Bumbling along to be Mortgage Free

cha97michelle

Deleted due to reasons I don't want to go into, but all my posts are going, sorry.

Catanddogs

Hi
I will be watching your progress with interest.

barnaby-bear

cha97michelle wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Thought i would start myself a diary on here as i am quite a keen MFW and i want somewhere to store my progress and further motivate myself. DH isn't interested in it to the same level as me. He is happy for me to control the budget as long as there is decent food on the table, but he doesn't really want me to bore him with the finer daily details. It's nice to share it with someone though.

We took out our mortgage when i was 25 in 2004. The house was £95k, and we needed a mortgage of £73.3k at 4.99% on a 5 year fix, based on my salary as DH was self employed at the time.

We were quite naive until the 1st mortgage statement arrived in Feb 05, when i realised we had paid nearly £500 per month but the capital had only reduced by £900. It felt like a huge slap really.

I was then determined to pay off what we could when we could to be MF as soon as we could.

• March 05 - overpaid £3665, which was the maximum we could per year. They tried to reduce my monthly payment, but i asked them to leave it at the original level.
• July 05 - overpaid £1665. Again asking for the monthly payments to remain unchanged.
• Oct 05 - forked out rather a lot of money to get married.
• Nov 05 - managed to scrape together another £2000 to fill that years overpayment allowance
• Aug 06 - overpaid another £1000. At that point i was 6 months pregnant and also decorating the living room/dining room of our house and forking out about £4k on furniture.

At this point the bank advised us that we were at risk of incurring charges due to leaving the monthly payment high so we left it at that stage due to me taking off 11 months maternity leave.

I then went back to work, and discovered i was pregnant again the 1st week back, so not long after that we had another bedroom to decorate, more furniture to buy, and not enough time to think about the mortgage. I have had another year off work. I went back a few months ago (not sure if it is sustainable though as i am not coping well with working and being a parent of a 2yo and 1yo).

We have just finished the 5yr fixed and dropped onto the SVR mortgage at 2.5% (guaranteed 2% above base rate) as there doesn't appear to be many bargains around that i want to take a gamble on, so i want to overpay like mad while we can.

Mortgage balance Jan 01/09 - £55,875.25
Mortgage balance Jun 19/09 - £53,483.09

I am also trying to pay into ISA's and 2 child trust funds, plus replace some immediate access emergency spends that have dwindled severely due to being off work for 2 years out of the last 3. This will be from trying to budget sensibly and careful household management rather than suddenly getting access to large funds as with 2 small kids there is always something that needs to be bought.

Recent improvements to the budget were:

• DS2 turned 1 so no more need to purchase formula milk (i did BF for 5 months so some savings there but he was a big demanding hungry boy)
• DS1 thankfully after 6 months of persuasion has decided to potty train in the last week so reducing spends on nappies (although he still wants to wear nappies so more persuasion/bribery needed i think)

I hope i can learn from this board and perhaps inspire someone else as i have been inspired. There is no better feeling in the world than seeing that figure decrease and know that you are a step closer to achieving the dream.

Michelle x

I think that's really impressive progress.

canne_2

You have done really well! Do you have a goal for when you think the mortgage will be paid off?

RosieTiger

Welcome to the fold your already doing really well !

setmefree2

and Looking forward to following your progress .

taka

:hello: Hiya! Good luck!

elliemoo

Hi! good luck with it all.

I too am trying to get my mortgage paid off as soon as possible and hope to do so in about 3-4 years but agree it is hard with small children. I have 3 children, the oldest is 8 and they can be expensive, but I think every litttle overpayment helps along the way.

pammyj74

wow your overpayments are fantastic and I am amazed how you afford it all. I am just about to start a diary myself and so far this year I have overpaid £1100. I am now trying to pay £100 a month and maybe a bit more if I get any extra money in.

Good luck to you
x

littlemrtinkle

current best newcastle bs 5 year fix at 5 % 90 day notice.

Floxxie

Hello,

Well done on your mortgage challenge. I too used our ISA funds to pay down the mortgage but then had second thoughts a while later so am using them as our mortgage rate is currently 0.98% so can still find ISAs that pay higher than this.

I also invest in Zopa (if you pop over to the referral board, you'll find a people offering £10 if you invest £2k by a particular date - at the moment it is by the end of June so I would leave it until the beginning of July and use a referral then)

I joined Zopa when it first 'opened' and have had mixed results. The returns are good but the bad debt and late payments have jumped this year (although you do only lend £10 per person so your loses are minimal).

Now I've posted on your diary I shall be able to follow your progress!

Floxxie