It’s going to be mortgage progress city here for a little while, because we’re in the homestretch! I know it was just last month that I gave an update, but we’re getting so close to done that every chunk of change we send in makes an enormous difference.

For those who missed last month’s update, our mortgage balance started out at $95,106.47. We actually started focusing on paying it off in 2010. By March of 2011, we’d paid 38% of that off, so were down to $58,966.01. When we refinanced in late September 2011, we owed $49,500.

Getting closer and closer!

And now, we only owe $16,846.90 . That’s like, less than the price of many new cars. (Although new cars seem horrifically expensive to me.)

Last month I said we were aiming for getting it paid off by December or sooner. But we’ve changed our minds, and we’re now aiming for September or sooner.

Why the change?

Well, we decided that while paying off the mortgage is not an emergency, we won’t actually need (knock wood) as large of emergency funds when we have a paid-for house. You know, because we won’t have to worry about making the house payment if we were to lose our jobs. Our expenses will be significantly reduced (especially compared to what we’ve been shoveling toward the mortgage) and so we will be able to live on a very minimal amount of money if need be.

So we’re going to get it down to $10K as fast as we can and then take that last $10K from our emergency fund. I can’t wait til my final mortgage update!