Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow
hiddenshadow Posts: 2,525 Forumite
edited 31 December 2017 at 10:16AM in Mortgage-free wannabe
DH and I bought our house Christmas 2013 and have been overpaying automatically ever since. Original mortgage of £197,100, have managed to knock out £30k since then. We're both well-employed (computer programmers), no kids, though we do have a pair of dogs and a pair of cats.

Our mortgage fix is up in December, so we've refinanced for 5 years and managed to shave almost 2% off the interest as well. :) By agreeing to up our agreed payment to the amount we've been overpaying so far (£1,350 rather than £778) we'll reduce our remaining term from 23 years to 11.75. :j

I was playing around with the budget this week, as we ought to be able to live off one salary and save the rest. With that number (£2,750) as a monthly payment, we should be able to pay off the loan in 6 years. :D Would be really nice to get that down to 5 so that we don't have to refinance again, but paying off almost 200k in 8 years is still pretty exciting.

Current Goal - June 2018 - Balance below £100,000

Past Goals
* December 2017 - Balance below £105,000 (£104,645.69 December 2017)
* November 2017 - Daily interest below £7 (£6.98 November 2017)
* April 2017 - Balance below £110,000 (£108,597.74 April 2017)
* March 2017 - Daily interest below £8 (£7.86 March 2017)
* February 2017 - Balance below £115,000 (£113,932.35 February 2017)
* February 2017 - Monthly interest below £250 (£248.27 February 2017)
* December 2016 - Balance below £120,000 (£119,900 December 2016)
* November 2016 - Daily interest below £9 (£8.52 November 2016)
* October 2016 - Balance below £125,000 (£124,999.99 October 2016)
* September 2016 - Balance below £135,000 (£132,991.85 September 2016)
* August 2016 - Balance below £140,000 (£139,700.00 July 2016)
* June 2016 - Balance below £145,000 (£142,927.47 June 2016)
* April 2016 - Monthly interest below £300 (£293.59 April 2016)
* April 2016 - Balance below £150,000 (£149,847.03 March 2016)
* April 2016 - Daily interest below £10 (£9.99 March 2016)
* March 2016 - Balance below £155,000 (£152,953.85 February 2016)
* January 2016 - Balance below £159,500 (£158,711.69 January 2016)
* December 2015 - Balance below £161,800 (£161,771.90 December 2015)
* December 2015 - Balance at/below £164,280 (£162,636.18 November 2015)
* December 2015 - Balance below £165,000 (£164,907.08 November 2015)
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Comments

  • Got £9.33 cashback from regular expenses (pet food, mostly) so that's gone to the mortgage. :)

    Also found a spreadsheet to calculate interest on the forums. Originally we were paying £22.63 :shocked:, currently down to £19.61. Right now it's going down 8-9p per month, but once we get our new payments/interest rate in January we'll be at £10.79!! Looks like we'll also drop about 16p per month, so won't be too long before we're into single-digits (as far as pounds, anyway). Can't wait!

    I'm tempted to bump our OP up by £50 by reducing my monthly allowance (DH and I both get £150/mo). I'm trying not to as online calculators show it will only shave 1 month off the mortgage term, and I struggle to "make" myself spend money as it is. (Lots of things I'd like, but pulling the trigger and committing the money is another matter! Much easier when I have my guilt-free spending pot.)
  • Posting a slightly simplified version of our YNAB budget. We've stuck with this budget for 2 years and it seems to offer the right sort of balance for us.

    Income (using salary sacrifice to stay in base rate tax band)
    • Me - £2,600 (will go up in 2016, currently overpaying tax to HMRC)
    • DH - £2,400
    • Pension (me) - £2,187.50 (includes company contribution)
    • Pension (DH) - £950
    Total: £5,000 (+£3,137.50 to pensions)

    Expenses
    • Mortgage - £1342.45 (with new fix in Jan 2016)
    • Council Tax - £116
    • House/Life/Pet Insurance - £193.23
    • Internet/TV/Phone - £54.12 (contract until Aug 2016)
    • Elec/Gas/Water - £71 (once MSE switch completes)
    • Charity - £32.67 (may change amounts/recipients in 2016)
    • Food - £285 (incl weekly veg box, also a bit high due to dietary restrictions)
    • Household/pets - £150
    • Transport - £400 (mine only, DH has season loan from work so gets taken out of his paycheck prior to the £2,400 above)
    • Allowances - £300 (£150 each)
    • Eating out/misc entertainment - £95
    • Amazon Prime - £7

    Total Expenses: £3,046.47

    Savings (small amounts here as we have savings pots built-up and can take from the mortgage overpayment in a given month if need be)
    • Vet/misc house - £285.98
    • Car - £100 (DH is currently learning to drive)
    • Vacation/gifts/etc - £160
    • Mortgage overpayment - £1407.55

    
Total - £1,953.53 (~40% savings rate)
  • Found another £107.81 from our subscription amount which has more than enough in it (can probably steal more later but want to wait for the annual payment to go out in November).

