Baby steps to being mortgage free

pammyj74

Baby_steps wrote: »

Thanks for that kick up the butt pammy, I needed it:p I probably needed a couple of items but not all of them if i'm honest.

hope it didnt sound too harsh lol

I have spreadsheets to do the budgeting, and I really enjoy playing with them. But i'm still getting used to actually sticking to it and find living with budget really hard :mad:

It does get some getting used to but once you are in the stride of it then when you allow yourself a little treat it is all the better for waiting for it

I have been good with the home insurance though, looked online and got a quote for £60 cheaper, plus £60 cash back. I am going to pay this on my personal CC this month to get the clubcard points and then pay it off with joint account money next month. So if I use the clubcard vouchers on line thats another £7. So all in all a total saving of £127 .:j:j:j:j

That means the amount paid off the joint CC this month is £390. Still less than what I would normally pay but this is because paid the annual travel insurance premium and service charge.

I am still having a look at my personal finances for the month. I have an outstanding balance of £1050 on my tesco clubcard (not taking off this months payment) and by the end of the month am normally in the overdraft by about £1100. The available balance on the OD is £3000. I am considering paying off the CC balance in full this month and using the OD to do this. The interest on the CC is less than the OD, but not by much. I'm thinking that as I won't max out the OD for the entire month I will save interest this way. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

My new years resolution at the start of this year was to be debt free by the end of 2010 and I will make this happen :cool:. Once the joint card is paid off the extra money will go towards the mortgage and savings (I anticipate this to be August). Once my personal debts are cleared I will then build up some savings for my emergency fund.

The main thing it seems is to curb your spending on things you dont need and think about the interest you would be saving if you pay off your CC rather than add to it!

Baby_steps_2

Pammy you didn't sound to harsh, that’s the point of being on this site, a reality check and to keep me focused!!

Right I have done it, I've cleared my CC :T Ok so lets be honest its completely cheating as I used the OD to do it. The only thing left on the CC now is the home insurance to be paid off out of next months joint account money.

This means my personal total debt by the end of the month will be £1859:mad::mad:. But at least I know now exactly how things stand and will clear that by the end of the year. This will hopefully give me the focus I need to shift that now. The only big expenditure coming out is my membership to a professional body of £100. After that the spending stops and I can just get on with shifting it all. I have updated my sig to represent the Joint debt and my personal debt.

In other MSE news I have joined one poll to try and do more surveys. This should help earn some extra income, which will help towards everything.

I’m struggling with the food budget, already ¾’s of the way through :mad:so £45 left until the end of the month. It will be a it tight but do have lots of food in so hopefully I might just stick to it.

In other news, have spent so much time studying (exams next week) my personal budget is looking forward pretty good. Despite the shopping earlier in the month so should hopefully come in on budget with some new clothes to show for it.:T:T

Baby_steps_2

Well just wanted to say, part of the reason I joined one poll was the new i-phone app. I just wanted to say anyone with an i-phone should get it and do it. It is so easy to work and makes accessing and doing surveys really easy. Would definatly recomend it to anyone with an i-phone. Have made 95p so easily, plus the £2.50 joing bonus so 3.45 already done for ten minutes of my time!!:beer:

pammyj74

ooh good luck with the surveys, they can be time consuming sometimes but if you stick at it they soon build up

good luck with your exam next week

Baby_steps_2

Well it just keeps getting worse for my personal finances but think this in finally it. My personal debt figure is officially £2000. On one hand I am proud of myself that I have finally sorted it all out and Know exactly where I stand. Although it is worse than I expected, I am starting to wonder if I'm in the wrong forum:mad:

I will stay here though as am aiming to have the joint debts paid off by the end of August, this will then mean we can use the extra joint money to pay down the mortgage. This is to reduce the LTV so when we re-mortgage next year we have the maximum capital possible.

But in the mean time will document how I'm hoping to get rid of the now £2K overdraft. It is going to take a lot of determination and careful planning to get rid of this. I have worked out that I can only clear £240 next month. This is because we are going away for two weeks so need some sun cream and bits and bobs as well as extra spending money. As well as this July seems to be my big birthday month so some extra money is going on that. I am however hoping to get this up to £250 if i can scale something back.

