on, the cherry tree disappeared (too many ants) and was replaced by an apple and a pear tree - and the interest rates fell (as did the value of the property - but that's a different story). My tenant moved out and Bryan moved in - but not as a tenant. He was/had become family. Improvements to the property were needed and discussions veered towards what might be. In the late 1990's a wish was formed - to remove a wall seperating the kitchen and the living room and create a larger living space. The idea might very well have been Bryan's, but I now claim it as my own. The cost of such a radical change might be prohibative, but I never got an estimate - knowing full well that I couldn't afford it. Even thought the interest rates kept on decreasing, what I owed on the house didn't seem to go down much.
Bryan moved on (as happens in many relationships), but we remained good friends and time went on. The interest rates kept going down and in time, so did the principal I owed on the house. My 50th birthday came & went and retirement approached. There was a countdown, I remember. I knew when I was ten years away, and then five. My house would not be paid off by retirement, but I sure would give it a try - by making extra payments. Of couse, as many of you might already know I did manage to pay off the morgage at roughly the same time as I retired in 2008.