    Mortgage balance now £166,999.99 :j
  • Looks like you have pretty much a great grasp on things and 2021 is a great achievable target for you
    Are you in your forever home currently ? or do you plan to move one day ?

    also how old are you guys :]
    Mortgage--- [STRIKE]£67700 March 15[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]£65221 April 15[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]£64983 July 15[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]£64780 sept 15[/STRIKE] Remortgage [STRIKE]£67295 oct 15[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]£66599 Nov 15[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]£65878.73 Dec 15[/STRIKE][STRIKE] £64834 1st Jan 16[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]Feb 16 £64,511.89[/STRIKE][STRIKE] March 16 £64,056.40[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]April 16 £62550[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]May 16 £62,396.20[/STRIKE] Feb 17 £60.800
    Emergency fund 23k
  • Looks like you have pretty much a great grasp on things and 2021 is a great achievable target for you

    Thanks! It's taken us a while - a few years back I bought a horse with my home equity line of credit. :( And DH had about £7k of credit card when we joined finances that he'd just been letting sit (and paying who knows how much interest on in the meantime!)
    Are you in your forever home currently ? or do you plan to move one day ?

    This could be our forever home, as we don't anticipate outgrowing it (we and the pets fit pretty well, no plans to add to the family). Our long-term plan is to sell at some point (probably once it's all paid off, but maybe before if we get antsy) and buy a house somewhere cheaper (Wales? South west?) with cash, so that we don't have to earn as much and can work for ourselves.
    also how old are you guys :]

    I'll be 34 in a couple of months, DH is 36.
  • Grr. :mad:

    When DH and I met he'd lived in a tiny studio flat for 10 years and it was packed full of books and DVDs (probably only 10ftx25ft but had 20ft ceilings and the collection was almost that high!). We moved in together and he moved 95% of it into storage. When we bought our house 3 years later, I hoped that some of the stuff he'd managed to live just fine without might not move with us...no such luck.

    We've since installed built-in bookcases along one wall in our lounge, plus we have another tall bookcase - all full of his books and DVDs (and there's plenty more in the garage!). We've also had a big box of DVDs sitting in the hall for months - I finally got tired of tripping over it today and decided to see what it might be worth.

    I got through about 30 DVDs (guessing there's about 200 in the box) and the total was over £50 - nothing close to what was paid, I'm sure, but that's sunk cost now. Asked DH what his plans were for the box...move all the actual DVDs to separate storage (where??) and then throw away the cases.

    I don't really mind about the money (though it'd be nice to have if the DVDs won't be used). I suppose I feel put-out because I gave up a lot of stuff to move to the UK (donated several hundred books to my local library, sold my horse, gave away/sold almost all my belongings - moved here with 3 suitcases!). So I've left that collector's mentality behind. DH clearly hasn't - which is fine, except when his collections are taking up so much space. He doesn't even watch his movies that often, but what he will do (that drives me bonkers) is put a disc in, play one or two scenes, and then stop watching. :huh:

    We have talked about getting a large hard drive so that he can back up the DVD/Blu-rays onto that and then he won't need the physical disks. Of course, he's paranoid about failure so we'd need a raid, and the last time he looked at that it was going to be something like £600. :eek:

    Sigh. I inflicted furry kids on him (given the choice, I don't think he'd have any pets, though he does enjoy the ones we have), so I suppose it's only fair that he inflict needless-to-me collecting of things. At least my present a few years ago of a Kindle has curbed the (physical) book collecting a bit!
  • DH spent part of the weekend organising the box of DVDs, so at least now we're just left with the empty cases to trash/recycle.

    He also wanted a software bundle that was being sold in USD, so put that on my US account (which has ~$1k in it) and paid the equivalent money (£9.66) on the mortgage. 0.1% further along with my 2015 goal!

    Also figured out that FD can send texts about the mortgage, so signed up for those. Looks like it takes a day for payment texts to process, but at least it saves having to call up and confirm the balance every time. Got our weekly summary this morning and we paid £610.15 interest for August. September should be on track to pay £590 (possibly a bit more as that assumes all OPs were done on the 1st, I think), so at least that's a nice drop! Can't wait until January when we'll be in the £300s for monthly interest with the new rate.
  • Went through our insurance policies to see if we can save anything.

    Pet insurance - no, thanks to our oldest dog who's 12 and is showing signs of age. :( He's doing well, but needs £93 worth of meds each month ("old dog breathing"), and may need osteopathy for arthritis/joint issues. Will re-investigate once we've got 3 young-ish pets (next oldest pet is the 9yo cat)

    Life insurance - could save £2/year, so probably not worth switching. Not sure if cashback can be awarded for switching companies, though (got cashback on this policy originally).

    Home/contents insurance - could save £100ish per year, so definitely need to get quotes once we have our renewal price closer to December.
  • Beckyy
    Beckyy Posts: 2,830
    Name Dropper First Anniversary First Post Combo Breaker
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    I think your budget looks really frugal for the 2 of you, wish some of our numbers were similar! Wishing you lots of luck in reaching your target :)
  • Beckyy wrote: »
    I think your budget looks really frugal for the 2 of you, wish some of our numbers were similar! Wishing you lots of luck in reaching your target :)

    Thanks! We joke that we live like old people - every evening at home in front of the tv, in bed by 10pm. It works for us, and happens to be pretty frugal as well. Neither of us drink alcohol, and thanks to my dietary restrictions we don't go out to eat much, so that all adds up. Neither of us have expensive hobbies (though I'm dreaming of getting back into horses once we're MF, so that'll be pricey).

    Only downside is that it's a struggle to figure out where we can cut back further to make more OPs against the mortgage.
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