One of the joys of home ownership is the big mortgage burning party once that final payment has been made. As someone who’s been there, I can tell you: There really is no better feeling.

Of course, the reason we were able to pay it off so quickly is that, as mortgages go, it wasn’t a very big one to begin with. The house is old, built in 1920-something, and it’s small, and parts of it just weren’t in very good shape.

That’s why we’re thinking about getting one of those remortgages for the kitchen remodel. Technically, it would be another simple first mortgage, but we like to think of it the other way just because it would only be for part of the house. Home improvement loans are like that.

We also would go ahead and include the mortgage protection insurance. After all, jobs seem to come and go with alarming regularity these days, and after all that work, the last thing either of us would want is to lose the house!