It's a marathon not a sprint.....

nookey_bear

nookey_bear wrote: »

I thought I'd post a quick update - been a busy bee this week!

Firstly, I have just switched tariffs on my EON elec and gas, they offer an online-managed tariff where you are tied into a price per unit until Apr 2011, and I have estimated my annual savings will be £180!!

Secondly, managed to persuade OH to switch to a cheape mobile tariff, that should start mid Mar which should save us around £10/mth

Thirdly, I have decided to stop doing the lottery at work so that will save me £4/mth

Forthly, my house insurance has reduced by £64 per year!

So overall, this week's hard work should save me £412 per year, which equals £35 per mth. This will be our regular OP from this month!

There was a fifth saving but I cant remember what it was! It will come back to me soon....

have a good weekend y'all!!

:money:

just remembered my 5th 'saving' plan. I have a very good cashback CC onto which all our food, fuel etc spend goes. Each mth I get around £10 cashback which then automatically goes towards the Jan statement. So I will be adding this to my monthly OPs.

So........OPs of £45/mth from April onwards will save me £9,910 interest and reduce term by 1.6yrs. Adding this to my 'spare' nursery fees next July, interest saved will be £53,800 and term reduced by 9.75yrs. At this rate, I could be MF by 49 and not 50!!

nookey_bear

I have just checked with my mortgage provider -

- If I OP by less then £500 a month, then this amount isnt knocked off my loan amount, just the interest so it isnt worth doing.
- If I OP more than £500/mth, then this is classed as a capital payment and it comes off the bottom line.

So until little 'un finishes nursery next July, I wont be able to make any £500+ lump sums. So any savings I do have (predicted £50 or so per mth) I will stick in my savings acct until I have enough to make £500

Also, the current SVR is 5.99% so having a quick recalc (and if move onto the SVR after my fixed rate period ends) I will save nearly £56k in interest and own my house by the time I'm 49 and OH is 47!!:rotfl::T:rotfl:

nookey_bear

Thought I'd better post an update, cant believe its been exactly one yeay since last post!

For various reasons that are too heavy to go into here, my OPing plans didnt quite work out last year. Anyway, I have spent the last 6 mths planning 'the future' (retirement planning, collating pension forecasts, moving to higer rate savings accts, setting S&S ISA's up etc) so I havent been completely idle! I now have a good idea when I can (as opposed to want to) retire - I have been active on the pensions & retirement planning board!

So back to OPing. My youngest finishes nursery in July and so the hefty monthly nursery fee stops - YAY!!. Our plans are to use that money (approx £500/mth) to OP the mortgage, for the first 12 mths we will probably pay off £1000 every 2nd mth (so move £500 each mth into our instant access P Office acct) - there are some possible big spends due our way in the next year and so rather than 'commit' to £500 per mth, we will pay £1000 every 2nd mth so we have the first £500 still available if required - hopefully we wont need it but I always have to have a Plan B!

So on this basis, we will overpay £6,000 per year, which all being well means we will be MF by Aug 2022 (so 10 yrs earlier than expected, saving us £32,000 interest!!) Our fixed rate ends at end of this year so that might change these plans a little but we'll see. This does all change my initial plans to start saving for kids uni fees, deposit for house etc - I will probably reassess in 12 mths and see how our overall finances are.

dimbo61

Are you still going to OZ in april ? we went in 2009 for 4 weeks to sydney ( my sister lives there) and had a great holiday.
We reduced our mortgage from 22 years down to 10 just over 5 years ago and have knocked over £50K off the mortgage in interest so now we hope to be MF in less than 3 years BUT plans may change.
By OPing we have also built up a massive op pot and could if we needed take a payment holiday or reduce our mortgage payment each month

hillcats

Keep up the good work NB !
How much was / is your mortgage debt now?

nookey_bear

dimbo61 wrote: »

Are you still going to OZ in april ? we went in 2009 for 4 weeks to sydney ( my sister lives there) and had a great holiday.
We reduced our mortgage from 22 years down to 10 just over 5 years ago and have knocked over £50K off the mortgage in interest so now we hope to be MF in less than 3 years BUT plans may change.
By OPing we have also built up a massive op pot and could if we needed take a payment holiday or reduce our mortgage payment each month

hey dimbo! yep, we go this coming Sunday!! cant wait! would I prefer to spend the holiday money on the mortgage? maybe, but life is all about balance. we have been saving for this trip for about 3years so we will damn well enjoy it!! I like the sound of reducing term to 10yrs, and all that cash saved in interest payments!!

nookey_bear

hillcats wrote: »

Keep up the good work NB !
How much was / is your mortgage debt now?

cheers hillcats, mortgage was £152,500 in April 2007, as of end of 2010 it was £139,811. cant wait to start on the OP's when we get back from Oz

nookey_bear

ok, so we did the Oz thing, great trip and if were still a single lad, I would probably be living there now!

We on the verge on making our 1st overpayment, planning for £1000 at start of October. Now that my youngest has finished nursery and is about to start work (ok, school then...) we have a 'spare' £500 pm to spend/save. The plan is to put aside £500 every mth, and then every 2 mths OP the £1,000. I became self-employed in July so the strategy of saving for 2 mths and OPing at the end of mth 2 fits into my current earnings pattern (some months good, others not quite so good), once things settle down we will probably switch to mthly overpayments. Our other consideration is that our 5yr fixed mortgage expires at the end of the year, so we are starting to look at our options (to fix or not to fix, that is the question...)

cheers

nookey_bear

Just wanted to say that we made our first ever OP yesterday!!!! £650 which we had saved during the end of last year. It was such a great feeling to hand the money over (!) as I know how much interest it has saved us already.

We decided to opt for a variable tracker mortgage after our fixed finished end of 2011, and as a result our mthly payments are down by £120. At the moment we are deciding whether to put into our OP pot or use it each month for the 'little jobs that need doing around the house' I think it will be a combination of the 2, as there are some things that need doing quite urgently ('need to do' rather than 'would like to do') but now we've made our first OP, we want to keep this ticking over. So maybe it will be £50/mth for OP and the rest for urgent jobs.

nookey_bear

The impact of our first OP was to reduce the mthly payments by just over £3/mth, but the term stayed the same. I rang NBS to query this and they said that the OP did come off the capital but term stays the same - to reduce the term would cost £30 each time!

So we have decided to keep term as it is (now 20yrs 1 mth) and simply put the difference between old and new mthly payments into our OP pot. Our plan for the next 2 yrs or so is to OP £500 (the min. amount we can OP by) every 4 mths or so - as well as 'saving' interest and seeing our mthly payments drop, then when we look to remortgage in a few years time, we can look at going back up to our original mthly payment level and reduce the term.

Its such a great feeling having made our first OP and planning for our next one!! I can see this getting addictive.....!!