Mortgage Free by 01/01/11...so goes the plan

Annieddiva

Oh wow Billy - 17 days to go and counting - fantastic stuff and it really does help inspire people!! Any ideas what your new focus will be after the MF date?! Any top tips you'd recommend!! Look forward to reading your last few posts!!

wynnvegas

Morning Froggy,

As much as I like food, I certainly can't claim to be a foodie as I'm not all that adventurous (mainly after an ill-fated have a go at Sushi - who the hell calls that real food!?)

Unfortunately, the website menu bore no resemblance whatsoever to the real thing in the restaurant. I've been there a few times so I had every faith that the food would be excellent but I was a wee bit disppointed in them not having the chicken, ham and mushroom dish as I couldn't think of anything better for M. As it was, she had chicken and mushroom risotto which she was well impressed with. I had the beef lasagne which was pretty decent (I still think my pork and leek lasagne would beat it, mind!!) and we shared a really nice sticky toffee pudding so all was well in the end up. As a gauge, it was that nice that I didn't mind (overly) being charged £4.75 for a pint of diet coke! - the perils of being the driver for the night) The nutella and white chocolate cheesecake with nutella ice cream will haunt me forever if I don't go back and have a crack at it at some point but we've decided on the Champany for the 28th to celebrate paying the mortgage off.

That's not a typo by the way! The intended mortgage free date has been moved up a whole 24 hours. We've got a wee bit more money than I had anticipated having at this stage of the game but it didn't click that only one of us needs to be paid to have enough to clear it and M gets paid on the 28th so that was a nice surprise for me - just the 15 more days to go now!!

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Hi Annie,

Thanks for that. We've got many areas of focus to hit upon once the mortgage is done - this is the excerpt from my SOA which shows precisely 0% progress on all the buttons we intend hitting between 28/10/10 and 31/07/12. Luckily, we should have somewhere in the region of £3,000 - £3,250 a month spare to start attacking these - then again, M has a hankering for hitting the shops in a big way in the not too distant future and i-phones, i-pads, gym memberships and such may also make a welcome appearance in the budgeting process!

Aims Saved CostShortfallEstimateOutstandingVegas 2011 Flights - £3,000-3,000.00Dec-10-3,000.00Bathroom / Boiler Project - £7,500-7,500.00Apr-11-7,500.00Vegas 2011 Hotels - £1,500-1,500.00Jun-11-1,500.00Vegas 2011 Spending Money - £2,000-2,000.00Jul-11-2,000.00Kitchen Project - £9,000-9,000.00Jul-11-9,000.00Floors and Doors Project - £3,000-3,000.00Oct-11-3,000.00Vegas / Hawaii 2012 Flights - £5,000-5,000.00Dec-11-5,000.00Mazda 2 - £12,000-12,000.00Feb-12-12,000.00Vegas / Hawaii 2012 Hotels - £2,500-2,500.00Jun-12-2,500.00Vegas / Hawaii 2012 Spending Money - £3,500-3,500.00Jul-12-3,500.00Total - 49,000.00 -49,000.00--49,000.00

As for tips, I have many but a few (most pertinently the "reserve fund be damned - everything will work out fine" strategy) that I wouldn't be quick to recommend to others. The biggest one by far would be to do an "all in" detailed SOA to work out, to the penny, how much is sitting spare per month. Again, it was easier for us as it's only the two of us but we hadn't factored in a whole load of birthdays on my family's side that we've managed to fit in so even the things that do crop up aren't insurmountable. I do think people having the intent to take a whack at their mortgage is the biggest thing that will drive the reduction process as it does take a good bit of dedication to really go for it. As it was only a 15 month (ended up as 14 month) commitment, we were willing to make the sacrifices but there would definitely need to be a better balance struck for a longer term.

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Hmmm, please note that my SOA is a damn site tidier than that slovenly raft of numbers would have you believe!!!

