The Mortgage Free in Three - Take 2 challenge (MFiT-T2)

cake21

curlygirl1971 wrote: »

care to share some of your %'s fellow MFW's?

Ooh, interesting and a great excuse to get my spreadsheets out
YTD spends: Mortgage (std payment + OPs) = 85% of expenditure
2011 budget: 67%
2010 actual: 91%

I don't feel deprived, but then I loathe loathe having a mortgage, have no fashion sense, don't drink much, and I travel so much with work the last thing I want to do with my time off is go to an airport or a restaurant!! :rotfl:

curlygirl1971

cake21 wrote: »

Ooh, interesting and a great excuse to get my spreadsheets out
YTD spends: Mortgage (std payment + OPs) = 85% of expenditure

You are FREAKING Joking! Is that 85% of your take-home pay. Or (please tell me) is it 85% of what's left after bills? In anycase that is hugely impressive and shows incredible dedication.

(% as a total of income after tax)
My Bills (except Mortgage) are 22%
I save 15% towards a new used car and holidays/activities
I spend 30% on Food, Petrol and anything else I want - this is the area I'm trying to cut down
I put 6% in Pension

I'd have to stop Saving (I appreciate the holiday is a luxury) and stop all monthly expenditure to get to 85%!! :rotfl::rotfl:

Anyway I know its all relative and depends on salary and personal circumstances. I'll have to tell the BF that I can't see him anymore as I can't drive to his house, go to the cinema, go on holiday with him........He's already MF so am sure he'll be sympathetic

golfiematt

% in itself means nothing as some fo you take home a few grand and other prob not even 1k so the spare money is hugely different. ie if i earned 1k a month 50% would be £500 spare or if i earned 3k it would be £1500 spare. Food and bills are the same for everyone, they dont rise when you earn more!!!

cake21

curlygirl1971 wrote: »

Is that 85% of your take-home pay. Or (please tell me) is it 85% of what's left after bills? In anycase that is hugely impressive and shows incredible dedication.

It does help that I'm obsessive but it's not impressive once you take all the circumstances into account. The 85% is as a % of spends, which is/was more than my take-home pay due to various bonuses and other one-offs that I don't expect again. Also helped because:
Bonuses / one-offs paid straight to mortgage distort figures heavily
Car & petrol etc paid by employer before tax
Pension paid before tax
Food & other bills e.g. heating & hot water greatly reduced as employer paying for these about 50% of the time and I stay with my sister about 20% of the remainder...
I agree with golfiematt that food & bills don't have to increase when your salary does, but I think most people do spend more?

Writing all that I'm now starting to wonder if I should be making more OPs! :eek:

RosieTiger

golfiematt wrote: »

% in itself means nothing as some fo you take home a few grand and other prob not even 1k so the spare money is hugely different. ie if i earned 1k a month 50% would be £500 spare or if i earned 3k it would be £1500 spare. Food and bills are the same for everyone, they dont rise when you earn more!!!

Couldn't agree more !

Circumstances dictate what you can and can't do. We were asked on here recently whether we had robbed a bank to get where we are now. I think it's all relative and more importantly, so is what you consider to be essentials that you are not willing to do without.
In some ways, we got very very lucky. Good income, change in circumstances left a higher disposable income and we then chose to continue at pretty much the old spending levels. Therefore, it didn't really hurt.
Key point is finding a level to OP at that your comfortable with, allows you to do the things you have decided you want to maintain and feels right for you.
To repeat a point I find myself making on here regularly, anything you do will essentially leave you in a better position than if you had opted to do nothing, so we are all winners in this !!!!

uzubairu

We are at 60% to 65% of monthly combined take-home pay.
Our circumstances (no pets or kids) allow us to do this and still have a couple of holidays and eat out now and again.
We could be a bit extreme and push it up to nearly 80%, but we would be doing without the treats (holidays, meals out, etc. in moderation) that make the journey more bearable.

Each year our disposable income has increased (pay rises/bonuses), but we have managed to reduce our living expenses, so the net difference has gone into mortgage overpayments.
Our monthly outgoings are still based on our take-home pay from 4 years ago.
Getting the OH onboard (main earner) has made the biggest difference.

I'd like the mortgage gone within the next 3 years, which will be 17 years early.

Like RosieTiger says 'anything you do will essentially leave you in a better position than if you had opted to do nothing, so we are all winners in this!!!'
As my employer states -Every Little Helps.

Trying_to_be_good

My story is similar - I have a good salary at a job I don't really Luke, and when single poured over 75% into my mortgage, with overpayments. Then I git married to someone with children and very different money ideas and we've both learned to compromise, finding a way to overpay towards a mortgage-free future whilst enjoying some treads along the way - I probably still commit over 60% of my net salary, but the overpayments go into our offset and I run a spreadsheet to show whose the money is, in theory. And if I want to spend it on something else, I can!

I've met my goal, according to my signature, which gives me the freedom, and in my head the permission, to spend some on me (or the house) to ensure I have the balance right for me between the mortgage-free dream and enjoying life now, as doing all one or the other doesn't work for us.

Hope this makes sense rather than me just rambling on during an early morning train journey!

TheBees

Hi everyone - not been on for a couple weeks but now it's the Easter holidays I've got a bit of time to relax.

Tattycath - the best way we've found to keep a track of your spending is something we've been doing for over 20years since we got married! Buy an A5 notebook, make 4 columns on the page - date, description of spend, amount and running total. Start a new page at the beginning of the month and list all payments coming into your account. Then list all the deductions that come out regularly first. We don't bother with exact dates of direct debits or standing orders - they're coming out some time in the month so that money's gone. Once all your regular payments have been deducted, keep a daily record of cashpoint withdrawals, spends in shops etc. I keep all receipts in my purse and list them every couple days before stuffing them in an empty envelope. The running total helps you to see how much money you have left to spend and helps you realise how much you're actually spending. HTH

tattycath

TheBees wrote: »

Hi everyone - not been on for a couple weeks but now it's the Easter holidays I've got a bit of time to relax.

Tattycath - the best way we've found to keep a track of your spending is something we've been doing for over 20years since we got married! Buy an A5 notebook, make 4 columns on the page - date, description of spend, amount and running total. Start a new page at the beginning of the month and list all payments coming into your account. Then list all the deductions that come out regularly first. We don't bother with exact dates of direct debits or standing orders - they're coming out some time in the month so that money's gone. Once all your regular payments have been deducted, keep a daily record of cashpoint withdrawals, spends in shops etc. I keep all receipts in my purse and list them every couple days before stuffing them in an empty envelope. The running total helps you to see how much money you have left to spend and helps you realise how much you're actually spending. HTH

Ooh, thank you very much, will sort out a book today, we do have loads of notebooks, writing pads, A4, A5 -another bad habit i got into-endlessly buying note books etc

adwat

I'm in complete agreement with the posts on this page, whatever we are doing in percentage terms (mine is about 60% of net income towards the mortgage - at this level we feel it's a fair balance between having a life and overpaying) it's going to help in the long run and save money and add to security etc. Pleased to report at this halfway stage (hadn't realised we were so far into the challenge) that I'm due to finish in about four more payments so should be finishing about 16 months earlier than I thought when starting out. Just goes to show what you can do just by plugging away determinedly. I've increased repayments when we've had payrises and with sticking to a budget the mortgage has really started to melt away. What a wonderful resource this website is, and in particular this forum, so thanks to everyone for the inspiration that's kept me on track over the last 18 months.