After talking it over with my wife last night, we went ahead and paid off the rest of the mortgage. Until writing out the post yesterday, it hadn't dawned on me that the situation had changed that much between our savings and mortgage. When we moved in just last October, we did have just about enough money to not have a mortgage, but it would have left us with nothing in savings. Really did not want that! Between an annual bonus and a large (unexpected) tax refund earlier this year, it really bumped up our savings and let us redo the back yard last month.
However, the more I thought about it the more sense it made. With the mortgage, we probably couldn't take on a sizable car loan, or at least I didn't want to, but at least we would have a large down payment. As I said previously that I wanted to pay off the mortgage before we replace her car. Well, I'd still like to replace the money we paid off on the mortgage before we purchase a new car, but if it turns out the other way, I think we are better off. The risk, minimal in my view, is that we would have to get a larger auto loan. Not a big deal since we just disposed of the house loan.
One last factor into our decision is that I also don't think her car is going to last 2 years, for us anyways. We've had it for 13 years, and put a lot of miles on it. Though, in the last year we have had two repairs. The first two repairs that we have had to do beyond maintenance. Sure, it's a Honda and that means it will probably still run for another 100,000 miles, however, I really don't want to have a situation where my wife is stranded somewhere. Then we would be stuck in a position of having to scramble to buy a new vehicle. And we really don't want that!
If it hadn't been for the car, I don't think we would have paid off the mortgage. But we agreed that the flexibility provided overrode any other factor.
March on!
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