Paying extra on my mortgage principal balance...

Goal: Pay off mortgage within 3-5 years.

I am so very tired of having companies that I owe money to, I'd like to be debt free!

We do use a Visa credit card. We use the card for all of our monthly purchases and most bills. We pay the balance off monthly and receive free grocery checks. (yes, credit card companies refer to people like us as dead beats..haha) It's a fabulous program. Once per quarter, an envelope arrives with checks to the local grocery store, where we signed up for the card, and we use them to purchase groceries! The highest amount so far was $75...OF...FREE...GROCERIES! This makes me very happy.

We also have payments for my hubby's car. This stresses me out. When I purchased my car, I paid it off in 2 years. (instead of 5 years) Prior to that, I purchased a 1 year old vehicle in 1999 and paid it off in 3 years. My hubby wants to just make regular payments. UGH! My OCD kicks in for this one!

Back to the mortgage...This year brought a ton of unexpected financial "surprises". Things we hadn't planned on paying. So, I didn't get as much paid extra on the principal as I intended. We were able to pay an extra $3,186.53 and I will call that a success. Although I had planned to pay an extra $12,000 towards the principal this year. Bummer, but we still paid some extra, so...yay!