I've heard the same from some relatives. I don't feel that going into this. Maybe I will. Of course, at 28, I've lived in my parent's home for most of my life except 4 years of college and 3 years in an apt locally. I guess 3 out of 4 is close enough.
Nonetheless, thank you for the well-wishes. I was brought up as a fiscal conservative. I have no credit cards and only student loans and an auto loan to finish paying. After that, it's lump sums into the mortgage. I plan to spend every dime of my money to pay off the house before 30 years. I plan to marry someday (maybe), and it would be a great home to raise at least one kid. We'll see what happens.
I reject your reality and substitute it with my own, in this particular case. Let the welfare mothers bilk the system. When I own all my stuff, I'll be the one laughing!
My reco is not to do that, for a number of reasons. First, it will make you a "slave" to your mortgage in a sense. Second, you have to enjoy *some* of your earnings or some part of your brain will begin to associate *earning* with *lack of enjoyment*. Third, a mortgage is probably the very cheapest money you can borrow, and you can't extract your overpayments without refi'ing, which typically involves fees. Fourth, the money you spend overpaying your mort is kind of "gone".
One thing I recommend is to print out an amortization table of your mort, for a couple of reasons. (Google "mortgage calculator" and you'll find 20+ sites that let you do this.) One is to spend some time studying it for some of the benchmarks, for example, how many [normal] payments does it take so that a [normal] payment is 10% principal? 25%? 50%? 75%? Second, play with the numbers a little on some of the interactive mortgage sites, with the idea of figuring out an intelligent amount to overpay your mortgage. If you want to retire your mortgage early, I applaud that, but I myself found that there was a point at which I was hampering my "operating" capital by sinking it into the mortgage. You can make an amazing difference by adding an extra 5-8% a month, which is almost nothing. By the time you're adding 20%, though, it makes less and less difference than you might think, and it's hard to maintain over the (still) many years you have to go. Of course, you don't have to overpay by the same amount every month, but you don't need to create an accounting burden for yourself, either.
I'm just suggesting you play with the mort calc to work out a fairly painless extra principal payment you can make comfortably and regularly. For example, if a one-time amount of money equal to say 5 or 8 mortgage payments suddenly dropped into your lap, I would definitely NOT toss it all into the mort. Balance.