Burn your mortgage
New book tells how young alum paid his off in three years

IN 2015, Ryerson alumnus Sean Cooper, Business Management ’09, made headlines when he burned through his debts. The good news: it’s possible to pay off a mortgage in three years. The bad news: you have to live super frugally.

In August 2012, at age 27, Cooper bought his house in East Toronto with a down payment of $170,000, leaving him with a mortgage of $255,000. “I knew that I didn’t want my mortgage to be a life sentence—I didn’t want to have it for the next 25 years to life,” said Cooper.

He went well beyond his full-time job as a pension analyst. “I was also working as a personal finance journalist, and part-time at a supermarket. Some people would live upstairs in their house and rent out the basement, but I actually did the opposite: lived in a basement and rented out the upstairs just to bring in even more money, because I could earn double the rent that way.”

Not willing to make that kind of sacrifice? There’s good news: even in a city like Toronto, the dream of home ownership is still within reach. In his new book, Burn Your Mortgage: The Simple, Powerful Path to Financial Freedom for Canadians, Cooper offers readers practical advice for a lifetime of financial responsibility.

“For me, two of the biggest expenses are transportation and groceries after mortgage or rent. If you can save maybe 15, 20 per cent on both of them, you can come up with an extra $100, $150, $200 a month. … Instead of buying a brand-new vehicle, you could buy a two- to three-year-old used vehicle from a registered car dealer.”

And don’t worry: he’s not unreasonable. “I don’t expect everyone to follow every single tip in my book, but if they were to perhaps follow 25 per cent of my advice, or figure out ways to save in their own life, they could pay off their mortgage a lot sooner than the 25 years.” — by Will Sloan