2010 MF Wannabes

Gargola

Hi pawlala,
I'm with Alliance and Leicester for my mortgage.
Annoyingly I can't access the account itself online so can't check for balance, interest etc. But I can make payments online and then they send me a letter telling me my new payment level and balance.
I'd love an account where I can check everything online (Nationwide seems good) but couldn't match my rate if I moved at the mo!
Gargola

uzubairu

My overpayments so far this month are:- £130 + £500 + £340 = £970.

I'll be adding another £10 next week, then I'll call it quits for this month.
I don't want to risk getting charged a fee for exceeding my overpayment limit.

I've already got £700 ready for next month, and hope to add to that once I sell a few more bits of junk on eBay.

I'll complete the update form for cake21 at the end of the month.

SalsaDanca

I have changed my monthly payment back to what it was before my fixed rate ended in June, so I'll be automatically overpaying by £87 per month from now on. The direct debit was taken from my bank account this week, so I've made my first overpayment of 2010! There will be another overpayment when I get paid, so I'll complete the Cake21's update form at the end of the month.

Nationwide's online mortgage statements are OK. They show you the total amount of interest charged so far this calendar year, and total payments received per month. They don't show individual payments, so it might be hard to keep track if you make lots of little overpayments, but its enough to keep your records up-to-date. The important thing is that they accept payments by bank transfer, so you don't have to mess about with cheques.

sassyblue

Hi all, l've just opened a new thread but we only pay council tax over 10 months so Feb/March are 'free' so those two payments are going in the mortgage reserve account, just a thought if some of you hadn't remembered (and are able to do it) x

curlygirl1971

Hi

I pay into a Mortgage Protection Policy (Life/Sickness/Redundancy). I know there are probably plenty of people who would think its a fools game but I considered it long and hard and felt it was something I wanted to do and still want to do. Anyway that's besides the point.........

The amount I pay is linked to to the Standard Monthly amount I pay to my Mortgage every month. If the standard payment goes down then so does the Mortgage Protection payment (albeit by a small amount). So when I overpaid by £1500 before Xmas I asked them to lower my Standard payment rather than reduce my term. I added the difference between my old and my new payment to my usual over-payment and I also added the (small) saving I make on my Mortgage Protection Payment.

So if anyone else has such a policy, then look into how they calculate the monthly payment and perhaps reducing your Standard payment will save you a £1 or 2 that you can add to your OP.

Every penny counts!......and I have no intention of only paying their new lower Standard Monthly payment (unless I fall on seriously hard times) so the term isn't really extended.

ironman1

pigtails_21 wrote: »

Hi, can I join in as well..I have a scary 40 year mortgage on a shared ownership property. I've not really ventured over here before. We're looking to overpay 3.5k in 2010.

A little about us (I'll probably set up a diary next year). We're hoping to tackle our mortgage before we even think about buying the other half of the house, and we're saving to get married (probably abroad)..once our little girl starts school next year, we'll have a lot more to save/use for overpayments..

Apart from the daughter bit your situation sounds exactly like mine and my gf's... We are also paying off a 40 year mortgage for half the property. Even the overpayment is what I put down for us for 2010. Least there is more than one of us out there in the same boat!

SalsaDanca

curlygirl1971 wrote: »

I pay into a Mortgage Protection Policy (Life/Sickness/Redundancy).

Thanks for mentioning this, CurlyGirl. My mortgage protection policy was set up by my mortgage broker, and it was bought from an insurance company that isn't connected to the mortgage company.

My MPP policy will pay out a fixed amount per month if I suffer accident or sickness or am made redundant - the premium was calculated to give me £400 per month. However, the policy will only cover a certain amount (I think it's 125% of the standard monthly mortgage payment), even if I'm paying for more cover than that. My standard monthly mortgage payment has been reduced because of overpayments and a change in interest rate, but I haven't told the insurance company, so it's possible that I have been paying for more cover than I can claim.

I will dig out the paperwork and make sure that I have the right amount of cover. If anyone else has a mortgage protection policy, they should consider doing the same.

