A More Realistic Mortgage Goal

In my enthusiasm to pay off my mortgage as quickly as possible, I tallied up all the things I could sell and found that I could pay it off in 1 year and 8 months. Then I tried out my plan and found that it was totally unrealistic. I'm not going to get the prices I want for my stuff and it's not practical to fix up the mobile home and sell the RV right now.

So, I made up a more realistic goal.

-Sell $1,000 worth of stuff. (I'm already at $430 so I think I can do it without sacrificing more than I want to.)

-Rent the house as a furnished rental in February for $4,000. (This is realistic because I already have a tenant lined up. My only problem is that I have to kick out my current tenants and they don't want to go. I hope we figure out a win-win situation.)

-Sell the house furnishings for $500 after the short term renters leave. (This depends on what happens with my current renters so it's not a definite thing.)

-Sell my stock for $5,000. (It was worth $5,000 at the beginning of the year. It's probably not worth that much now especially since I have some GM stock. I'm hoping in 2 years it will be worth $5,000 again.)

-Use most of my emergency fund, $7,000, to pay off the last chunk of my mortgage when the balance gets close to $7,000. (That is a little risky but I will still have my mom's vacation money if we haven't gone on vacation yet in 2 years. And once my mortgage is paid off I can save almost $2,000 a month. I'll decide if I want to do that when the time comes. If I use the emergency fund I can have my mortgage paid off in 2 years and 2 months (Sept. 2010). If I don't use it, it will be paid off January of 2011.

That's my new plan. It's not so extreme so that I will get discouraged and not too long so that I don't think it will ever happen.

Now, I need to keep thinking about short term goals to keep myself motivated.