Lynn's MFW Diary

Lynn11

I recently found this site about a month ago and have viewed a few opinions but love reading the MFW thread. Anyway over the last 3yrs I have been overpaying our mortgage with Nationwide on what we can afford. 1st year overpaid by £1050, 2nd yr overpaid £2700, 3rd yr £4100 and hopefully wish to overpay £4000 for 4yr. Our fixed term finished 30th May and it will be interesting to see what is avaialble at that time as we have a good rate at present which is 4.73%. Hopefully when the fixed term finishes and before we can find another good deal we can put something into the pot from our savings - not too much as job security for hubby is iffy at the moment. We started off with mortgage Jan 08 at £73950 I believe and will check 31st Decmeber online but hope it will be approx £67500. Would love to get this down as much as possible, as we will probably need to move in a few years time when daughter is growing up etc as handy to have as much money paid off before we jump to a 3 bed. Hopefully you can all keep my motivation up throughout 2009 as it will probably be a hard time for a lot of us. Heres to 2009 and trying to pay off as much as the mortgage as we can.

StuartGMC

Lynn
Well done on the OP to date and best wishes for the target for 2009. It will indeed be a difficult year or 18months for many, but your history of OP should put you in a good position with the lender if the worst happens.

I assume you'll keep us updated and I look forward to reading of your interim targets and steps along the road to be mortgage-free.

:beer:

hughmungas1986

Lynn11,

Good Luck with your challenge, keep up the overpayments if you can, they certainly make a big difference.

hugh

Lynn11

Well I have recently bought a big tin bank and we are saving £1 & 50p in this to go towards the mortgage when full and you need to open it up with a can opener so will not dip into this. Hopefully I can put away at least a £1 a week and we can see how long it takes to fill. I will be finding out my actual mortgage balance on wednesday 31st Dec 08.

Lynn11

Logged onto Nationwide online and found my year end mortgage balance is £67381.40. Im happy with this as we managed to pay off £6523.77 this year with our overpayments. I was aiming for £67500 so managed to bet my expectations. 2009 - would love to get to the magic number of £60,000 by 31/12.2009.

Tonight is a quiet night for us as DD will be in bed and we are at home eating no doubt the left over chocolates and crisps in the cupboard seeing in the new year. Tomorrow we are going to the inlaws for our dinner and staying over.

Happy new year to everyone and hope it is a fairly good one.

Lynn11

Well I have worked out that I can overpay £450 towards the mortgage tomorrow so we will go for a visit into town and pay this. Also managed to get next year's christmas cards for £3 for about 80-90 cards, some christmas wrapping for 5p so we have put this away and hopefully it will help towards this christmas.

I have decided to start monitoring our grocery spend for the month and then try to decrease if we possibly can. Went shopping today and managed to get a fair bit of groceries such as tins and stuff for the freezer. Every bit helps. I also tend to shop at the local fruit shop and fish shop.

If there is any money left over at the end of the month, not sure when I will be paid but know when hubbie is paid then maybe I can put in the extra £50 as overpayment, since we are trying to reduce our mortgage to as low as possible before our deal ends 31st May 2009.

Need to check out the websites for recycling mobile phones, as I got a new one for my christmas. I checked out envirofone but they would only give me £1.50 for my old phone, which is a standard phone etc but is there are any other sites out there that I could try to see if we can get anything for it. I believe that there may be 2 more phones upstairs - need to go hunting.

One of my resolutions is to lose the fat which I gained when pregnant - hopefully keeping a tight track on groceries etc and starting some exercise next week will kick start me in the right direction.

Pinky15

Hi Lyn just wanted to wish you luck with your challenge. As soon as I have my CC and Loan paid off I hope to start my own diary. I already make overpayments on my M of 20% per month and this have taken the term from 17 yrs to 12yrs. I think you have done really well too pay off what you have. Keep going!!! x:j

StuartGMC

Lynn11 wrote: »

Need to check out the websites for recycling mobile phones, as I got a new one for my christmas. I checked out envirofone but they would only give me £1.50 for my old phone, which is a standard phone etc but is there are any other sites out there that I could try to see if we can get anything for it. I believe that there may be 2 more phones upstairs - need to go hunting.

Lynn
Check TopCashBack and/or Quidco, both have a few different providers of mobilephone recycling, so you get the cashback plus the phone cash. Amounts depend upon model and company so you may need to add the two amounts to see the "best" deal.

Good luck in the weight loss and the MF journey, hope your budgeting spreadsheet helps.

setmefree2

and

Lynn11

Thanks Stuart for your 2 websites and will try to view them tomorrow as a bit busy today.

Managed to get into town and pay £450 towards mortgage as overpayment. Also got 7 special christmas cards for 2009 at 25p each - so well chuffed.

I decided to tidy up our sideboard drawers and found that I have birthday cards there, so hopefully I can use them up before I need to buy more this year.

Lynn11

Well I heard about the interest rate cut on the news but it will not benefit us until at least June when our fixed rate runs out. We will need to assess if we take the risk to go on the svr for 2-3mths or if there are any good fixed deals around. Well no doubt our savings will be earning less interest now - not ideal but as long as I can get access to my money when needed.

We are looking at the moment to book our summer holiday and awaiting some brochures as hubbie wishes to see them instead of taking the comments on the website - hopefully will book next week and then have something to look forward to.

CC bill arrived today - much higher than I thought as hubbie used some of it for work expenses. Hopefully can pay all if not most of it off but no further overpayments this month.