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

TheAllanCadenhead

Kaz2904 wrote: »

Hi Allan; This a 3 year challenge hence the reason why some peoples targets are so high.
I've pledged £46000 for this challenge as I managed to clear just over £43000 on the last 3 year challenge.
There are many different ways in which people raise the money to clear their mortgages; the main tip is to just take it one step at a time and not to run headlong at it. If you tackle one area at a time, you can find yourself saving lots of money.
Personally, I have found the challenge much harder this time around than I did last time. The economic climate is much, much tougher so it's harder to pick up really good glitches on things, savings rates are really low, food is very expensive, fuel and utilities even more so. None of the supermarkets seem to accept each others coupons any more and Mr T's don't ccept any coupons even for items you haven't bought. This means a big drop in shopping savings. I have also got 2 children who are older this time round (err, obviously! ) so they are much more expensive than they were on the first challenge. They seem to be trying to bankrupt me with their clubs, school contributions, eating everything which isn't nailed down and really expensive to clothe and shoe. Darn hobbit feet that they have! I'm horrified that my DD is now into shoes which cost around £40 a time since she turned 9 :eek:. I feel that we should be given a way of proving that the clothes we are buying are for our children- it's not our fault or teirs that they are size 4 feet and verging on adult clothing sizes too. Actually, it really bugs me that DD has to pay VAT on shoes and her God Mother doesn't because she's short. She also buys childrens clothes for herself.

Anyway, I can't possibly put all the information in one post but it's worth trying to overpay, every £10 overpaid at the beginning is worth £15 from the end (or thereabouts- all dependant on your APR etc etc!

I highly recommend whatsthecost.com to see how much time and money you could save on the term of your mortgage just by overpaying a little each month!

curlygirl1971 wrote: »

There are people from all walks of life on this challenge. Some of us are single income households (me), some of us have children (not me), some of us earn average salaries (me), some of us benefit from already low mortgage repayments thus freeing up more of our monthly budgets (me), some of us go to a lot of effort to bring in extra income (not me) or sacrifice a lot (not me).

My 3 year target was to reduce the value of my mortgage by £20k which will be achieved by my regular payments and also over payments. I've made some large-ish OP's from my Bonus and existing Savings but mostly I make regular OP's of an average of £220. This amount is achieved by 1) being careful 2) being savvy 3) The magic of spreadsheet accounting; but I can't ignore the fact that I'm also very lucky to have a standard OP of only £290, and to be benefitting from an incredibly low BOE base rate......although the economic climate is whipping my !!! in other respects.

When you get your mortgage you should come back and join one of the yearly challenges or maybe it will coincide with the birth of a new MFiT challenge. Every penny counts!

black_taxi wrote: »

TheAllanCadenhead

there are many ways to reduce mortgage---sell move into a smaller property---endowment matured.

you will also see those that have stated what there going to do---but actualy havent started on 1st page

im on around 20k a year--but hav no children/single.also i have bought and sold property at the right time.even so i see property as a debt i owe to lender.

at start i thought 3 years was easily acheivable---i soon found out with known/unknown bills its a slower process---should hav about 60% paid off 12/12/12

but those who hav stuck with this an only paid off15%--thats good enough for me---lowering debt is always a good thing

g/l all the best

wow, thanks guys. Didn't realise it was over a 3 year period. All this talk get's me excited and inspirted to start saving for a mortage and get it all paid off. I would even go to the lengths of adding up my salary 5 fold and working out roughyl my outgoings, if they stayed the same for that length of time.

I really appritiate all this info and I will definately be back to investigate and get help & advice, also on things like fixed term or not.

Not sure if anyone heard, but 0% deposits are a thing of the past.

Kaz2904

TheAllanCadenhead wrote: »

Not sure if anyone heard, but 0% deposits are a thing of the past.

True, but hopefully the housing market will correct to adjust for this. I personally think that housing is disgracefully high to rent and to buy. I think that it could do with coming down to a cost of around £650 pcm to rent or to buy a 3 bed home with a garden. I don't see how people are going to manage otherwise.
I can't bear the thought of my children living with me for the rest of their lives, how can they ever go out and have families of their own from a situation like that? My children's generation have very little to look forward to (they are 8-10) as do the young generation of now. No jobs, no homes, no hope. Great lifestyle eh?

