It is possible to own your home free and clear. it used to be something most people aspired to. Even in our credit-crazed modern society, one-third of Americans have paid for their homes in full. It's hard to remember many homes have no mortgage when news of Bank of America's possible buyout of Countrywide Lending tells us that if the merger goes through, one in every four U.S. home loans will be held by BofA.

In small towns like Oakley, Kansas, the paid-for ratio is even higher. In Oakley, 361 homes do not have a mortgage, while only 284 do. So why are more people not paying off their houses? I think it's because they see it as too hard of a process–something that takes so long to accomplish, why bother?

You can, however, pay off your home years sooner than the 30 year fixed mortgage, or even a 15 year mortgage. People are paying off their homes in as many as 10-15 years sooner. That's the whole purpose of my mailing list, which you can opt into below - to communicate with folks who would like to payoff their mortgages earlier not only the techniques we're using to pay our home off, but also the techniques I learn from listening to others about how they paid their mortgage off sooner.

It isn't as rare as you might think for homeowners to pay a mortgage in full in 10 years. A few folks manage to pay off their note in as few as five years. Maybe the key difference is that word owners. Some folks are motivated to buy a house for the joy of owning it. Others are just renting from the bank instead of renting from a traditional landlord. They may call themselves owners, but as anyone who's ever had a mortgage knows, for most of the term, the bank owns more than you do.

Stay tuned to this blog for specific techniques for owning your home years sooner. I won't give them all away for free here, but I'll share many of them. For my favorite technique, you may need to buy my how-to manual.

• For a hint, read about using your home's equity to pay it off faster.