In addition to my quest to see "How High Can I Get" in the game of poker, I've decided to document one of my lifelong dreams and aspirations: to own my own house AND pay off that mortgage. I feel like a key component to building wealth is to PAY OFF THE HOUSE. If you look @ the average American household, the house or rent payment usually takes the lion's share of all the bills - it's 36% of my total bills and the next highest is food @ only 11%. Sadly most people don't pay off their mortgage early and end up paying 2 to 3 times the value of the house in interest. Without a house payment, you can save money and build wealth so you don't have to work into your 50's and 60's unless YOU want to. Plus, when you pay off your house, you don't run the risk of LOSING your house - 100% of home foreclosures are suffered by people WITH a mortgage If you're in the camp of people who think having a mortgage is a good thing because of the tax deduction and because you can use the extra money to invest on something that might make a higher % than the interest rate, we'll just have to agree to disagree because I completely disagree with that line of thought.

For my personal situation, I bought my house on January 1, 2003 for $145,000 but put $29,000 down or 20% for a total mortgage or debt of $116,000 on a 30 year fixed rate @ 5.75% interest. I do not have an escrow account and handle my taxes and insurance separately, so my house payment is $676.94 per month. To date, I have not made any extra payments, but DO have money saved up solely for the purpose of paying towards the house. The only reason I haven't pulled the trigger on making extra payments is because the economy is so bad and being single, I'd really rather hold on to the money in case a disaster happens and I lost my job and couldn't find a comparable one to replace it.

Starting on 01/01/2010, my mortgage debt was $103,690.97 and I would like to have it paid off by 12/31/2011 in basically two years. If I continue to not make any official extra payments, my debt will naturally decrease down to $99,122.01 by then through standard payments, so I need to raise that much extra money in two years. I have about $30k saved that I could use towards the house, so that brings my debt down to about $77k. To do it in two years, I'd need to save an extra $2.9k per month over that interval.

For this first year, my target is to save up $1,200 per month and continue to develop my poker game and make $25k for the year in poker, which is already one of my side goals. I don't plan to use any poker money made this year towards my house. I hope to use that money to continue to fund my live bankroll and online bankroll and move up the stakes so that @ the end of 2011, I can start to bank income from poker for the first time. In 2011, I'll continue to save $1,200 per month but will then need to find a way to fund the rest of the money, which is $40k for that year, towards the house payoff.

What I think will make this challenge interesting is that while I can probably save more than $1,200 per month for two years on my own WITH my day job WITHOUT poker, I don't think I'll be able to find the full $40k extra without SOMETHING ELSE. I'll need poker or some other extra income to make up that much ground so quickly. The real "goal" is to pay off my house WELL before 30 years. My target is to do it before 2012 or 9 years from when I bought it.

So, my general targets to help me accomplish this are:

- Keep my day job and save AT LEAST $1,200 per month for two years -> $28,800
- Keep my $30k savings to be used towards the house debt
- In 2010, continue to develop my poker game, build my online and live bankroll, and move up the stakes as best I can
- In 2011, through my day job, poker income, poker bankroll, or any other means necessary and possible, raise and save an additional $40k along with the $28.8k and $30k from above to pay off final outstanding balance of $99,122.01 by 12/31/2011

*NOTE: any money borrowed AGAINST my physical live or online bankroll would be paid back as available starting in 2012 through $1,200 per month savings PLUS the $676.94 house payments I won't have

I hope this goal will be a healthy and fun way to motivate me to budget, save, and spend wisely during the next two years plus motivate me to continue to have fun with poker while also working hard at it and trying to be as successful as I can. I don't plan to go on "beans and rice" during the next year or go completely crazy, but I do want to be frugal, smart, reasonable while still having fun when I can.

I plan to pop in from time to time with saving updates and possibly look at hourly rate snapshots from poker plus any other extra income or notable savings and cost lines.