Wednesday, March 15, 2006

1 down, 19 to go

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of P & I living in our house. It's hard to believe that a year ago today we were receiving the keys to our very first home and making our very first mortgage payment.....I guess the tagline for this celebration should be 'only 19 more years until we pay off our mortgage!'

How depressing is that.....?

It was at the start of this year that I received another depressing piece of information. It came in the form of my annual pension plan report from my employer -- the lovely federal government. The report details your pension contributions to date and nicely outlines the earliest year you can retire. According to the report, I am committed to working until .....2035. I will admit, it was a bit of blow when I read that....it's 30 years away for cryin' outloud....and with moral in my work place at an all time low, I will be lucky to survive 5 more years.

However... (and thank god there is a however in this case) if I do the math correctly the bright side of all this depression would be that with 30 years of work left to do and only 19 years left of the mortgage to pay, I will have 10 good years of work in there that won't require me to pay a mortgage. That sounds better than Freedom 55 or whatever that B.S. is that people rave about -- of course, that all depends on if we stay in this exact house for the next 19 years and we continue working for the Feds for the next 30....which is a whole other can of worms, but for now I think I will enjoy the rest of the day, dreaming of my 10 years of a mortgage free life.

(Hopefully in 10 years Winners will have gone out of business or I know exactly where P will be spending his extra mooola!)