Getting rid of a London-sized Mortgage

2456730

Comments

  • Lrimas
    Lrimas Posts: 196 Forumite
    edited 14 September 2016 at 8:43AM
    If you feel like you should spend £100 on charity then you should. You are not in debt and if you can afford £700 on entertainment then you can more than afford £100 on charity :)

    Our mortgage is similar (down to just £300k from £320). We earn a fair bit more but we are also a bit older (I think we were on roughly the same salary at your age, and I now wish that I'd bought a house then instead of wasting all my money on "things") - in a few years time your mortgage payment might be almost a non issue.

    Good luck with your journey! I look forward to see how you get on.
  • Hi,

    Welcome. I shall follow with interest - my mortgage started at £243,750 last year.....and I'm in the North of England.

    Good luck! I just wish my Council Tax was as low as yours - mine is over double that.

    MM
    x
    O'Payments:2016 - £3641.262017 - £7779.282018 - £11,515.16MFiT-T4 # 59 - reduce mtg to £195,000; MFit-T5 - reduce mtg to £140,000Mortgage:01/2/2015 - £243,75031/12/15 - £235,906.7131/12/16 - £224,120.9831/12/17 - £210,224.0631/12/18 - £190,821.21Mortgage today £140,788
  • Welcome, another one with a London mortgage here.
    £310K in Nov 2012 down to £261K this month.

    The little things do make a difference. I take my breakfast and lunch to work most days and make my own tea and coffee. It is a fairly straightforward thing to do but it adds up over time.


    A big mortgage can feel like a long haul to pay off so I would suggest setting interim goals. I usually focus on 1% (£3,100) hence my OP target for the year. I have also set a few bigger goals like below £260K by Nov so I have paid off the first £50K. The other thing I do is not focus all my finances on the mortgage. I put money away for holidays, days out and for my children because I can't impose frugality for the next decade.


    Best of luck.
    MortgageStart Nov 2012 £310,000
    Oct 2022 £143,277.74
    Reduction £166,722.26
    OriginalEnd Sept 2034 / Current official end Apr 2032 (but I have a cunning plan...)
    2022 MFW #78 £10200/£12000
    MFiT-6 #28 £21,772 /£75000
  • MallyGirl
    MallyGirl Posts: 6,565
    Photogenic First Anniversary Name Dropper First Post
    Senior Ambassador
    The little things do all add up.
    I have an offset mortgage - basically our mortgage is a massive overdraft - so play the game to maximise daily interest calculations by putting everything on cards and only paying when I have to. I have managed to stooze a fair bit onto 0% cards but the standard interest rate one gets paid in full each month (my current 0% on purchases is Amex and not everyone accepts that so I also have a points earning mastercard).
    We are old enough that we have had 2 endowments mature this year with the final 1 in Jan 2017 and that has really eaten into the remaining balance. Add in a redundancy, where we went very frugal till OH got another job, and we have managed to get the mortgage balance down from £225k in Feb '14 to £42k (plus £36k on 0% cards) today.
    I find it motivating to record it all in a spreadsheet with a pretty graph pointing downwards (mostly, although we have built an orangery and replaced both cars in the last 3 years).
    Good luck
    I’m a Senior Forum Ambassador and I support the Forum Team on the Pensions, Annuities & Retirement Planning, Loans
    & Credit Cards boards. If you need any help on these boards, do let me know. Please note that Ambassadors are not moderators. Any posts you spot in breach of the Forum Rules should be reported via the report button, or by emailing forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com.
    All views are my own and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.
  • What is the £700 a month for entertainment used on? Also your council tax looks very low.


    I have a South East mortgage too, £228,000
  • katep23
    katep23 Posts: 1,406
    First Post First Anniversary Combo Breaker
    Forumite
    Another one here with a London-sized mortgage (£330K) although I am in the southwest.

    MallyGirl, that's really inspiring. I have an offset and stooze (using money transfers rather than every day spending) so it's amazing to see how it adds up!
  • Welcome and many congratulations on getting your new home. You sound very savvy already which will make this interesting. I go along with those who say getting smaller targets works. When my mortgage was your size I aimed to pay off £500 per month plus the interest which gave me a monthly goal. I like the idea of targeting 1% at a time - £3100 seems eminently doable. Also the first year in a new place is expensive getting anything paid off in yr 1 is a real achievement, it does get easier once the mind set is there. It's a marathon so I would keep the entertainment budget it is important to enjoy life along the way.
  • What is the £700 a month for entertainment used on? Also your council tax looks very low.

