museumworker's quest to consign mortgage to history!

museumworker

Hello all you crazy MFW's (and any lurkers too;)). This is museumworker's diary to record my quest to become MF :j:j even the thought of it is very exciting!

I have just joined the MFin3-T2 challenge, and thought keeping a diary would be a good way to focus my attention on mortgage overpayments. I have what feels like a massive mortgage - £194,000 as of end of last year :eek: and the aim is to pay off around £34K by the end of 2012. There, I've written it down now so will feel :o:o if don't manage to do it! We are due to remortgage in Feb 2012, so it is an important year for us as we are hoping to get a better LTV and a better mortgage rate as a consequence.

We purchased our house in Oct 2008 for £237,000 (I live in London, so this is cheap for an actual house here!;)), we ported over a mortgage of £198k from my boyfriend's old flat. It is with C&G, fixed at 5.09% til Feb 2012, with very large redemption charges. The amount that can be overpaid is fixed at 10% per year of the total sum. Due to end in Feb 2036 :eek:.

I've been an MSE[STRIKE]fanatic[/STRIKE] fan for about 12 months now. In that time I've learnt about selling my toot/treasures to raise an extra few quid, meal planning, budgeting and general cheap skating ways. I'm very lucky in having a fantastic OH who is fully on board the MFW train. Last Nov we set ourselves the then seemingly impossible challenge of saving 10K for our loft in 2010. Amazingly, we will have saved that amount by mid next month :j:j so are now open-eyed to how much we can do to become MF. (as context, in 2009 we only managed to save £1,100 so this is a major turnaround for us).

A little about us: we both work full time, me in the (not very well paid) museum sector (as you may have guessed), and have a DD aged 7. We are lucky to have a great group of friends and family, so balancing enjoying them with overpaying will be a challenge!

The current plan is to get the loft done this summer (aug/sep) and after then start putting all of our extra money into the mortgage. I'm hoping we can overpay £3K this year, £15K in 2011, and £7k in 2012, when we are thinking of having another mini-museumworker!

Anyway, thanks for reading!:D If anyone knows how I can overpay on my C&G mortgage easily, please do let me know as I only get annual statements, I can't access the account online:mad:

museumworker

Today's MFW activities:
* did four online surveys (V boring, but need to keep on top as every extra quid counts!)
* found some of the schweppes swim water bottles :j- needed water anyway, and get free swim with the cap in my local pool! The bottles of water are 60p each, will save £2 on my weekly swim, so bought 3 for now.
* sold book on Amazon , first for 2 months
* entered 10+ competitions
* leftover spag bog for dinner

Not so MFW
* black tights laddered on way to funeral :mad:so had to spend £4.50 on a pack in emergency pit stop
* daughter needed summer sandals, let her pick some from next at £18 (although last year I bought her birkis at £20 she never wore, so at least they'll hopefully get used!)

Now need to pack as off camping for OH family birthday, off tomorrow after work. The weather should be great, hope you all have great weekends!:beer:

Courgette

Hi Museumworker - welcome and good luck!

I don't know anything about C&G I'm afraid but my mortage has the same 10% OP limit per rolling year (so really hard to keep track of) and the way I got round it was by reducing the term. I'll be on mat leave in a few weeks (YES!!! :beer:) so will need to increase the term again once my wage goes down.

Otherwise, just ring them and ask. Some say you can OP but only a certain amount at a time (seems to be about £500). You may have said what your interest rate is and mrs preggo-brain here missed it, but check you'll not be better paying any OPs into an ISA - the advantage of that is that you can pay tiny little bits in when it suits you - you've seen my 5p comment

My top tip: make the admin side of OPing as simple as you possibly can

Good luck! Love a new diary :T

mummyofonechild

Hi

I have only just joined this challenge too but have been overpaying my mortgage since last Sept. What worked for me was setting up an additional standing order so the overpayment goes out automatically and I dont miss it. That way it is fully automated and I am not tempted to buy another pair of Ugg boots from ebay. I think I have one pair for everyday of the week now. Had to collect last pair from Post Office this morning whilst hubby was out, but as I am paying double what the mortgage should be, he cant grumble too much

dimbo61

Cashback credit cards help and so does quidco ( for me) I also have a fantastic OH who has an eye for a bargain even down to sugar,milk and bread.
Good luck

tootallulah

Hi museumworker and good luck. I am very impressed by the saving of £10k. Looks to me like you are going to make your target and live a good life, sounds GREAT.

drewwa

Good luck with it all.