DisgruntledGoat

Out of interest, how do you MFW guys plan for other long-term purchases?

Just been going through some numbers, at some point we're going to have to replace the car (hopefully 5+ years, it's a 54-plate that's been very reliable so far, we've owned it since 10k miles, 1 year old), the boiler may need to be done and we have some building work (£10k or so) that's going to have to be done at some point. We have other savings that'll cover at least some of that, but we can't get mortgage overpayments back so that money is effectively 'gone' until we're mortgage-free.

At the moment the attraction is to overpay as much as we can and deal with other things when we get there (suspending overpayments if necessary), but i'm wondering if I should be putting more into accessible savings and less onto the mortgage so that we can cover everything that's likely to crop up.

curlygirl1971

Hi Disgruntledgoat

Well I guess we all have our own way of doing things. I'm a security freak - I like to know I have reasonable possibilities covered. Especially as for most of my life I've been single and not on a great salary. So I spent years saving up.

First I started an account that would take care of annual expenses (Insurances, Christmas, Car service and even some budget if I want a holiday or needed car repairs). I worked out a budget for each / 12 and I've always put that much away each month from my salary. I review it to make sure I'm putting away enough. I keep it in a separate easy access account. Sometimes I syphon amounts off and fix them

I didn't realise I was doing it at the time but I also felt I needed an additional amount behind me which some people would call an 'emergency fund' designed to cover the cost of living expenses if unemployed for say 6 months. (Although I do have a mortgage protection policy). I will also need a new boiler in the next year and will fund this from that fund which I will then re-build. I want a new bathroom in a couple of years so will take the cost from this fund and then re-build again. This is mainly in fixed accounts.

Last time I replaced my car I then looked forward to when I would be replacing it and how much I would possibly want spend. Say £5000 in 5 years. £5000 / 5 / 12 = the additional amount I started putting away in my 'Annual expenses account' towards my next car.

I know not everyone is able to do this and I consider myself lucky that it occurred to me years ago, the year before I got my own place. It's not that I have bags of money - it's just that I've always done it. Sometimes it has been extremely hard to find the monthly 'payment' to my account. And sometimes I've sacrificed other things to ensure I wouldn't have to worry over the next year.

I have a huge spreadsheet that I record all account balances on, deduct any spending and also have forecasted spending on my savings sheet. I have moved money around to earn best interest rates

Now I'm comfortable with my level of savings and esp as they are earning less, I have just started over paying my mortgage with bits of spare cash (amounts I previously used to build up my emergency fund). Now that I see the amount of money I'm going to be saving over the next 10 years I kinda feel 'why didn't I start this years ago' but back then I wasn't ready and felt other things were important

Many other people feel completely different and would think my approach completely over the top. So decide on what your priorities are, what makes you tick and what strategy fits best for you.

Sorry for long post - I always struggle with short explanations.....

uzubairu

I use my Sharesave scheme at work for those kind of things.
The monthly payments come out of my pay before it hits my bank account.
So I get used to the money thats left and budget with that.

When they mature each February, I sell enough shares to get back my payments and stick that in my Cash ISA and the rest (profit) stays as shares.
Every 3 years enough shares are sold to fund replacing my car.

If we needed to replace a boiler or needed major work done on the house we would sell some of those shares.
We haven't had to do that so far with the house being built in 2006.
We would probably use those funds for something that cost £3K+ and we needed the money fast, but for most things such a washing machine / dishwasher / fridge / TV etc we would probably reduce overpayments for a short period of time.

We do have approx £2K instant access with egg paying just over 3%.
Since we are with Nationwide, we can get back overpayments, so we have slowly been moving our emergency funds to the Overpayment Reserve and added £9K to it last year, because our mortgage rate is fixed at 4.79%.

I've financed my last 4 cars with SAYE 3/5 years schemes from my employer (2 brand new through brokers, 1 pre-registered with delivery mileage and 1 less than a year old) and never had to get a loan.

The year before last (2008) we reduced the overpayments by 50% for 5 months so that we could put that money towards new worktops in the kitchen.