money

I was recently discussing finances with some friends, one of whom was wondering if she should save some money or spend it on a vacation. As we have made increasingly more money, we've gone back and forth over and over and over again about how much to pay on our mortgage each month and how quickly we should try to pay it off versus enjoying our money. I've done a lot of research and even top financial advisers disagree about whether or not you should pay off your mortgage ASAP.  We choose to enjoy our money while we have it and only pay a little extra (100 - 200) each month.

We've evaluated how quickly we actually could pay down the mortgage and decided it wasn't quick enough to make a difference (before the kids graduate high school or any other major milestone). The kids will get free college if they stay in Texas for college anyway, thanks to the Hazelwood act, which waives tuition and fees at public schools for veterans (who enlisted in Texas) and spouses and children of totally disabled veterans (who enlisted in Texas). They will also receive a Chapter 35 GI Bill, which is what I'm getting. So if they go to a public school, they will get paid to go to school, like I'm going to, starting next month as I re-enroll in community college here. We don't need to worry about saving for the kids' college. We also don't have to worry about retirement, since Karl will continue to be paid for being disabled as long as our government is taking care of veterans.

Since Karl's brain injury is degenerative, we want to use our money now while we know he can enjoy it, rather than have more money later when he may not be able to enjoy it. All our money is blood money from his brain injury. So that colors our financial priorities too. If we paid off the mortgage, saved up, and in 20 years he's completely gone mentally and I have all the money I could ever spend, not only would that be absolutely worthless but I would feel so guilty that he didn't enjoy what his brain injury and other service-connected disabilities gave us. Sure we could build memories for the kids by sitting at home playing board games (which we do a lot) or all piling into bed together and reading (which we also do) but if Karl wants to go on a cruise next summer, wants to go to Italy the year after that, and absolutely 100% wants to go to South America before he dies, then those are more important financially to us than anything else.