The key thing is to find a balance between OPing and having a life. Also, be as consistant as you can. It does make a huge difference over the long haul. I've just been looking back at my financial tracking spreadsheet and it's amazing the difference that the overpaying is making.

With overpaying I'm down to 84k on my original 202k mortgage. If I hadn't overpaid I'd still be around the 177k mark!

My biggest tips?
Payrises/Bonuses go straight into the savings/offset after a nice meal out
Credit cards with cash back are worth it if you're careful
Offset mortgage works wonders if you have a reasonable pile of cash
Run a sensible second-hand diesel car. Saves a fortune if you do miles
Make everything DD so you never miss the money
Scrutinise expenditure on a monthly basis

Keep us up to date.

Cheers,

Drew.

museumworker

Courgette wrote: »

Hi Museumworker - welcome and good luck!

I don't know anything about C&G I'm afraid but my mortage has the same 10% OP limit per rolling year (so really hard to keep track of) and the way I got round it was by reducing the term. I'll be on mat leave in a few weeks (YES!!! :beer:) so will need to increase the term again once my wage goes down.

Hi Courgette, thanks for your post. I follow (well lurk on) your diary, you are such an inspiration, like MFW royalty:rotfl:!

Great news that you'll be on mat leave soon, I think you've coped amazingly well with the SPD, and it was good to read that it'll clear up after the birth :j.

Good tip about decreasing the term - I'm not sure if I can do that before Feb 2012 though, and doubt I'll overpay more than 10% of £194K :eek: in the next year or two. But definitely look at doing that in 2012 and after, as I imagine it doesn't take that long before the 10% limit starts to impact on payments.

The interest rate is 5.09%, so better to overpay than save in an ISA. We do have money in ISAs at the minute, but might have to clear those out for the loft work.

museumworker

mummyofonechild wrote: »

Hi
I have only just joined this challenge too but have been overpaying my mortgage since last Sept. What worked for me was setting up an additional standing order so the overpayment goes out automatically and I dont miss it. That way it is fully automated and I am not tempted to buy another pair of Ugg boots from ebay. I think I have one pair for everyday of the week now. Had to collect last pair from Post Office this morning whilst hubby was out, but as I am paying double what the mortgage should be, he cant grumble too much

Hi mummyofonechild (like I am), thanks for your post and congrats on overpaying your mortage, I am very much looking forward to my first proper overpayment!

Here's hoping the heatwave is putting you off those ugg boots on ebay (although I assume it is a better time of year to buy winter things in terms of moneysaving! :money:).

I will be looking into how to automate the payments for C&G, at the moment we check our accounts after payday and manually transfer money into a savings account.

museumworker

dimbo61 wrote: »

Cashback credit cards help and so does quidco ( for me) I also have a fantastic OH who has an eye for a bargain even down to sugar,milk and bread.
Good luck

I must admit I don't know much about cashback credit cards - could you point me in the direction of any good posts about it? I use topca$hback, and have got about £300 out of them since September, just through insurance renewals and the like. Incredible that you can get money for things you need anyway. :T for the OH, he sounds like a gem.

museumworker

tootallulah wrote: »

Hi museumworker and good luck. I am very impressed by the saving of £10k. Looks to me like you are going to make your target and live a good life, sounds GREAT.

Thanks for the good wishes tootallulah, I have been following your diary with interest too. Sounds like you have done well too paying off £6k since Jan. I'm interested to see whether you will ever kick that £2 a day coffee habit !! I do very much hope to meet (or even, exceed, target) but still have a social life left at the end of it!