-
The Mortgage Free Roll Of Honour
Welcome to the Mortgage-Free Roll of Honour. This is for Mortgage-Free Wannabees who are no longer Wannabees. Please report a. The date you decided to become a MFW b. Mortgage Debt at its highest c. Mortgage-Free Date d. Your one perl of wisdom. e. The MSE Mortgage guides and others that helped you f. And if you had a…
-
Mortgage-Free Wannabe sticky
🏢 🏡 Here are some Forum threads you might find useful: * Mortgage-Free Wannabe Welcome and Explanation * The Mortgage Free Roll of Honour * 2023 Mortgage-Free Wannabes 🏢 🏡 And here's some relevant content from MoneySavingExpert.com: * Overpayment calculator * Should I overpay my mortgage? * Should you remortgage? * I'm a…
-
Simple living in the country - back to basics
Hi all, I'm Cheery, been round here a long time now, and feeling in need of a new space to spread out for the new year :smile: We are two, Mr Cheery and I, and at the start of 2018 we moved from a terraced house in a city to a detached house with 11 acres of very soggy fields in the middle of nowhere. It's been a steep,…
-
Prosperous soul, mortgage neutrality & creativity Year 2
A year ago I'd just got divorced and was about to take on my biggest mortgage ever at £202K over 22 years. I was terrified I wouldn't make it. I'd had a long history of repeated debt cycles the worst peaking at £70K at the end of 2016 which I'd got down to £1,479 in November 2021 but feared I'd never be free. Thanks to…
-
And now we go again...
...new diary title taken from the line I had already added in to my signature! Regulars will already recognise me - I've been here a while, although aside from one fairly short stint always on the DFW boards. A quick summary of our MSE history for those who have not stumbled across me before though - started out with a…
-
Greying's Gaining Ground - with Gratitude & Grace
Good Evening MFW'ers! I've been around MSE for quite a few years now - both as a lurker on MFW, and a diary-keeper on DFW. Some of you may 'know' me by my username (Waves). I've had a hiatus from diary keeping for just over a year. Life got in the way a little and then..... well, this year 'happened', didn't it? So, why…
-
Getting FIREd up 😀
After two years keeping calm and carrying on, now feels like the right time to move on and start getting FIREd up instead 😀 Summary of the last two years: Was working for a plc, decent money but putting in a lot of hours, very little support from the business and pretty fed up with always being sent out to do battle for…
-
Steadily climbing the mountain, enjoying the view along the way
I have been pondering for a while stating a new thread, as at 700+ pages my old one is getting very long and doesn’t feel so aligned with where I am now. 2026 is going to be about getting myself to as healthy and happy a place as I can. Life is short and my inherent perfectionism means that I tend to want to achieve,…
-
🌞 Happy Days in our Golden Years 🌞
Just over a year has passed since the final entry of my last
diary. A whole year of no debts and no
mortgage 😁 We
are semi-retired, using our private pensions to cover the cost of bread and
butter and running our own business part-time to put jam on it. You’d think I could do without a money saving
diary in those…
-
Aiming to be mortgage free before I am 62!
It feels very bizarre to be starting a mortgage free wannabe diary! I (and we when I was part of a we!) have always been a bit of a on off rollercoaster between paying off debt and creating more debt! I can’t really put much of a potted history of my finances together as I don’t really know how things built so much or how…
-
Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻
Hi all 😊 I'm Cheery 😊 By name and (usually 🙄) by nature. I've been around here for many years, taking in all the excellent wisdom and trying to use as much of it as possible 😊 We are two, Mr Cheery and I. We have been together for over 18 years 😮 We moved to the countryside six years ago, gained a large mortgage, and a…
-
Prosperous & Creative Soul & MFW Year 3
Two years ago I finalised my divorce and completed on my biggest ever mortgage - £202K and switched from interest only between 2 of us to repayment on my own. I took the term for as long as I could - so 22 years - which means I would be 73.5 by the time I was actually free. I've used my post from 2 years ago as a prompt…
-
FIREside Chats
We all know MFW is great, a friendly meeting place for folk who are all very different but a little bit similar, in that they're trying to provide stability for them and theirs by achieving something that is pretty hard work <3 I'm not sure if it's the demographics of the board, but I've noticed a lot more posts in the…
-
+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++
My third diary. <<<out of cheese error>> documented our debt free journey and then paying off the mortgage +++ Whoops! Here comes the cheese! +++ focussed on early retirement plans, and then my first year as a widow. This time I will be focussing on a positive new start in my brave new world. Final stages of renovating a…
-
Watty's Awakening
Time for a new diary I think. It is 2024, my last diary began over 10 years ago and so much has changed. My introduction in case we have not “met” My first diary told the story of, what I thought was a long and
happy relationship, paying off a mortgage aiming to get my financial freedom
from the world of work by paying off…
-
From Frugal Foundations to Fortified Family Future
Good evening MFW'rs I hope there is a little space in diary land for me (Greying Pilgrim) to take up residency and chart our journey to mortgage freedom - albeit we're doing it a little back to front. The short story is, that we did own a home - Greying Towers - but 4 years ago we moved into rental accommodation with the…
-
Rolling Down the Green Hill Towards REtirement 😊🌄💚💜
Happy New Year!!! As our MFW journey finished back in July 2015(wow!) on our family home and Apr 202 on our BTL (because we sold it! :D ) I thought it was time for a new diary (seeing as some others are doing it, I thought I'd also jump on the bandwagon 😉 🚙) and the new year seems a good time to start. Back when I started…
-
Pay off mortgage and start having even more fun 😁
Finally after twelve years of part one of this diary it’s time for part two 😆 Heres part one, slightly lengthy now to say the least! https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2408201/pay-off-mortgage-and-start-having-fun/p1 So condensing 12 years into a few sentences…. I joined the mfw board in April 2010, with a…
-
Steadying the ship - a perilous voyage across the financial middle
It's a funny thing taking a break from incessant forum posting. There you are, quite happily chuntering away with updates every day, when you decide to have a rest. One month becomes two and you discover that you can't really be bothered starting up again. A two-month break probably seems like nothing to many of you, but I…
-
It always seems impossible until it’s done…
I started this journey 14 years ago with some £65k worth of debt and £118k left on the mortgage. Whilst the original aim was to clear the mortgage by the end of 2023 in line with retirement plans, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Buuuuut if I look at what we’ve achieved, we have come so far! We cleared every single…
-
10 years to clear £334K - our FIRE journey
We bought our house late 2014 and have been (very) gradually doing it up. So far we have replaced the roof, oil tank and boiler and completely refurbished the study, living room and one bedroom. We have three bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and utility still to go. We recently re-mortgaged and have released some equity to do…
-
Prosperous soul embraces creativity & mortgage neutrality
Today I completed on my biggest ever mortgage - £202K and switched from interest only between 2 of us to repayment on my own. I took the term for as long as I could - so 22 years - which means I would be 73.5 by the time I was actually free. There has to be a better way! Financial info: * Currently have c£1479 left to…
