About a month ago I received a call at work from Sal. This is a pretty rare occurrence, but it didn’t worry me at the time. When I asked what was up, she replied, “I have good news and bad news.”

The bad news was that her work was shutting down. I’m sure the “global financial crisis” hasn’t helped, but the company she worked for had been running things very close to the bone for a few years and I guess they reached the tipping point this year and had no choice but to close up shop. So Sal was going to be out of work.

The good news, however, was that since Sal was a full time employee she was getting a redundancy package. The amount, at the time, was almost exactly what was left owing on our mortgage! So we knew that when Sal’s work finished up we’d essentially be debt free.

That day comes today.

Well, that’s not strictly true. Sal finishes work today and she’ll probably get the redundancy package today, but of course there are hoops to jump through to pay off the mortgage and waiting periods while money moves around. Anyway, the crux of it is that for all intents and purposes we own our house now.

For those playing at home, that’s this house that I blogged about seven years ago:

Our home being built

Seven years is a pretty good time period in which to pay off a mortgage. Since I was putting about two thirds of my salary into the home loan, the fact that we’ve paid it off means I’m essentially getting triple my take-home pay each week from now on. What will we do with it? Well, I’m gonna start by picking up a few niceties that I’ve gone without for a while, like a new PC. Then we’re going to plan a European holiday. After that, we’ll settle back down and perhaps look at buying an investment property.

Sal, of course, is going to look for another job. It’s fortuitous timing because she was starting to get a bit restless where she was. I know times are tough for job-seekers right now, but I have every confidence that she’ll find something that she loves before too long.

Sorry if this comes across as a bit self-promotional, but it’s a big milestone in our lives and I wanted to get it “out there” if only so we can look back at this post in another seven years with fond memories.