My main life attitude is to gain Financial Freedom. At first I tried to accomplish this through working hard & more, trying to earn a quick buck. This is one way to do it, the other way is to minimize your expenses and keep strict budgets and just be wise with your money.

A few things you could have done to improve your quality of living and improve your cash balance at the same time:

- Make a 2nd hand account. From this ‘account’ you buy 2nd hand luxury goods whenever you can. Most of the time these purchased 2nd hand goods lose no more then 25% of their value in a few years time. So Assuming you are paying 50% of the new price, you will get 75% back on that price if you sell it again. So effectively you pay only 12.5% of the real value of the luxury good you use (think about computers, TV, DVD’s, speakers, whatever retains most value and is easy to buy/sell (liquid).) Not to mention the fact that you can actually make money with buying low & selling high.

- Instead of repaying your mortage in 3 years, keep it open for as long as possible and invest the money you ’safe’ by not repaying in a combination of Stock & Obligation & Commodities funds. This will give you good Risk/Return statistics, and perhaps give you about 8-9% net return / year with relatively low drawdown risk. You will have 3.5% extra return over your money.. which in your case is a couple hundred o’ thousands dollars extra in your bank account in the 25yr period.