Cheers,

Billy

Jock_Tight

Only a couple of weeks to go

I'll need to pick your brains re vegas as we are looking to back next year!

wynnvegas

Morning Jock,

I'm not even sure I should count the 28th as a day as it will be first thing as soon as I get into the office on the Thursday morning. If I'm feeling particularly cheeky, I may even try a midnight run at the HSBC call centre to get them to do it as soon as M has been paid.

No bother at all. I am now a veritable font of knowledge when it comes to Vegas and should see you right. They've now released the summer 2011 rooms so I'll be keeping a close eye on the deals as they start to emerge in the next few weeks and months. I'm pretty confident we'll have the money to book the flights at the end of November (so long as they don't go much above the current £3,000 price) but I may wait to see if Virgin are kind enough to include Vegas in their January sale!! Hasn't happened yet but I'm not sure how their Manchester - Vegas route is doing.

Cheers,

Billy

LilacPixie

Billy Don't mention the football, it's not good for my bloodpressure. Apologies Im a girl but my Dad was heavilly involved in football until the last few seasons when he has semi retired so I have grown up with having a rant. I ended up marrying a football hater as well, OH would rather watch motor racing. Alot of his friends and family are football daft so our wedding day was a mix of awe and disbelief from them.

I have ranted a bit on face book about last friday. What gets me is against the Czech Republic everyone was lined up for the national anthems and the Scots are standing about like a bunch of flacid penis' there was no passion, no want, no hunger. At least they attempted to get stuck in with the Spanish.

So you have 14 days to go! Whats the plan afterwards? Save save save for your project or will you be looking to buy land while prices seem quite low and just wait and wait while saving more and paying off the borrowing for the land? Do you have plans yet or is that way ahead in the future??

wynnvegas

Morning All,

As committed as we may have seemed previosuly, the building of our own house took a step forward yesterday with M suggesting (yes, I know!!) a new period of relative financial prudence with a view to getting our own place up in the next few years. She's finally realised the sense of budgeting to the penny and the mortgage freedom has dawned on her (mainly as people she works with who are 25 years older than her are just getting round to paying their mortgage off) - she said last night that she had never really thought of what we were doing as a big deal - just an inconvenience to her shopping plans!

So we're 100% on the building our house project. We're still going to do up our current house as planned with the dual benefit of us a) living in it for the next 5-7 years and b) adding value with each room. If the house gets to £175k in 5 years (current estimate £130-140k) and we can, however we do it, turn 5 years worth of saving (around £150k) into £250k in that period, then we have the opportunity to look at a project somewhere in the region of £450k. We're going to pop round tomorrow to a friend's house as she built a 7-bedroom mansion which is absolutely stunning - the only issue may be that I'll have to drag M out once we've looked about! I don't think we'll save for the new house quite as hard as we've attacked the mortgage as 7 years is a long time to be skimping and saving so we'll progress as quickly as possible whilst still having a good bit of fun - so maybe just two holidays a year for the foreseeable future...

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Hi LP,

I was really pleased with the Spain game (other than playing that numpty Kenny Miller) as we had a bit of a go and a bit of heart in the performance. I don't even mind the odd 0-0 draw but to set up and purposely play for it is worth Levein being sacked in my book. The worst of it was that the Czech's are rubbish at the moment but we've managed to pretty much throw away our chances of qualifying already.

We're seeing an IFA on Friday to discuss our options on the project (and somewhat potentially self-servingly, he also owns a good bit of land). As I say, we think we know the kind of pot we need to look at (and I'll resist any recommendation, however sensible or well-meaning, to ever take out another mortgage) but if it takes us until we're 40 to get there and we do all of the things we want to in the next ten years as opposed to 35 and really going hard at it, we'll take the former option. I'll forever regret (even though we weren't financially equipped to do it) not managing to get M's granny to Vegas to see the fountains as she loved the videos we had taken of them. We were planning it for her 75th birthday next year but she unfortunately died in the summer so we'll make sure that we never have any such regrets again when it comes to things we can do for friends and family.

Cheers,

Billy

golfiematt

14 days to mortgage freedom!. well done on that, its people like you that keep me motivated to shift ours, gl with your future plans