Check out the old MFi3 thread if you can find it, lots of hints and tips on there. We started in April 2007.

Just pay whatever you can whenever you can. Work out your budget (include savings for holidays, rainy days, pension pot, gift money, days out, pocket money for frivolous spending) and then work out a set overpayment if you are able to do so. Then set it so that it comes out of your account automatically. Or you could chose to go for a slightly shorter mortgage term.
When we got our mortgage to buy this house, I had worked on paying about £650 per month. When I rang to get it all sorted, if I stuck to the same term (just over 21 years) it was a bit under this so I kept getting him to recalculate it until it was £649.75 minimum payment with an 18 year term. 3 years saved instantly!

black_taxi_2

yeah so true--rents an mortgages are shockingly high

Jock_Tight

We pledged to clear the remaining £40k mortgage in the 3 year challenge, with less that a year to go we are down to £10k.

We are dinky (double income, no kids yet) and benefit from having an offset mortgage (100%) so pay no interest. This means we have more disposable income to go towards the mortgage, current OP of £475 on top of our regular mortgage payment. Any bonuses from work go into the mortgage, any salary increase gets added to the monthly OP.

Spreadsheets work wonders enabling us to keep track of spending, mortgage payments etc.

Like others we save anything below 20p (this alone can net us over £200 per year), Halifax rewards, another £120 a year, cashback, the odd ebay sale.......it all adds up!

Its a long haul but so rewarding seeing the mortgage shrink each month.

spidystrider

We've had an endownment policy pay out, so have managed to pay off our full 10% overpayment of £11,000 in one go :T. We have actually now beaten our goal of getting our mortgage down to £100,000. I'm now looking forward to seeing how low we can get it by the end of the year, as our first 3 year term will be up on 31st October. Hopefully I can have a lump sum available by then, to pay off a bit more.

mfwin2019

I have just logged on to my LLTSB internet banking & my C & G mortgage is showing - hurray at last no need to keep ringing up for a balance. It doesn't appear to have a link to make repayments but will investigate further.

This is great as I still have not received 2011 mortgage statement but now I don't need it as it is all on screen.

I am not sure when this appeared (probably ages ago) but I needed to scroll down to the bottom of the screen so I have probably just not noticed it before.

abouttimetoo

mfwin2019 wrote: »

I have just logged on to my LLTSB internet banking & my C & G mortgage is showing - hurray at last no need to keep ringing up for a balance. It doesn't appear to have a link to make repayments but will investigate further.

This is great as I still have not received 2011 mortgage statement but now I don't need it as it is all on screen.

I am not sure when this appeared (probably ages ago) but I needed to scroll down to the bottom of the screen so I have probably just not noticed it before.

Oh my goodness, how exciting. Saw your post and instantly logged on and mine is there too including the BTL mortgage :j :j

I've lost count of the amount of times I've asked when I could see my mortgage online and they said it was in the pipeline and now it's here!

MFWIN, it's definately just happened today as it was not there this morning. Also you can definately OP online as I have it set up in my payments scheduled list and have done it online for years, they also use the faster payment system so instantly credited to your mortgage

Is it wrong to be this excited about being able to see my mortgage online :rotfl:

gallygirl

abouttimetoo wrote: »

Oh my goodness, how exciting. Saw your post and instantly logged on and mine is there too including the BTL mortgage :j :j

I've lost count of the amount of times I've asked when I could see my mortgage online and they said it was in the pipeline and now it's here!

MFWIN, it's definately just happened today as it was not there this morning. Also you can definately OP online as I have it set up in my payments scheduled list and have done it online for years, they also use the faster payment system so instantly credited to your mortgage

Is it wrong to be this excited about being able to see my mortgage online :rotfl:

:j:j:j:j:j

Oh. Now all I need to do is open a LLTSB account

shop-to-drop

We have just changed our HSBC mortgage which was on SVR (3.94) to the 1.99 above base fee free tracker, unlimited overpayments mortgages. We did so all online with internet banking with a few clicks and a little time to read everything through. I was really impressed and making overpayments in really easy too with HSBC intenet banking.

curlygirl1971

Bumping from the bottom of page 3. How rude!