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

misswissy

My tactic to achieve this is to keep up my Make £10 a day challenge. This should provide £300 per month. I'm paying my debts off first, though so won't be overpaying until about March. I also do daily clicks and play free bingo. Will have to up the ante though to meet this target so may have to get a second job (I could tutor as I'm a teacher). My hubby is in and out of work (for the last 5 years!!) If he was in more than he was out this challenge would be a doddle.

Just a thought, but at what point am I to consider myself 'debt free'. If you look at my sig I have a student loan which I won't be paying off prior to the mortgage as the interest rate is lower. I also owe tax credits a fair whack but have opted to just not receive what I am now entitled to, to try and offset it. They don't hassle me in the slightest.

In my mind, I am effectively debt free once my credit card and loan is paid off. Be interesting to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.

travellady

Well we're on our way GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!!!!!

As my fella and I are both self employed things could be one way or the other if his work goes quieter (he is in the building trade) so I have been looking at doing some extra marketing on my Travel business as I am just off maternity leave this will be my main priority for next year.

Of course i will need to tighten the purse strings/ use quidco and cash back sites and of course use the MSE travelagent beat my quote- (every £10 helps eh?) If anyone is in marketing and could offer some free advice that would be a great help :-)

Anyway, hope everyone does well X

cha97michelle

My plan is not fully formulated yet, but i have had the idea to try and pay off each day the interest that has been added so that when i pay my monthly payment all of that will go to reduce the capital.

I then need to look at savings as i no longer work since starting the challenge, so the best thing i can do is look at reducing our outgoings. I know my strength is to look around at where we can save odd pennies and then i automatically transfer that into overpayments in the hope that it will add up.

Our garden was quite productive this year so i will look at growing what i can again.

I am also going to try to only buy/use what we need, and personally not each so much snacky food in the hope that pounds saved in the shop also mean a few pounds lost from my body. I'll probably also give up drinking for part of it too. Not that i have a lot, but it is another unnecessary expense.

Not got any great plans here to raise a fortune but hoping lots of focus on pennies pays off.

wynnvegas

Some fantastic ideas there - I fancied the matched betting but I just don't have the time to invest in getting it right. I've just started using quidco, sold my first ever thing on Gumtree and have a whack of stuff to get shot of on eBay, Gumtree or the deals section of HotUKDeals.

We're on a marginally tighter timescale of 12 months to get shot of the mortgage with a regular payment of £820 and monthly overpayment of around £1,845 which, whilst pretty tight, leaves us with money to pay all the bills and £300 per month to save up for the holiday to Vegas in July - flights to and from Vegas are already booked and paid for so that helps no end as there are always amazing hotel deals - we may slum it this year in Bally's or somewhere to help this challenge! If interest rates stay at 0.5% for the next year, our monthly interest payment on top is only about £37 now!

We've also stocked up with offers on things like washing powder, toiletries and foods that will last for ages so we expect the supermarket bills to be relatively low in comparison to what they used to be.

Bigger than all of that though is my commitment to stop buying as many (nearly all) the bargains I see on HotUKDeals. I have to confess to already buying enough M&S Christmas wrapping paper for the next 4 years because it was such a good deal - need to remember though that it was £16 that I needn't have spent. My goal is to have at least 4 or 5 days per week as "no spend days" to concentrate all the spending for the week into a single day and keep a really tight grip on what we're buying.

All in all, we're taking a lot of the advice from this site without going to the extremes of bulk cooking and trying not to save every single penny. Trying to maintain that kind of rational balance will be a good bit of work as we get ever closer to mortgage freedom.

Best of luck to everyone on the challenge. I'm already looking forward to this time next year when I can splurge and buy everyone a pint with relative impunity!

mfwin2019

I will probably not be able to tackle mortgage overpayment much for the first year as I have about £10k of 0% cc debt to be repaid. This was the overspend on my house extension/renovation. But the normal monthly repayment repays about £500 of the capital a month.

I will be looking to cut my grocery shopping, change energy providers & account for every penny so that I know where I can save a bit more.

Good luck to every one - it is very inspiring to read everyones stories.

PetitePeche

I intend to budget like mad ... and stick to it this year :eek:!

I have used MS Money and set the household budget up for the next 12 months allowing an amount each month for groceries, petrol etc after all dd's have been paid. Any savings will go to the mortgage pot. I have also set mine and DH's income at last year's level so that any above that will add to the pot. On top of this I have allocated an extra £499 pcm to the mortgage. Savings from the "pot" can be paid each January when I can pay upto 10% off.

To make extra money I will be doing:

• Surveys
• Mystery Shopping (infrequently though due to long working hours)
• free scratchcards
• Menu planning
• Picking up tips from here to make more!

Good luck everyone.

