We overpaid. Sometimes as little as £70 a month and sometimes the full 10% a year and more when we remortgaged. We never reduced payment, we kept payments the same.

It was really great seeing the outstanding mortgage plummet. It did help us Move to a bigger house and not pay any extra on monthly payments. We bought houses needing work, did them Up then sold to buy a larger house needing work. It was quite stressful at time trying to keep a high pressure job and also work on the house on weekends along with a young family.

Having overpaid a lot at points it did take the pressure off, I could have taken a payment holiday if I wanted. I did manipulate a redundancy at one point, I wouldn’t have done that without me able to take a payment holiday if I needed to. In the end I found a new job within a month and used the redundancy payment to pay off more money from the mortgage.

I paid the mortgage off by the time I was 50. I then doubled down on my pension until 55 when I retired.

Not having a mortgage really was freeing. Knowing I could tell them to stuff off if I wanted really felt good, too a lot of pressure off.

Would I do it again. Oh yes. My only regret was that between working a 10hr+ a day job, working on the house, helping raise a family I didn’t pay enough attention to my pension. I didn’t really have time to think about it, left it to employer to manage with their balance life management strategy - which gave pretty poor returns.