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

maz123_2

Loving the pictures of the houses peeps and uzbairu where on earth did you get the idea for that from?
think i need to go and play.........again
maz x

Lunar_Eclipse

Hello everyone!

FB & Maz, I have just submitted my challenge objective. Apologies for the delay; I haven't been on top of our financials since the Summer after we pulled back some of our mortgage overpayments.

Our mortgage currently stands at 117k. The 2012 target is to reduce this to 40k. This should be realistic whilst being very challenging, although it is based on fundamental underlying assumptions which could change (and delay these plans). Alternatively we could win the lottery .

We have an IO offset mortgage with FD. Currently on their SVR since our last fixed rate ended, but will be moving to a two year fixed rate in Jan/Feb, whenever our 6 month holding period ends. That will be at 3.99%, although they do have a more competitive rate currently on offer for anyone looking at fixing.

That's it for now. Good luck to everyone!

improviseadaptovercome

OOOOOOH can I play this one? Ive been on the site for years and never got round to posting so heres the first.

I aim to clear the mortgage by 12/12/12, it stood at £47065 in January 2009 and I ve been "practising" op in preperation for the challenge!


And I am going to raid the DS crayon box for a house until I get a jigsaw made.!

uzubairu

weezl74 wrote: »

uzubairu, wow, what a creative idea! I want one

maz123 wrote: »

Loving the pictures of the houses peeps and uzbairu where on earth did you get the idea for that from?
think i need to go and play.........again
maz x

I was in the kitchen and was looking at the fridge and the magnets attached to it, and thinking about a way to help my OH stay focussed.
He visits the fridge daily so he would get always be reminded about the need to live an MSE lifestyle to achieve our goal.

My initial idea was to take a photo of the house, stick it on card and then cut it up in to pieces and attach small magnets to each piece.

I then did a search on the web and found this:-

http://www.yourjigsaw.co.uk/magnetic.htm

My OH loves it and says it's got him hooked, because he sees it every day and he can't wait to add the 4th piece at the end of the year.

taxi73

Thanks so much for that uzubairu..what an interesting site.

SHOULDI

Hi,

I would like to join the MFi3 T2 challenge.

We were able to keep to the MFW2009 target we had set ourselves this year and feel this 3 year challenge will give us some longer term focus and some sensible milestones to hit throughout the challenge.

Some background, we have a mortgage outstanding of 222k as of Nov '09.

In 3 years time, I think it is feasible that we could get this down to 129k. Which is a breakdown of 31k a year. This breaks down further to £2538 per month of capital off the mortgage.

We are fortunate to have an offset mortgage with First Direct of 1.49% + Boe rate so currently our interest is approximately £370. This will obviously change over the 3 years but we will endeavour to keep up with the £2538 of capital repayments.

Assuming we are both employed and work really hard, this figure is achievable and will bring our net debt to under 100k as we currently have £30k in Savings and Investments. (Currently earning a higher interest rate than offsetting it against the mortgage).

So here goes...

Pledge: To bring down mortgage from £222,000 to £129,000. Which is paying off £93,000 over the 36 months and inherently getting our net debt to under the £100k mark.

I'm looking forward to reading all of your progress reports over the coming months.

Good luck to you all and wish us luck... We're going to need it...

SparkleBlack

Well long time no posting, but hey, I've been lurking a lot! I can't believe it's less than a month till we start - roll on 12/12! Right, I should probably do a long post alert - if you want to skip, then skip the next couple of paragraphs and you'll end up at the numbers bit!

Over the last year, things have changed a bit in the SB household money stakes. I've had a payrise (I've taken on lots of extra responsibility over that last couple of years), plus Mr SB and I have sold some shares, plus we've had some money from our incredibly generous parents. All this has put us ahead of where we thought we'd be at this point in our MF journey.

Now the long term plan is to have kids, however there are some places in the world we'd like to see first. We were thinking of doing these one a year for the next 2-3 years, however, we think that with a major amount of saving, we could get our offset mortgage balance down to 0 by Dec 2011, at which point we'll be able to save and do all the places in a one-er. Not only will this mean we'll be paying less interest by being offset sooner, but we'd only need a round-the-world ticket instead of a return ticket for each trip so that'll make things much cheaper. I figure if we're going to be doing something expensive, we should at least try and find the most MSE way to do it!

So the new plan is to get the offset balance to 0 by Dec 2011 and then save enough to travel such that we're still 100% offset at the end of the challenge. In hard numbers, our original target was to go from £120K to £75K excluding the offset. However, I'd like to change this to from 44K to 0K including the offset, if that's ok FB?

This plan is going to involve A LOT of cutbacks and saving for the next two years, but the end goal of no interest payments + an awesome holiday gives us something to look forward to. I think I may borrow uzubairu's awesome jigsaw idea (maybe a world map one) to keep us focused on the end goal!

Anyway, here's to everyone about to start on this challenge! I'm really looking forward to the journey with you

SB

financialbliss

SparkleBlack wrote: »

However, I'd like to change this to from 44K to 0K including the offset, if that's ok FB?

Hi SB,
I've just changed Chart 01 and post #1 to:
15. SparkleBlack. Reduce my mortgage from £44,000 to £0 (including offset).

Used the phrase reduce rather than clear, as I appreciate you may probably want to draw on offset savings rather than clear mortgage. PM me if you're unhappy / want me to change this.

SparkleBlack wrote: »

Anyway, here's to everyone about to start on this challenge! I'm really looking forward to the journey with you

Looking forward to it here too. Hoping for a Florida / some other large family holiday in 2013 once the mortgage has gone.

FB.

SparkleBlack

financialbliss wrote: »

Hi SB,
I've just changed Chart 01 and post #1 to:
15. SparkleBlack. Reduce my mortgage from £44,000 to £0 (including offset).
FB.

That's great. Thanks FB.

weezl74

Hi sparkle black,:)

Is your house you're paying off now your 'forever house' or will you an DH be looking to upsize when you start your family?

Good luck with your MFW journey,

Weezl x