Jaywhoopee's MF diary

jaywhoopee

wynnvegas wrote: »

We're too chicken to move from the current 3-bed semi to our forever house as I'm perhaps stupidly against taking out another mortgage. Our notion is to save the difference between our house now and the next (and last - certainly in the UK) one.

I think if we'd owed as little as you do now there would have been a lot more resistance to the idea of borrowing again. At least some of the ease with which we saddled ourselves with the extra 55k was "the amount we owe is so high it doesn't seem real" detachment (although that's not to say we can't afford it).

I've finally finished insulating and boarding the loft (delayed by a killer combination of perfectionism and laziness!) and the house is now quite nice and tidy, so we're finally feeling the "forever house" feeling (much more than when it was a box filled mess anyway!)

jaywhoopee

We're inching closer to our first milestone - we're just under 172k owed so will hopefully reach the sub 170k mark in May.
As of October we also now fully own the car. (And as sods law dictates, since it's now out of warranty the parking sensors have given up the ghost!)

Money aside, 2011 hasn't started very well, with the loss of loved ones (both human and feline). This has resulted in a lot more travel and expense than usual, but we've still managed to keep our overpayment on track and cleared £1000 from the balance in February which feels pretty good!

Now we're beginning to think about saddling ourselves with more debt and extending the house!

drewwa

Sounds like really solid progress. I like it. Keep going!

Cheers,

Drew.

jaywhoopee

Another £1000 cleared from the balance and the first OP over 400 this year :j (albeit only by 10p!). We only managed to OP over £400 once last year and I suspect this year will be similar.

As the direct debit more than covers the worst case where the interest rate is at its 5.99% cap, if interest rates don't rise this year then we would only need to make an £18 OP on top of the usual monthly one to hit the 4k target.

I'm tempted to increase the target, but I think a BOE base rate rise is probably on the cards this year so I'll probably leave it alone.

jaywhoopee

To revisit the poll attached to this diary, the emergency fund is now above 6 mortgage payments (and at the capped 5.99% rate including about £300 overpayment too :j).

If I include the work sharesave scheme then we're probably just about at 6 x take-home pay.

I had intended to ramp up overpayments at this point, but we're beginning to consider home improvements, so we may overpay and borrow the OPs back if/when we decide to do anything major.

Despite such "borrowing back" being allowed by the terms of the mortgage it just feels wrong though!

jaywhoopee

Outstanding balance now below £170k :j

It's also the 4th or 5th month in a row where we've managed to clear £1k from the outstanding balance

jaywhoopee

Another month with £1k cleared from the balance. :j

Not sure we can sustain this (particularly if rates increase) but I've upped the target for this year to £4,400 all the same.

I'm aiming to have a lot of NSDs this month and next to make up for a few major purchases recently. (I've had a few things in my amazon shopping basket for a while, tracking their prices up and down, but several of them dropped to really compelling prices over the last month or so and I've been weak )

jaywhoopee

I thought I'd add some estimated dates for our upcoming milestones.

They're all based on being able to sustain the current level of overpayment even if interest rates increase, so they may slip but we'll try to hit them all the same.

[STRIKE]187k borrowed - Oct 2009
10k capital repaid - Oct 2010.
MF 2010 (4059/4000 OP) - Dec 2010
170k outstanding - Apr 2011
20k capital repaid - Aug 2011
MF 2011 (5420/5400 OP) - Dec 2011
160k outstanding - Feb 2012
30k capital repaid - May 2012
152k outstanding - Oct 2012[/STRIKE] (original mortgage on previous house)
[STRIKE]MF 2012 (4244/4500 OP) - Dec 2012
40k capital repaid - Mar 2013
140k outstanding - Sep 2013
MF 2013 (5126/5000 OP) - Dec 2013
50k capital repaid - Dec 2013[/STRIKE]
132k outstanding - Jun 2014? (amount owed on previous house when we traded up)
MF 2014 (5000 OP) - Dec 2014?
60k capital repaid - Mar 2015?
120k outstanding - Jun 2015?
MF 2015 (5000 OP) - Dec 2015?

Hitting the 152k and 132k outstanding milestones will be a big boost for us psychologically but 2014 seems a long way away, hence the need for all the intermediates to keep us focused.

(I'm hoping to increase future MFW targets to £8k from £4-5k so have updated the target milestones accordingly to motivate us. Edit 30/09/2012: Looking unlikely at the moment so reverted to £5k)

jaywhoopee

Another 1k cleared this month

Not doing too well at the NSDs though

jaywhoopee

£20k capital repaid as of this month, so another milestone reached. :beer:

I got a small raise and bonus :j so have overpaid a small lump sum extra this month and increased the MFW 2011 target too.

It was a close run thing as I was sorely tempted by a new camera lens!