Pay Off £200k in 100 months!

SwitchyChick

Thanks gallygirl - I've noticed we've got a similar length of challenge, although yours is reducing I see! Hope mine starts to do the same soon...

SwitchyChick

Just logged on to the mortgage account to see what the offset details are for our first month:

Mortgage interest before offset: £627.50, after offsetting £564.12. Value of offset £63.38.

Have paid the extra £63.38 off the mortgage. I love seeing the amount reduce immediately!

Switchy

setmefree2

Well done:D

cazmanian_minx

Only just noticed this thread (I'm so behind with my reading!) - no, of course I don't mind you pinching my sig, I'm flattered! Good luck with your target!

Caz

Shazwellyn

Hi Everyone.
I was wondering whether it is possible to convert the life insurance component of a low cost endowment (unit trusts) to the main lump sum investment. Excuse the pun, but if your mortgage liability reduces surely the life insurance component becomes 'dead money' because the aim is to pay off the morgage should you die. If you don't die, then the money is lost! Although if I was to die before the end of term, the extra money would come in handy to my loved ones, taking charge of paying off my interest only mortgage by stashing what I can with lump sums would decrease the need for this component of my policy. What I would like to do, is make good use of my policy and put all the monthly policy money into the kitty, so that at the end of term, the lump sum would have snowballed to a greater amount, without paying any more than my monthly premium. I know that endowments are frowned upon presently, I have been duly compensated with any mis selling on this front which has gone directly into the repayment pot of my property, but I feel that if you have a long term investment, you have to go with the rough and the smooth of any economy, hope for the best and plan for the worst. The stock market is not performing well presently, but has in the past and will get better in the future, so taking the average - the rough and the smooth - I don't regret taking these policies out because the end of the term hasn't happened yet for me! Although any investment can be thought of as a lottery, particularly if you are attempting to draw down a pension or endowment policy presently when stocks are performing so poorly, at this time, has just been unlucky for those people. My endowments will mature in 10 and 15 years. I want to use these policies as lump sum payouts as I am on track to pay off my main mortgage within the next 10 months! I want to maximise these payouts and boost them when I can to help with the snowball affect later. Does this make sense? This investment is supposed to really accummulate in the later stages, so I want to action them now to gain a greater reward later. Using the life insurance component and stashing more money into the endowment, particularly when the stock market is down (as it can only recover in time) makes sense to me when I am so near to reaching my mortgage free goal. But is it possible?
Has anyone done it or knows of how this can be done?
Happy New Year Everyone!
Shaz

Shazwellyn

Nowadays, I think in terms of every £1 in the mortgage pot = £3 over the long term! So, when I see a saving on an item purchase, I can see that that saving is worth 3 x to my mortgage!

Shazwellyn

SwitchyChick wrote: »

Every time I try to post in 'Advanced' mode the site keeps redirecting me to the login page & I lose everything I've typed. How annoying!

Yes, it is.:eek: .. same happened to me! :mad: I now note book my responses and then copy and paste!

SwitchyChick

Happy New Year all!

Yes, it’s been a long time since my last post so this may be a long one…

My main goals this year are to keep paying chunks off the mortgage, to keep offsetting all savings/stoozings against the mortgage & to try to save as much as possible!

Since the offset mortgage was set up in November last year I have paid off an additional £300 per month plus any reduction as a result of offsetting. Having spent some time tinkering with ‘Microsoft Money’ it would appear that I can afford to increase this amount to £500 per month for the remainder of the year, cross fingers.

I had hoped that we would be able to pay off a sizeable chunk but this is dependent on DH’s company’s fortunes (or lack of them!) Given the state of the economy I’m not holding out much hope so I may have to revise my goal to pay off £24k this year!!

We paid back our MBNA stoozepot in December so that I could apply for the Virgin MBNA card in DH’S name. It has a £10k limit so we have BT’d £9k to the bank account which we will stooze for 16mths.

I’m also slow-stoozing on a Sainsbury’s Mastercard: 3 months for all purchases, 12 months for Sainsburys purchases. Slow stoozing is an unfamiliar concept which is taking some getting used to but I have calculated roughly how much we will spend & plotted that into ‘Money’ which really helps me see how things are going.

What else? Oh yes, the price of heating oil has reduced considerably (virtually halved) which has made a big difference. We order at least 1000 litres a time & it’s so much easier on the purse strings when its 35p per litre rather than 64p!

Quidco cashback this month was £111.04 which has gone straight into savings.

January has seen the savings diminish somewhat with the taxman getting a chunk & school fees to pay, but it’s all budgeted for so I can’t complain really!


Switchy

dimbo61

Hi SC
Happy new year ! Bit late I know
I see you use quidco We are working hard to pay for everything via Quidco.
Just booked a holiday in OZ via quidco and opodo ( got 1.7% on flights)
But that was cancelled out by 1.9% booking fee for using my new American Express cashback card ( paying 5% for 3 months !!! )
Still wanted to pay on CC card in case airline goes bump ( you never know )
Car and home insurance pay best cash back via quidco so keep up the good work.
PS got £34 from quidco for taking out cashback card from american express !

setmefree2

well done on your progress so far