uzubairu's Mortgage Free Journey

uzubairu

I couldn't understand why there has been a strong smell of petrol in the cabin of my car when I put the fans on, over the last week.
I was really concerned today as the smell was intense and nauseating.
I dropped into the nearest main dealer (15 minutes from my house), and after a thorough check, they discovered a fuel leak.

I asked them to fix it straight away, so that cost me £138 (the parts costs £46). :mad:
I could have probably had it done cheaper somewhere else, but at that moment in time, my concern over my safety smothered my MSE tendencies.
My Virtual Sealed Pot currently has £134, so that has been raided to cover the cost.

I received a cheque for £56 (dividends for some shares I hold), and I will be transferring that sum to VSP when it clears.

I checked Quidco and £30 has already been received from EDF (switching electricity). :T

uzubairu

First Direct re-mortgage has been approved.
We are just waiting on the valuation (which shouldn't be a problem).

Mortgage will increase due to the redemption charge and the removal of some of our emergency fund money (£3K) from the Overpayment Reserve, but I am hopeful that we can still end the year at £65,000. Fingers crossed.

We will be saving the overpayments elsewhere at present, mainly Regular Savings accounts.
When they mature, we will make overpayments to the mortgage.

Quidco payment of £31.82 will be hitting my account in the next few days.

uzubairu

July Update

Overpayment in blue, Interest in red and Balance in green.

Year starting balance = £81,723.61
Overpayment Reserve = £17,968.24

June Stats:-

Month / Payment / Overpay / Interest (per day) / Net reduction / Balance.
Jan / 937.16 / 1,000.00 / 326.49 (10.53) / 1,610.67 / 80,112.94
Feb / 937.16 / 990.00 / 289.55 (10.34) / 1,637.61 / 78,475.33
Mar / 937.16 / 1,000.00 / 313.92 (10.13) / 1,623.24 / 76,852.09
Apr / 937.16 / 1,000.00 / 296.51 (9.88) / 1,640.65 / 75,211.44
May / 996.41 / 740.00 / 302.46 (9.76) / 1,433.95 / 73,777.49
Jun / 996.41 / 700.00 / 286.15 (9.54) / 1,410.26 / 72,367.23
Ju1 / 996.41 / 950.00 / 289.55 (9.34) / 1,656.86 / 70,710.37


Year To Date Totals
Std Payment / Overpay / Interest / Net Reduction / OP Reserve / Balance
6,737.87 / 6,380.00 / 2,104.63 / 11,013.24 / 24,348.24 / 70,710.37

uzubairu

OH has been told that the department he works for is being sold to another company, probably at the start of September.

He will transfer to the new company under TUPE, but no-one knows the name of the company yet.
Naturally he has concerns but his pay and conditions remain the same apart from pension.
He is also looking into redundancy payments, but that hasn't been offered to anyone in his department.

The one thing he is grateful for is the reduction in mortgage over the last few years means that we could easily manage on a lower combined income or just on mine.
We are now more determined to get this mortgage paid off sooner rather than later and OH will be looking to increase his contribution to overpayments in the next few months.

Overpayments for August have gone into Regular Savers x4 totalling £950.

We've asked Nationwide for £2,750 from the Overpayment Reserve, since that is part of our emergency money.
We need to take it back before we redeem the mortgage and re-mortgage with First Direct.

The mortgage currently stands at £69,xxx, but it won't stay at that level for long due to the above.

Queen-Bee_2

Well done, and I hope the transfer goes smoothly. It must be a good feeling to know that whatever happens to OH's job, you can manage without having to sell the house. That's my primary motivator for my MF journey!
QB

gallygirl

Hope all goes smoothly U. We too are thinking of going to FD - how are you finding the process?

uzubairu

gallygirl wrote: »

Hope all goes smoothly U. We too are thinking of going to FD - how are you finding the process?

Pleased with things so far.

It took nearly 3 weeks to get a formal offer, and they were extremely thorough during the application process.
We had to answer many detailed questions about our credits and debits on our current accounts.

The conveyancing company have been in touch and we've been told that it shouldn't be long now before it is completed.

uzubairu

Just wanted those of you who have a Nationwide mortgage with a 'borrow back' facility to know how easy the process has been to get some of our money back before we re-mortgage.
We wanted £2,750 from our Overpayment Reserve.

Posted the letter to Nationwide on Monday morning (1st Class standard mail).
The money is now in our First Direct current account on Thursday morning. :j
We didn't have to fill in any forms.

Checked our Nationwide account online and it shows as a refund of £2,750.
I will have to redo the overpayment totals for 2010, but we also have over £2,000 in Regular Savers so far, which are planned for overpaying into our new mortgage when the mature.
This should mean that the totals will stay similar and we should be able to stay on target.

Mortgage is back up to £72,575.

I also received a £30 cashback cheque from Canon for a camera I bought for a friend last month.

OH seems more confident about the situation at work, as some plans are being discussed in more detail and they may be options which will allow him to stay with his current company.

uzubairu

We completed the re-mortgage yesterday (24/08/10).

The starting figure for our mortgage with First Direct is £73,064.
The letter we received from First Direct today states that our first payment isn't due until 3rd October. :T

We were expecting to make a mortgage payment in September, so we will probably make an overpayment equal to the monthly payment we thought we would be making.

The ERC was £2K, so that has slightly messed with the figures for MFiT-T3 September update.
We may be just short of the figure to stay on target, but it is a marathon and not a sprint, so I'm sure we can pull it back.

The good thing is that we started the Regular Savers a few months ago and we have put £2,500 into them since June.

I wonder if First Direct let you access or view your mortgage online.
I really liked that option when we had our Nationwide mortgage.

kabads

We too are switching mortgage to First Direct - they have reduced our term by 1 year with a slightly smaller monthly payment than we are making now.

During the process I asked FD if we could view it online - you can if you have the interest only mortgage but if you have the repayment mortgage, then it won't appear online (which I always wanted as my current lender only operates 9am-5pm and take a while to answer the phone).

However the FD representative said that we could always call them on the phone if we have a query (like a balance statement) and I found out that their mortgage department is open until 9pm.

The more I use telephone banking with FD the less of a fan I am with online banking.