A friend told me that “they” would invite the friends and neighbors in after they had paid their last mortgage chit. A fire, literally, was lit and in went the stub-book with great rejoicing.
Did this ever/still happen? It sounds like a rural Depression-era thing.
Does anyone even still have a book with regular mortgage payment slips? Isn’t it all done electronically now?
Not a concrete answer by any means, but I remember seeing this ritual on an episode of the sitcom Eight is Enough , and it wasn’t presented as something exceptional. So presumably it was part of popular culture in the U.S. in the early 1980s.
Yes, I’ve been to a couple. Of course, these days fewer people live in the same house long enough to actually pay off the mortgage.
If I had a mortgage, and had just finished paying it off, I would certainly do something like this to celebrate.
I paid off my mortgage last year.
My Mother-in-law made me a nice cake.
The only ones I’ve heard of recently are for non-profit groups, like a local church or organization. (And one of them was also a fundraiser for an addition!)
Edith and Archie Bunker did it.
I plan on doing it in about two years - you’re all invited.
mmm
We wanted to do something, but since the payments were automatically deducted and we didn’t get anything to burn, we just got drunk in celebration.
When my parents did it, they didn’t burn the payment book - it was the actual physical mortgage agreement they had signed 30 years previously when they bought the house in 1956. Back then your mortgage most likely stayed with the same bank for the entirety of the loan, and they mailed you the agreement after the final payment. Nowadays I’m guessing the original agreement is long gone by the time you finish paying, even assuming you didn’t refinance 6 times over the life of the loan.
We paid off our house earlier this year. We symbolically burned a photocopy of the “Mortgage document” in the backyard. High-fives and cold beers followed.
My mortgage is through Fifth Third; every year after they calculate my new payment (depending on the past year’s escrow shortage/overage), they send me another booklet with another twelve coupons in it. I don’t use them though; my bank sends out automatic monthly payments (I assume electronically), so I just shred the coupons.
To continue with useless TV references, in M.A.S.H episode 11-07, the staff threw a mortgage burning party for Col. Potter.
And to add more to useless personal speculation, when I pay off mine sometime in the next 5 years, damned straight I will either find or create a sufficient effigy of my mortgage and burn it in a raging drunken binge.
My baby sis is having a mortgage burning next month. I don’t know exactly what she intends to burn, but there will be fire. My folks burned something when their mortgage was paid off, but I lived 800-ish miles away and wasn’t able to attend. Get back with me in 20 and we’ll see what we do…
Burned the mortgage agreement. Fire, burgers, and beer. Good combination.
Made sure all the deed and lien paperwork was squared with the county office, first, though.
When we made out last payment we just smiled.
Now, if OWS has their way, we’ll just feel like chumps for paying the damn thing.
My parents burned a photocopy of some document-or-other at Christmastime the year they paid theirs off. Why not?
We didn’t do it when we paid off ours in 2004.
I wonder if anyone has ever done it, had some part of the process go awry, and burn their house down.
How ironical. 
mmm
[nitpick]ironic (unless I was whooshed)[/nitpick]
Ironic, irregardless.