One day i'll make it!!!

needtopaymydebts

Well, over the past year, myself and my husband have worked really hard to clear our debts. Unfortunately, after losing a relative, we did receive a little windfall that has allowed us to be almost debt free a couple of months earlier than planned. However, a burlgary and car theft left us taking out finance on a new (used) car only one month before the finance was due to be completed on the last one! My job and family committments require me to have a decent car to travel in so we decided that we would be better off in the long run getting something slightly newer and more reliable than the previous car. Hence why i'm not certain i'm quite able to post on the MFW page with debt remaining.

However, we have overpaid our mortgage, albeit by £30 a month since we took it out four years ago, the required payments are reducing significantly at the end of the month but we are going to leave the payments the same. Essentially we are going to be overpaying by around £300ish each month, sorry i haven't got exact figures at the moment. We also have a little paid aside into an Emergency Fund although for now our jobs are both relatively secure so this should continue to build for a while yet! hopefully!

At the moment we are stuck with a Northern Rock Together Mortgage and are also in negative equity, due partly to borrowing to the maximum we could afford at the time and buying at the top price for houses in our area which have now dropped like stones and are now not selling! we would like to move to a larger home but at the moment this clearly isn't possible until we get our act together and reduce the mortgage to the point where we can be more sensible about what are options are for the future.

I seem to have lost the point of my post other than to let you know that i might be lurking around for a while and also trying to work out where we can trim out outgoings each month to maximise our savings and overpayments

thanks for reading!

earthgirl

Of course you are welcome! Good luck with you efforts, its amazing how addictive oping is!

dimbo61

If you have a together mortgage do you still have a loan as well as a mortgage ?
If you can then clear the loan first and then get into overpaying the mortgage and every little helps GOOD LUCK

jackiegibbo

hi welcome and good luck with your challenge of being mortgage free:D

setmefree2

and well done on all your progress so far:T

needtopaymydebts

Hi

thank you everyone, i think i'll spend the afternoon looking to see where we can reduce our spending on everything else and work out the best way to pay thing to get the amounts down as fast as we can!

dimbo61, yes we have an unsecured loan from NR as well as the mortgage, until now we've just made payments monthly and they have taken an amount towards the loan and the rest to the mortgage. I've never really looked into how the amounts are worked out, partly because we've always had CC's that needed paying first. Hence why i've decided to start taking more interest in this board. The maths really does confuse me!

our last mortgage statement shows that the secured loan is £115,700 and the unsecured loan is £11,500, the interest rate is exactly the same on both parts so i'm not sure if it is worth or if we are able to make additional payments to one bit more than the other. Does this make sense!

In addition to the mortgage we have the car finance with MINI Finance which was agreed over a 5 yr term to make the monthly payments fairly manageable. We agreed this on the understanding that we intend to pay it off earlier than the 5 years anyway.

Since we last looked at the mortgage, coming up 2 years ago we have overpaid by around £1000 which isn't bad considering the amount of the payments and that i've been on maternity leave for a lot of it and paying our other debts. I just really want to throw everything we can at getting this down so that we never have to sit and worry about our payments at the end of the month again. We really have learned our lesson where money is concerned and i'm kind of looking forward to getting addicted to paying our mortgage as quickly as possible!

needtopaymydebts

i think i'm getting into this now!

although i've pulled out the mortgage statement and had a proper look at it now! it makes for depressing reading just thinking of the mistakes we've made in the past...but we're putting it all right now and have learned a lot on the way!!!

our mortgage is made up of 3 parts
mortgage around £96500
secured loan around £19000
unsecured loan around £11500

all have the same interest rate

should we be specifying which part we want the overpayments to go to or does it not make a difference?

dimbo61

NR have you tied to them with the secured loan even if you wanted to move lenders onto a better deal !
All they have to say is NO! we will not be the second party to having a charge on your property ( First charge would be the NEW lender say HSBC,ABBEY,etc)
So if you are paying the same rate on all 3 parts of your debt then overpaying on the secured loan part ( if allowed !) would be best.
This is also a much smaller amount than the main mortgage and might help keep you focused.
GOOD LUCK

needtopaymydebts

Thank you for your help,

I'll see how we need to go about specifying where we want the overpayments to go to. I know that we can, just haven't yet worked out how! This should give us some extra motivation with it being a smaller amount and with the rates dropping as of 1 October. We should really be able to see a difference! I've also managed to find the logon details for the website so we can view this whenever we want too.

here's to getting rid of this mortgage/loans as quick as we've managed to deal with the rest of our debts!

I'm sure i'll be thanking you all for lots more help and advice in the next few months while we get on our way!

Thank You

wantabetterlife

Hi needtopaymydebts and a big welcome to the mfw board!! I am fairly new to this aswell and have not started a diary yet because i am on maternity leave and there is no spare money at the moment to make overpayments. I think i will wait until the new year and start one then, when i am back at work. Like you we have many regrets about borrowing more money on our mortgage and spending it on rubbish! But i think we all learn from our mistakes and i certainly wouldnt be as stupid again!!
I love reading all the threads on this board and look forward to reading your updates. Goodluck on the journey:T:T

needtopaymydebts

hi again,

just thought i'd update this a little to let you know what i've been up to over the past few days!

i've contacted NR who have informed me that I need to change the payment from a SO to a DD in order to specify that I want a regular overpayment to be made to a specific part of the amount. I have no idea why this is but i'm now waiting for them to send the forms out. Then taking into account the drop in interest rates we are going to make a regular overpayment of £397 each month. This should leave us both with a little extra each month after bills have been paid that we can use as a bit of a buffer, for little treats or to save as we like. We already have a small emergency fund for bigger things that might go wrong. We've agreed that once we have enough saved in our own accounts we might then increase our payments even further.

i've also managed to find a local charity that buy clothes, bed sheets etc to sell on. Even if I only get a few £'s then it's better than nothing as my wardrobe is full of dresses that i've only worn a couple of times for weddings, christenings etc I've tried listing them on ebay but just ended up with a load of fees to pay!

the local shop has started a charity book shelf, where you can donate books and offer a donation for ones that you want to buy. Much cheaper than my usual library fines! and less time taken choosing due to less choice!

i might look into a few of the 'got gold get cash companies'! for a few bits and pieces that I have. I also looked into increasing my hours at work although i have been what I would described as well and truly stitched up and this is a no go at the moment...although a perfect opportunity to extend my family i think!

i have also been very good with my money and have turned down two unnecessary nights out this month, leaving me extra to put towards a few nights out in the next few months.

I feel like i've done a lot more even just writing it all down here! it still seems as though it's going to take us a long time to get out of this mortgage, eventually allowing us to save for a deposit and move to something more suitable for a family...but...we'll do it somehow.

Fingers for a bit of luck on the way!