Hello all you beautiful Mustachians!
I'm a 28 year old gal living in northeastern Indiana. I am blessed with health, happiness, and a steady job that pays well and has good benefits. I also was fortunately enough to evade student loans and car loans in my pre-Mustachian days, so the only debt I have is my mortgage.
Let's set the stage:
-I work as a customer service rep at a local insurance agency and I make about $50,000/year pre-tax.
-I do have high deductible health insurance and an HSA, to which I contribute $200/month. Once my HSA reaches the amount to cover my out-of-pocket maximum ($6,500), I plan to back off my contributions to just cover the amount I use each year for my annual visits. My employer pays 95% of our health insurance premiums, so I only pay about $7/month, deducted from my paycheck.
-I do not have a 401(k) option.
-I'm a homebody, vegetarian, and single so my expenses are pretty low. I'm frugal and don't spend money on crap I don't need. I track my spending and typically my monthly expenses are about $800, excluding the mortgage.
-My current mortgage payment is $690 but I pay $750.
-I purchased my home in 2013 and have a mortgage balance of about $110,000 at 4.25% interest. I have no plans or interest to move as I am close to work and plan to live in this house forever, or at least for quite a long time. I can't say I'll never move, but since I have no plans to have a family, I don't need to consider anyone's opinions but mine!
-I have a Roth IRA with Vanguard with 90% stocks 10% bonds. I max this out ($5,500/yr). I only opened it last year and the current balance is $7616.46, which means I've made $741.47.
-I recently started another account with Vanguard investing in the Wellesley fund. Currently that has $3161.29. I may move this over to the Wellington fund if my stock/bond balance gets too out of whack (right now it's roughly 75%/25%).
-For those who don't want to do the math, that means I have a total of $10,777.75 invested. Not a lot, but it's a start and growing all the time.
Ideally I'd like to retire by 50. Well, I'd like to retire NOW, but I know that with just one income, I have to make my money work as hard as it can for me. I also know that I likely can't carry a mortgage in to retirement.
So my question/dilemma. I know that you are "supposed" to invest rather than pay down your mortgage, because you'll make more interest investing than you will save by paying off the debt. However... I don't like being in debt. I want to own my home outright. I plan to keep maxing out my IRA and putting at least $100/month in to Wellesley, but would it kill my early retirement plans to put any extra money toward my mortgage?
Thanks for any and all advice!