£133K until mortgage free!

msmoneypennyplease · 26 May 2013 at 6:07PM

An excited & motivated new mortgage free wannabe!! :j

Lois_E · 26 May 2013 at 6:20PM

Hello MMPP and welcome to MFW :wave:

Well, you have great plans, haven't you? You ask whether £1100 is reasonable for all your bills and spending ... well, it depends what your bills and spending come to. It wouldn't cover all my bills and spending, but I'm a totally different kind of household - 1 adult, 2 kids, band E council tax, etc. What's your SOA like? Have you done one? If not, then why not do one and post it, and people will be along to tell you where you can cut back.

Anyway, good luck for the journey. See if you can do a sig with some numbers in it to track your progress, and you'll find everyone here is very friendly and supportive.

msmoneypennyplease · 26 May 2013 at 6:24PM

And I should've said how we plan to do this.

House mortgage is limited to £1500 payment per month (incl max overpayment) so we will pay the other £2000 per month into ISAs each year (£6000 ISA for me and £6000 ISA for my husband) and savings accounts. This will also give us an emergency fund if needed. Although I'm wondering if it might be better just to reduce the term of the mortgage officially with the bank & therefore pay more directly to the bank-£2500 per month maybe. Hmmmm-will have a think about this. This would only cost £25 to do.

It's amazing how writing this down publicly really focuses the mind!

msmoneypennyplease · 26 May 2013 at 6:32PM

Thanks Lois_E! I will try to work out how to do a signature.

What is a SOE? Waw...I feel like the new girl in the class!!

Yes maybe £1100 to live on per month is unrealistic but you're right I will do a SOE like you suggest and see (I'm assuming this is like a kind of expenditure audit?) TBH we've never really analysed our money or spending before...we just sort of spend as and when. For example I would have no idea how much we spend on food per week. Hopefully this forum will help us realise and pay attention to things a bit more!

Thanks again,
MMPP :-)

Lois_E · 26 May 2013 at 6:45PM

If you've no idea how much you spend, then your SOA (statement of accounts or statement of affairs) will just be a guess and won't mean much. Begin by keeping a spending diary for a couple of months, and then you'll be able to budget going forwards realistically.

I don't think reducing your mortgage term with the bank would be a good idea if you're trying for a baby. If a baby comes along, you'll have to rethink your entire strategy, and then you might not be able to manage the higher payments you'd have committed yourself to. Babies don't have to be expensive in themselves - they're quite happy with second hand stuff and there's lots of it about - but they hammer your finances because either you have to pay out shedloads in childcare (which is ruinously expensive in a way that non-parents frequently don't realise) or one of you has to give up work or just work evenings or something, so then there's a big loss of earnings.

Ride the wave of the initial enthusiasm to get your spending diary sorted and a realistic budget in place. Then you'll be in a good position to keep going when you get to the "ugh" point of realising what a long haul it is to pay off a mortgage! You're off to a great start, so well done.

Oh, and near the top of the page (near the right hand end of the lower of the two green bars) there's a tab called "quick links". Click that and select "edit signature" and you'll be able to make a sig for yourself.

gallygirl · 26 May 2013 at 9:17PM

Well done on what you've achieved so far :j. I'm a bit confused by what you've said about btl mortgage - you said paid off then say there is 3.4k outstanding? Tax wise, you'd be better off with a higher mortgage on this and lower on your own property as the interest on the btl is tax deductible.

msmoneypennyplease · 26 May 2013 at 10:17PM

Hi gallygirl. We had paid off the mortgage on the flat but needed to take a small amount back out for the deposit for the house-that's why there's now 3.4K outstanding. We were also really stupid as should've got the bigger mortgage on the flat for tax purposes as you said but we didn't think about this at the time-feel very stupid for not realising that now!! That is not very money saving is it! -(

Thanks Louis-E...we will keep a note of our expenditure over the next couple of months then come back on here and get back on it. And you're right about the mortgage term-my worst nightmare would b to be over stretched and having to pay a mortgage that we couldn't afford. It is nice that its a choice at the moment. Although just back from the supermarket & spent a lot more than usual as 1l bottles of pimms currently only £10 in morrisons and 1l of Gordon's gin £15! I will get into the swing of this money saving sooner or later!!

msmoneypennyplease · 11 August 2013 at 9:44AM

So a lot can happen in 2 months it seems! I am pregnant-have been very lucky as it happened on the first month of trying! We have also bought a £13.5K car. Both of these things have/will impact on the MFW plan!

