Pay Off Your Mortgage In Two Years Blog Discussion

Daniel_B

Personally, I think 'Paying off your mortgage in under 10 years' would be a better, and more achievable target for most people.

I'm a little dissapointed with the programmes so far, however the re-visit next year will be interesting.

Dan

cuffie

I preferred the first programme in this series so far....did anyone see the 2nd one on Thursday?? Can't believe THE most obvious thing....the lady was a TEACHER!! What about HOME TUTORING??? My dad was a school teacher and he used to put in loads of extra hours helping out students with their O'levels and A'levels.

And the idea of the keepsake box for the children is good, but who is going to pay nearly £100 for a box that you can set up yourself for your own children? My husband and I started these boxes when our children were born so don't have to "backtrack" to get things like newspapers, CDs, coin sets or stamps that were out at the time so I do think its a good idea, but people can do that themselves! She even said she would only be making £3 a box, so what is the point in that?? And the presenter was raving about the idea!!

I agreed about the property idea (doing the buy-let one ourselves), but that is hard work and I felt sorry for the fella finding somewhere so far away to be able to make a profit on doing up a house to sell on, esp as he still has to continue with his decorating business nearer to home.

It would be interesting to see how far that one goes. At the end of year 1 they aren't any better off!

Whilst I am going on....why choose a couple who have paid off over 3/4 of their mortgage? I'm sure the BBC had loads of applicants for this programme...I wonder what their selection process was.

OK...nuff said! Still enjoying watching the programme (I know it might not seem so!), but any tips got from these types of money saving programmes is good. xx

cuffie

caseya wrote:

I must admit we are very fortunate to have Anne-Marie's parents living very close by and they have been wonderful.
Obviously the BBC filmed hundreds of hours of film just to get a one hour programme, so what you see isn't always a true reflection.
We spend an enormous amount of time with the children.
We realise now that the only way we are going to do this is by A-M keeping her full time job at the bank ( which she has never given up ) and her being my rock as I set up my NLP and Hypnotherapy business and go into the corporate market to stop their employees from smoking, helping with stress in the workplace and continuing my comedy hypnotist shows. I will also be doing some more " Think yourself Slim " seminars and training people in stage hypnosis and PMA techniques.

It has been great reading all your comments both positive and negative and we are taking a lot of these on board, actioning them and really hoping in the coming year to achieve our goal of being mortgage free.
What it didn't actually say in the programme was that the main aim was to pay it off so Anne-Marie could finally give up her job to spend more time with the children. She was a little upset that this wasn't mentioned and they seemed to emphasise that we were just doing this so we could start a new life in America which is not true.

Cheers
Sean Casey-Poole

Its great to read this from you. Thanks.....

Can I just ask....do YOU think you will do it??

You've done so well, and I can appreciate that the BBC select the tiniest bits of information. The thing that strikes me about the presenter is that he doesn't seem much of a driving force. I thought he'd be stricter and that doesnt come across at all (not so much in your programme, but the 2nd couple I feel needed it and he was just sitting back nodding his head!).

Seeing Anne-Marie's slimming club idea was great. Made me wish I had taken the chance of taking over my local Rosemary Conley franchise a few years ago - I lost a lot of weight, and its the one subject I know inside out too.

Best of luck anyway. We thought you did fab, and really got into it.

We will look forward to tuning in next year to find out how you've got on (and maybe little updates on here??... )

All the best. xx

rach2805_2

I paid off my mortgage (£60000 + interest) in 5 years and did not need a second job, just saving wisely and paying off large lump sums just before the yearly interest recalculation.

caseys

I will give you little updates on here, but obviously due to the nature of the programme can't give too much away.
We have had a great deal of support on here and really appreciate it.
I hope we continue to give a decent account of ourselves.
With regards to the presenter he was a late starter on the programme and I would rather not comment on him as we wait and see what develops.
Thank You again
Sean Casey-Poole

alanobrien

Daniel_B wrote:

Personally, I think 'Paying off your mortgage in under 10 years' would be a better, and more achievable target for most people.

