The mortgage, the pension, the plan.
How Sally stopped wondering if she could pay off her mortgage before retirement — and found out she actually could.
The mortgage has been there so long it barely feels like debt anymore.It's just part of the month. Goes out on the fifth. Has done for twenty-two years. And in about eight years, if everything goes to plan, it won't.
That's the thing I've never quite been able to see clearly. Whether "if everything goes to plan" is actually true — whether the numbers, my actual numbers, actually work out the way I keep assuming they do.
I'm 57. I work for the NHS. I have a pension that's been building since my thirties, a savings ISA I've been quietly adding to, and a mortgage with £87,000 left on it. By most measures I'm doing fine.
But I've never been able to look at all of it at once and say: yes, this works. Yes, the mortgage goes. Yes, retirement at 65 is real, not just a date I keep repeating.
The question I needed answering
Both my children are nearly independent now. One renting with friends, one finishing university. The moment that's supposed to feel like breathing space has arrived — and instead of relief, I felt something closer to urgency.
If I'm going to pay this mortgage off before I stop working, I need to know whether I can. Not roughly. Actually.
And if I can't, I need to know that too — because then the plan changes, and I'd rather change it now than at 63.
What I did
I opened giltedge and put in everything. Salary. Mortgage balance and rate. Pension value and contributions. Savings. Expenses — all of them, including the ones I'd rather not think about.
Then I looked at the Projection page.
The mortgage clears in 2033. That's eight years away. That's two years after I'm planning to retire.
I sat with that for a minute.
Then I did something the app makes almost unreasonably easy: I added £200 a month to my mortgage as a committed overpayment. Watched the projection redraw.
The mortgage clears in 2030. Three years before retirement.
That's the number I needed. Not a rough sense that overpaying is a good idea. The specific amount, the specific year, confirmed against my actual salary, my actual pension, my actual savings — everything running forward together, month by month, for the next thirty years.
What's different now
I still have the same mortgage. The same pension. The same job.
What I don't have anymore is the vague anxiety that I'm probably fine but can't quite prove it.
I can prove it now. Two hundred pounds a month. Mortgage gone at 60. Retire at 65 with eight years of breathing room.
That's not a hope. That's a plan.