Still overpaying the nationwide mortgage every month by the maximum (£500) which will reduce the term to 8 years 8 months from 14 years. I am confident that we'll be able to sustain this even when I'm on maternity leave (other Mums/Dads please feel free to comment if I'm being naively unrealistic as to how much a baby costs!!) so if we continue with that we will be MF in 7 years. We would however love to be MF in 4 years!!

As it stands at the moment.

Mortgage 1: £125600 (2.89%)
Mortgage 2: £6200 (2.5%)
Money on 0% credit card: £2000 (0% until May 2014)

Since May we'd completely paid back mortgage 2 to a nominal balance of £1 but borrowed a lump sum back to buy the car. Aim is to now pay mortgage 2 back as quickly as possible to £1 again and then start saving in a savings account. I think this is sensible as there's not many savings accounts out there that pay more than 2.5% net.

I've no doubt that having a baby will impact on this plan & realistically we want to have a nice life & enjoy ourselves & treasure the precious moments of a newborn but being mortgage free and not paying nearly £400 every month just in interest back to the bank would be SO liberating!!!!!

Good luck everyone on your mortgage free journeys! I find it really clears my head to put things down in a diary on here. Thanks for reading!

msmoneypennyplease · 23 November 2013 at 9:56PM

Just a little update...

We've been doing lots of things to earn extra money. Had a lodger, selling things on internet & overtime. It's good to be able to now see progress since our last post in August!

Mortgage 1: £120,000.00 approx
Mortgage 2: £1
Have been saving to offset 0% credit card balance and these are now roughly equal so in real terms savings/debts = £0

Still have the very ambitious aim of trying to pay off the £120K remainder of the mortgage by 2017 but we'll take it month by month and save what we can & if it takes a few more years then so be it. Definitely want to save both my & OH ISA limit each year as well as overpaying the mortgage by £500 per month. This is the most realistic aim as 2 * ISA limits = £12000 so that's saving £1000 between us per month into ISAs plus paying our mortgage of £1500 a month. This is realistic & still allows for a nice life!

Best easy access ISA I can find is 2% and best current account savings is nationwide 5% upto £2500 which is amazing!!!

OH now putting into a share save thing at work- £125 per month so by Oct 2016 (end of mortgage fixed term) we can cash this and all the savings/ ISAs in and hopefully pay off a big chunk of the mortgage. That's the plan!

Oh and so enjoy having a nice car now! Although it wasn't a very money saving move it's so nice to have what seems like a luxury car compared to our old banger! Still very important to us to keep a happy life/savings balance and not to get too obsessed with saving!

msmoneypennyplease · 4 August 2014 at 9:24PM

Mortgage 1:£110000
Mortgage 2: £0
Savings: £28000
Debt: £0 (Not including student loans of around £20000-eeek)

Therefore total remaining to pay is £82000. I just looked on this diary and this time last year we had £133600 still to pay-can not believe what we've achieved in a year. The hard work has paid off. We've done so much including both of us having second jobs, mystery shopping, renting out our spare room and being VERY careful with money. It just shows what can be achieved in a year when really focused! I'll be interested to see where we are this time next year. Probably nowhere near the same progress as we now have the baby so the inclination to do second jobs and take lodgers has gone! In fact I now would love to be a stay at home mum if I'm honest so let's see where we are this time next year! Aim is to at least still overpay mortgage by £500 a month which would mean we knock off another £18000 but I hope we manage a bit more than that. ⭐️

jaylee3 · 4 August 2014 at 9:35PM

Wow, good luck with this. A mortgage that's over £130,000 paid for in 30 months?!

It's £4400 a month. Continually for 30 months. If you have this surplus income every month, and nothing whatsoever comes up that you need to pay for, then of course you can do it.

I don't think 99% of mortgage owners could think about doing this though. (Paying off a £132,000 mortgage in 30 months.) So I'm not sure what 'support' you'll get to be honest.

£133K until mortgage free!

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free