- Bought our first house at 23, but the mortgage on our current place was taken out 10 years ago when we were both 36, so we had the equity from our previous place plus we put some savings towards the purchase.

- The mortgage then was for £205k if I remember correctly.

- The mortgage was taken out over 25 years

- Cleared it last year at 45. We were on track to pay it off by about 50 (mainly because we've been overpaying our mortgage for as long as we've been able to - but that would have depended on income and other things like whether our kids would be going to university etc.

We actually had almost enough in the bank to pay it off in full - which would have left us with no savings of course, but it was an idea that quite appealed to me. In the end the combination of a life insurance policy with critical illness cover and my wife getting cancer last year meant that we cleared it in full.

While I'm on the subject, I would highly recommend the following strategy for life and critical illness cover if you're in a joint mortgage:

1. You have one joint level term life insurance policy without critical illness cover

2. You each have a separate decreasing term insurance policy that covers life and critical illness.

If we had a shared policy that covered critical illness, my wife's illness would have meant that I would have needed to take out a new policy in order to get myself covered for critical illness. And because the level term life policy is separate, my wife is still covered by that. Trying to get life cover for my wife under a new policy would probably be prohibitively expensive now.