PP

taka

I've made my first OP of a whole £4.61 this morning! :j Ermmmm every little helps? :rotfl:



I'm planning to meet this challenge (~£180/month OPs I think) by

• Continuing with the £4k challenge (which is called the Frugal living 2010 challenge next year). I'm still tweeking my final figures for next year but sticking to my budget for everything (but still having a very qood quality of life and enjoying myself ) should allow me to make regular OPs of £100/month.
• Moving £1k (well multiples of a smaller amount ) into and out of my 2 BOS reward accounts - Another £10/month.
• Cost of living pay increase. I think this will be ~£8/month when they finally sort it out - hopefully starting Jan with a bit of it backdated.
• Raise ?/month by continuing to OP 50% of the equivalent of any surveys/ £2 coins/ vouchers/ interest/ coins 5p and under/ found money/ tOpcashback money etc. (The other 50% is a splurge fund to keep me motivated doing boring surveys etc :rotfl:).
• Avoiding the canteen at work - I've spent way too much there this year and the food doesn't taste great. Last meal I had there I discovered a snail in my salad so that has rather put me off... yuck! :eek:
• Join the make £10/day challenge and actually make something extra!
• Finally get up the courage to ebay some [STRIKE]junk[/STRIKE] unwanted/no longer needed stuff.
• Not sure where I'm going to find the rest yet... :think: One idea is to set up a really small jewellery business as making silver jewellery (especially with semi precious stones) is my hobby. Not sure how much I'd actually make doing this as I have little time but even if it only raises the equivalent of what I have in my budget for my hobby as profit after materials, costs, tax etc then I could use the money in my budget to OP instead! :rotfl: I suspect I'm getting a small website for Xmas! :rotfl: :xmassign:

Anyone still awake after that list? Sorry it is a bit long!

curlygirl1971

That's a great list Taka and I admire your efforts. (£4k pa and £10pd!! Gulp. I think I'll look into that £4k pa challenge and see what it entails)

* I also have two Halifax Reward accounts and will be moving £1k between both to earn £10 pm (until the day they may start tightening up / changing the regs) and that £10 will be part of my OP.

* I occasionally do a bit of an evening job - 3/4 times a month and I get £70-80pm for that so that will be part of my OP (although some of my earnings between now and xmas are already spoken for)

* Then I am just going to squeeze my monthly budget as much as I can but still enjoy myself. Cut down on grocery (by planning and sticking to shopping list), clothes (already doing). I already spend very little on 'social' as I can no longer be bothered drinking....so that just leaves an occasional cinema visit and the odd meal out (but we never go anywhere that pricey!)

* I'm going to look into getting a water meter (have been procrastinating for ages) and switching utilities

* I have always been a budgeting / forecasting fanatic. I save ahead for expenses such as insurances and even put money aside for potential car repairs!......so when I 'under-spend' I'll put the money into OP rather than leaving it in savings.

* And any extra cash that comes in along the way. eg. My mum often gives me £30 at Xmas. If I get a rise I think I will increase my pension contribution which at the moment is just £80 pm. If I am lucky to get a bonus this year then some of it will go in my ISA and some of it will be a lovely juicy OP!!!

And I shall be watching the MFW threads for other ideas


Can I ask - Is anyone with the Halifax and have been able to set up an overpayment SO from their CA to their Mortgage that they can administrate themselves (ie change the monthly amount to suit). The Halifax keep telling me its possible but after 2 attempts and going into Branch again today - they've eventually admitted that they can't.

taka

curlygirl1971 wrote: »

That's a great list Taka and I admire your efforts. (£4k pa and £10pd!! Gulp. I think I'll look into that £4k pa challenge and see what it entails)

If you are interested the 4k challenge is here but it is almost finished for the year. This is the one for 2010 (it has been renamed as we have loads of different budgets not just £4k/yr!) Its about living on a budget (of your choosing ) in order to live on what you earn, to pay off debt, to OP mortgages, to save for travelling - the reasons are as many and varied as the lovely people. I love it - it has made a massive difference to me and others - in my life in general, not just financially! I think I'm going to do an everything except mortgage, mortgage OPs and savings challenge this year! If you are a budgeting fan then it may be for you...

I'm really bad at the 10pd thing... I usually spectacularly fail but even if I manage a £1 a day it'd be £30 a month!

Good luck with getting Halifaz to play ball... maybe phone banking may be able to help?

curlygirl1971

Thanks for the info Taka


I ring the Halifax and Telephone banking either inform me 'oh you can do that on-line'. No I can't. Or say 'Well I'm not sure about this, have you checked with your branch you can make over-payments?'. YEEESSSSSSSS. Never-mind - will persevere

Am currently messing around with budget to see what I can over-pay next pay-day :j