    I did have another look at the council tax, and I did make a mistake, the council tax should be £1,050. The bill that I paid was until April, not a full year.

    The entertainment bill covers: all cash that is taken out, beer, wine, going out, going to restaurants, nights out, theatre tickets, weekend breaks and small holidays to other UK cities, train tickets to visit the boyfriend's family, event tickets etc. It also includes kindle books and some games, although those are rare.

    We cut back on entertainment a lot in the last 6 months to year before we bought the house and it has affected our relationship substantially. The data uses entertainment before Jan 2016. We will start to reduce it. This week:

    I asked for a payout on my market research panel that I did - £135 in John Lewis vouchers. When I spend them I will transfer that amount in cash to my overpayment account.

    I got a refund on some of my train journeys where I was delayed for over 30 minutes, around £10.

    I have discussed having a 'no spend October' from my next paycheque at the end of September. I got my boyfriend to agree but he has a hard time resisting spending - we will see how it goes.

    I made a complaint with my bank because when I got the mortgage, I specifically asked if I could make overpayments. Apparently, we can't make regular overpayments to reduce the term. They said that they would write me a letter outlining this, so I hope I will be able to understand.
    Mortgage started at £318,000 in June 2016. Original MF - 2041 :eek:
    2nd Property Mortgage at £275,000. Mortgage free: 2049 :eek:
    Total OPs: £29529
  • I have been trying to convince my partner of the value of paying off our mortgage early and being a bit more frugal. He has a complicated relationship with money. He feels very emotional about it sometimes. He feels guilty when he buys things and feels guilty when he doesn't have any. He was quite poor growing up and so it is way more complicated for him than it is for me. He has been feeling really down and upset about not having much money following buying our house. Aside from the house, furnishing it, painting it, and fixing the critical things raised in our HomeBuyers Report has really drained our resources. He feels bad about it - but still manages to spend so much.

    August was our first proper month of expenses in the new house because we were away in July. This was 'Before Mortgage Free Wannabe', so this was old budget and this is what we are going to cut back on.

    House - £1800 into our joint savings accounts where the bills come from. All our bills are very efficient and this is designed to allow a surplus to build up for house emergencies.
    Charity - £42.50
    Food - £233
    Naughty Food - £127.92, this should be 0 and covers lunch out and takeaway
    Phone - £57
    Shopping - £400, we had to buy a lot of house stuff
    Transport - £295
    Zipcar - £262, unusual cost to cover all the ikea trips that we had to do to furnish the house
    Netflix - £7.49
    Long-term savings - £300
    Entertainment - £783.12

    How could we spend EIGHT HUNDRED POUNDS on entertainment? That is more than half our mortgage. How could we spend so much - let's look.

    Boyfriend took out cash - £40
    Boyfriend took out cash - £50
    Dinner out - £35.2
    A craft night for me - £10
    A drink out before dinner - £10.13
    I took out cash - £20
    Dinner - £12
    Boyfriend took out cash - £30
    Pint - £5.35
    Boyfriend took out cash - £40
    Pint - £4.15
    Tickets to a show - £23
    Boyfriend Cash - £30
    Dinner with friends - £56
    Dinner with friends - £40
    Dinner - £31.98
    Pub lunch - £14.65
    My cash - £20
    Mini weekend break - £76
    Boyfriend's cash - £30
    Pub - £35.15
    Dinner - £7.9
    Boyfriend's cash - £30
    Dinner - £15
    Pub - £15.60
    Drinks - £13.10
    Cinema - £11.89

    We clearly have a cash problem. Cash is easy to spend and I can't track where all his cash is going - £250 per month of money which has evaporated. He can't really remember where it went and said that much of it probably went on lunch. I asked him to please put things on card because it allows us to identify where we can cut back. For example, if it is work lunches then we can make more work lunches or spend more time making them more delicious.

    I think he is on board for the No Spend October I want to do. I am planning to budget maybe £100 for entertainment for the month and only pay for transport and food.

    Overall I feel hopeful, we clearly can make a lot of gains.
    Mortgage started at £318,000 in June 2016. Original MF - 2041 :eek:
    2nd Property Mortgage at £275,000. Mortgage free: 2049 :eek:
    Total OPs: £29529
  • Sounds like you are on the right track to reduce your outgoings by identifying where it is all disappearing :)
Meet your Ambassadors

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 342.5K Banking & Borrowing
  • 249.9K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 449.4K Spending & Discounts
  • 234.6K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 607.1K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 172.8K Life & Family
  • 247.4K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 15.8K Discuss & Feedback
  • 15.1K Coronavirus Support Boards