To have any chance of achieving my goal by the end of the year, I am really going to need to up these payments and make as much extra I can. I am due £146 from quidco that I'm hoping will pay out by the end of the year. I also will need to get to £40 from one poll, doing OK on this one £5.80 so far in my first week so need to get to £40 by end year as well. I will also try to get to £10 from VO, although have to admit don't get on to well with this site for some reason.

So from now on I have £30 a month for treats, if anyone hears I have spent more than this on shopping please fell free to tell me the error of my ways,:A from here on in!!

Baby_steps_2

Well Just wanted to outline my plans with the mortgage for the next couple of years. To give me some focus. The original mortgage was taken out in May 2008 at 5.62% for a 2 year fix over a 35 year term at needs to be repaid to the developers in ten years and the first five a value of £165,000. This covered 75% of the property, the other 25%years of the loan is interest free.

I was very shocked to discover in the 2 years we have lived here we have only paid 2.5K off in capital:mad::mad: and this has made me want to focus on repaying the mortgage. I reckon the property is currently worth about £200K a fall of £20K and putting are LTV value back up to above 75% and reducing the deals available to us (as well as putting us into negative equity although this won't be the case for mortgage purposes). The aim is to go on the SVR from July 31 and significantly overpay, and to remortgage in March/April next year for £155K. So basically reducing the capital by £6K over those 7/8 months.

I then want to look at fixing again for 5 years. I have seen a product with the rate of 4.99 for 80% LTV so am hoping we can get this. We will then continue to over pay by about £250 per month. The aim is over those next five years to reduce the mortgage to £125K. This will mean we would have paid off £40K in the first 8 years of the mortgage and will save £50K in interest.s:j:j:j:j

We will the probably look at repurchasing the remaining 25% of the property. But just for fun and to see how quick we could pay off the mortgage and what we would re-pay I decided to carry on. This is getting a bit pie in the sky but hey gave me some interesting results. So assuming we continued to pay £1000 per month and the interest rate was 5% for the remaining term then these were the results ..........

Pay the mortgage off in 23 years (12 years less than the original term!!)
saving a massive £99,979 in interest:j:j:j:j

I had done a nice little graph but for some reason can't get it in. Now I know it is very unlikely that this will be what actually happens as there are way to many variables. But wow what an eye opener. Saving £100K in interest is amazing. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as the £300 I have currently overpaid has already saved me £1603.

pammyj74

Its good when you see how much interest you can save by OPing, its such an eyeopener that quite a few people dont even think about and just pay as normal for the rest of their life! I so wish I started it at the beginning I would be nearly free now

Baby_steps_2

Long and boring day at work today. Just had to resist the urge to sign up for a savings account with scottish mutual. They are offering £100 cashback via quidco!! £50 for first two deposits of at least £25 and another £50 on your 12th installment. I have been looking at these accounts for some time as a tax effective way to save.

I know this isn't the time to start an account like that though, I know its only £25 per month but if I save that I will never hit my target to pay off the debts by the end of the year, plus no point saving with debts anyway. So I'm going to wait until early next year and then wait for another offer like this and start doing it then. The cashback would really have helped me achieve my £200 target for the year though!!

Currently my quidco balance is £174.50, so another £25 to go before I meet my yearly target.

My current balance on VO is £6, and one poll is £6.10, would like to get to £10 on one-poll by the end of the week but not sure how realistic this is as only got 30p today. Although I am now addicted to checking for new surveys, I think its because they pay a decent amount of real cash!!:D Toluna is up to 28,000.

I got my first Toluna gift voucher at the weekend for debenhams, so decided to use it for a treat given the lack of money available for them this month. I got myself a lovely mac eyeshadow. I usually wear it and had decided not to replace it when it ran out as to expensive, so it was nice to get myelf a little something to keep me going!!:j:j Other than that I was very good and bought nothing. A big achievement for me:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

pammyj74

well done baby steps! you are getting more than me daily on onepoll I normally have been lucky to get 10p a day the last few days!

well done on the debs voucher.

InaPickle

Baby_steps wrote: »

Pay the mortgage off in 23 years (12 years less than the original term!!)
saving a massive £99,979 in interest:j:j:j:j

Those statistics are actually quite scary. Well done on being sussed enough to figure it out! :cool: