The Investor Class & the Working Class

The middle class is one of my favorite things to think and write about. I've tried reframing the classes into quintiles, I've written about the difference between having a middle class income and having middle class wealth; about how your location determines a lot about what kind of income you need to be considered middle class. This blog has posts about how class and inequality are inexorably linked, and how one of the traditional definitions of being middle class (doing better than your parents did) is completely unsustainable.

These days I'm not really sure I love the terminology.

What if we're using some antiquated ideas of lower, middle, and upper classes that don't mean much anymore?

Wait, Did Paying Off Our Mortgage Kind of Make Us Financially Independent?

So, we did it. We sold a bunch of stock, pulled together our dividends and ESPP payments from June, scrounged up all the cash we could find, and paid off the mortgage last Friday. Pending some paperwork that has to go from the bank to the county, we are mortgage free and own our home outright.

It's a great feeling, if a little more subdued than we thought it might be. Maybe it's because we'd been mortgage free once before. Or maybe it'll just take some time to sink in.

Maybe we're a bit distracted as Mrs. Done by Forty was offered a job on the same day, and her decisions on that are more pressing than celebrating a milestone.

So We're Going to Pay Off the Mortgage

Talking things over with a few friends last week helped us make a decision: we're going to pay off the mortgage. All at once, by using the remaining cash we have from selling our two rental properties, but mostly by selling investments we have in our taxable accounts.

I already know from our mortgage swoop posts that most people probably won't like this idea. I'll try my best to explain our rationale, which I really do think is sound. But I'm not trying to convince other people that this is what they should do. Instead, I want to explain where we're coming from, our thought process, and just want to be as transparent and honest as I'm comfortable with on the blog.