We bought our house in 1983 when interest rates where running something like 13% (don't remember exact numbers- but HIGH). I was always debt adverse and frugal but never really had any plans to FIRE- never even heard of it, or knew anyone who would do anything like that. I didn't accelerate payments until my husband got big raises and I thought what are we going to do with all this money. We were already living on 1/2 our salaries, saving a lot of money, and instead of figuring out ways of spending his huge raise, I decided to pay off the mortgage. I didn't want to refinance- that costs money- and I thought that I'd be better off just aggressively paying it off. Basically I did it because I didn't know any better. I doubled the payments the last 5 years or so and we paid it off in 12 years. Just before he paid it off, my husband was having trouble at work. He hated his boss, hated his job and just wanted to quit. Without a house payment, we could live on my salary alone so we talked it over- what were we going to do with our money with no house payment and all this money we didn't really need- so he FIRE (with a few side gigs once in a while. I don't think I would have "allowed" him to FIRE without the house being payed off and I would have freeked out taking that huge amount of money out of savings with him not planning to go back to work. I need a nest egg.
The point of this story is I had no intention of FIREing, it just happened, and it was because the house was paid off.