I'm a little dissapointed with the programmes so far, however the re-visit next year will be interesting.

Dan

Absolutely agree. The reality of paying bills and bringing up kids on an average salary with a high mortgage makes the 2 yr time frame laughable.

Its a good title for a TV show but that's about all

caseya

angela110660 wrote:

It was great to see that you had read this thread and answered my (and other people's) question about your child care arrangements when you took on all these new tasks to raise money. Did you pay the £14K off the mortgage as you got it in your hands or in one lump?
About the programme generally, I realise that there is so much never broadcast (we were on Real Rooms a few years ago), and I wish you both all the best for the future. I have to say that A-M's slimmiing success was remarkable and wondered if the club she works for is only local to you or nationwide? Is it similar to the Slimming World, Weight Watchers, Lighter Life clubs that I know of? Also if you are ever in Hampshire.. maybe you could run one of your day seminars? Very interesting and the people who took part were very enthusiastic. Well done to you both.

Hi Angela

Thanks for your comments. It was actually Weight-care who are a Midlands based club.

caseya

caseys wrote:

I will give you little updates on here, but obviously due to the nature of the programme can't give too much away.
We have had a great deal of support on here and really appreciate it.
I hope we continue to give a decent account of ourselves.
With regards to the presenter he was a late starter on the programme and I would rather not comment on him as we wait and see what develops.
Thank You again
Sean Casey-Poole

I cannot of course speak for my husband, but thank god he has eventually got his own user name, instead of replying on behalf of me:)

I have thoroughly enjoyed all the comments on all the threads about this programme. One of the main reasons I did the programme was to help viewers think about their finances, and it certainly seems to have done that!

As for us, some people may think our relationship has crumbled, but in fact it has got stronger than ever, because we have a joint goal at the end of this for a better quality of life. Rather than bury (his) head in sand we now are open and honest about fiances, which is a great place to be.

No children were harmed or suffered hardship during the filming of this programme.

lipidicman

Some people need to get over the title of the show. It certainly is a little misleading. As others have been saying 'maybe under ten years' might have been better as some of the couples have clearly had their mortgages for some time (e.g the second couple had already paid off 3/4 of theirs, this seems to reflect the choice of different types of people at different life stages). So the other posters who have cleared theirs in under ten have done fantastic jobs. Also, others have criticised the show for being an 'instant makeover' which it clearly isn't. For the people involved this is a 'two-year experiment' which seems quite a commitment to me. For me and my girlfriend it has inspired us to think about running a business in our spare time to boost earnings and hopefully sharpen our skills.

Other criticisms have included that cutting back too sharply can be unsustainable and the second show illustrated this point nicely, eating porridge was never going to last.

Overall I think the show is good. It is different to what Martin does. I consider Martin's advice is good advice for everyone. The stuff on 'Two Years..' is for people who want to push themselves to free themselves and therefore I think it is valuable.

Tim_L

I'm going to go one step further here, and don my flame proof underwear and actually dare to venture a slight criticism at Martin's approach.

A lot of 'Moneysaving' is really quite marginal tinkering. Because a great many people's finances are pretty chaotic, this can certainly bear considerable fruits, at least initially, and because it's often a very intensive and active process it gives you a great impression that you are doing something positive. It's fun and compelling, and it will help with cashflow and debt reduction, but the fact remains that to make a major difference often much more radical steps are needed. You're not going to become much richer by switching to a better Regular Saver interest rate, but you might by changing career or starting a business.

This is where the mortgage show offers something a little different, because it is looking for income streams rather than saving from existing sources. Actually I think it goes a little too far in sensationalising the 'two year' aspect, which is really just a provocative tag to pull people in. In any case it's not all that difficult to find investments that can beat mortgage rates, so it's questionable how sensible it is to want to pay a mortgage off at all.

Probably the reality is that an approach somewhere between the two, i.e. sensible long term planning of goals and career moves with reasonably tight money management is the one that will bring the best benefits overall.