Intrigued - how much do you feel you're giving up

gallygirl

I totally agree with all the others, it is a case of prioritising and deciding what is important, then finding the best way to do it.

My minimum mortgage payment is around £135, courtesy of OH paying 1/2 and the drop in mortgage rate. I am currently paying £650 extra, shortly increasing to £850 as DS finishing uni (plus anything I make from mystery shopping). This is almost 50% of my income. Yet I had a week in the Canaries in Jan, plus a further 5 trips to our apartment in Spain by the end of the year. Those are my priorities.

I don't spend a lot on clothes, shopping, flash cars (admittedly current car is only 6 months old, but will last me 5 yrs, 135,000 miles), Sky, plasma TV's etc. My choice, I could forego overpayments and buy a 42" TV but I'm just not interested.

Most people on here seem to start by making 'sacrifices' but our priorities change and it quickly becomes a way of life. I don't feel I'm missing out by not buying lots of clothes - but I'd think I was profligate if I did.

Primula

Foregoing holidays for a few years, and changing the car, but to be fair there is nothing wrong with the car anyway. We sat down and discussed what we both wanted:-
1.

Primula

Foregoing holidays for a few years, and changing the car, but to be fair there is nothing wrong with the car anyway. We sat down and discussed what we both wanted:-
1. To overpay on mortgage and be mortgage free (whoopee it's less than a two years to go now), or
2. To change the car and not overpay so much on mortgage, or
3. To stop overpaying for 6 months and have a holiday.
Anyway, we both decided, we want to be mortgage free and THEN we can have the car AND the holiday.
Having said all that, I don't feel I am missing out as overpaying the mortgage is our own choice and what we WANT to do!
P

belfastgirl23

For me, OPing the mortgage was part of a lifestyle change really. I had recently started to earn more and DH became self employed and luckily was successful. So we had more money coming in than ever before (I remember when even making the basic mortgage payments was a challenge!). But I realised we were frittering it all away on god knows what really. So I decided it was time to budget. I already put a certain amount into our joint account for normal month to month expenses so I decided to set myself a budget for spending in the month (a pretty generous £400). So then I portioned out what was left over and set up seperate pots for holiday savings, house and car repairs/maintenance and ISA. And then decided that a portion of it should go towards OPing the mortgage since DH tends to make big lump sum payments as he is paid for different pieces of work.

We don't miss out though. We eat out at least once a week and have at least a month of holidays over the year. Personally i would like to cut down a bit more and OP a bit more but DH won't have it so I've given in on that. We do drive an old banger though but given the state of the roads I'm reluctant to put too much money into a car.

So I too feel that I'm prioritising the mortgage over luxury shopping and eating out more. But no bad thing!

PS we OPd almost £18000 last year (my contribution was £3274 through regular payments and DH managed to put in a whopping £14700) and so far this year it's £1320 - reckon we'll be up to £20k in the next few months!

littlemissbossy

If you ever feel like you are missing out on anything think about future holidays (flying premium economy intead of sardine class) and cars (new instead of used). I have done these two things since being MF and the next thing is less hours at work. Great!