MCG's Mortgage Free Mission

I've spent a fortune in the past couple of days sorting out the garden! It's looking a lot better though, so will be worth it in the end. I've dug out some seeds as well and planted up a few veggies in the garden - corguettes, tomatoes, peas and salad. Hopefully they'll actually grow this year and not get drowned!

The 50% ltv realisation is spurring us on at the moment. I plugged some figures into a price comparison site and the current interest rates if we can meet that ltv are amazingly good compared to our 3.98%, so it's really worth trying to reach that in time for remortgage. If we paid the minimum we do now on a new lower rate mortgage then, we'd only need a 15 year mortgage, rather than 25.

I've currently got £10,000 saved up for emergencies and a new car. I'm toying with putting some of it towards the mortgage now, as the sooner the better it's paid and making up the rest again in savings. It'd help us reach our target sooner, but I don't like not having a contingency.

I've been thinking about my car. It's 12 years old and I've had it for 8 years. It's worth nothing now and I'm paranoid it's going to conk out soon. However, if I can stretch it out for a couple more years, I hopefully will have a newish car that I can use at least until I'm mf. At the same time, I'd like something a bit newer and less dodgy now. I need to think a bit harder about what I do with it!

Anyway, enough of my ramblings for today

Hmm, it's been a few weeks since I posted. All my money for the month went down the plug hole at the end of May with visits etc to the family member who was ill, and who then unfortunately passed away. Times like this are rare, fortunately, and financially, we'll be back on track soon. During difficult emotional times its handy to have the financial resource to cope, I suppose.

Anyway, not much has gone off the mortgage this month, but even the little we've paid off helps. However we're now wondering if we should move after all. Our house is nice, but smallish and in an OK area, but not exactly where we would like to like. We could afford to increase our mortgage by approx £50k and get somewhere bigger that needs work, but in a better area. As there would be a small inheritance coming from the family member, this would help with paying for works to any new house. We've not gone beyond thinking about it now, but it makes sense to some degree.

Right, so I've been reading Mr Money Mustache - very interesting food for thought and he has inspired me to crack on with getting the mortgage down and strive for FI, especially as work is pretty hellish at the moment.

I had a pretty decent amount saved for a new car, but I think now I'll hang onto the old one for as long as possible. So I've taken £2k out of my car savings and whacked it off the mortgage - I can save it again when or if I need it and it's better off saving me interest rather than earning me pretty much nothing in my ISA. I've still got plenty in savings if the car conks out tomorrow so I don't think I need to worry about it too much. I've also found £200 spare thought coming through my accounts, so that's gone off the mortgage as well.

Reading through MMM has made me realise that I've got really complacent about saving and there's loads more I can do now to pay off the mortgage and strive for FI. I'm going to try to one thing a day to help get there. Today I've paid £2200 and also planted up a load of late/winter salads and turnips and filled up an indoor greenhouse we have with salad plants. So that's two things I suppose!

I've got a long list of things to do, so I'll have plenty of ways to save money!