The MFW diary of a procrastinator

mbbetter · 27 June 2012 at 8:39AM

Hello – I’m back.
Despite my last post indicating that I was shutting downthis diary, it transpires that I jsuat can’t keep away from OPing the mortgage.I set up a regular investor with iii – but to cut a long story short, theyintroduced some charges which made it
So back to the diary – we have managed to chip a bit moreoff with a couple of overpayments from the pay. Also a sweet little ebay sale froma freebie we picked up +£10

New mortgage has started with a 3.49% 2 year fixed – which whilstis quite a lot higher than some, a pretty good deal with zero fee.

Stoozepot now sits at around £6k in the offset, which hasbeen a great plan so far.
So I’m back on the case and looking for to max out thescrimping and saving this month. Aldi has now replaced most of the thing sonour weekly shop...

Cheers all

mbbetter · 20 November 2012 at 1:10PM

Wow was my last post really June – time flies when you are having fun!

In fact it is now over 2 years since I started the diary. I guess it’s natural that the regularity of the posting has slowed.
Mortgage now stands at £123,467

I perhaps need to set a new target, based in the new financial plans we put in place with ISA saving.
The mortgage overpayment has slowed down somewhat, but that is mainly down to diverting cash into ISA funds. This is fully offset whilst it is being stashed, which is quite nice really. The ISA pot is now sitting at£7350 and I expect it to reach the full allowance by April 2013.

Stoozepot now sits at around £8000 fully offset at 3.49% -thanks Halifax , I have another 4 months of this little perk, which is worth over £100. I’ve just taken out a Tesco 0% CC for 18months for a further slow stooze
I think 2013 will see a bit of a revival here in the diary, and despite not overpaying as much I think we can still have some pretty ambitious targets.

mbbetter · 1 May 2013 at 3:32PM

Ok I’m back on it and motivated once again. I’ve been number crunching and things are getting fairly interesting. More on that later.

Mortgage today stands at -£117817.83 however our offset is really starting to crank-up. We are now at a tipping point where our savings in our offset are worth nearly 50% of the mortgage. This is where things in the next 8 months could get pretty exciting.

Another small win – refund from a hotel night £57.67 ploughed into the mortgage. Nice

Time get serious for the remainder of the year once again and magical things could happen!

mbbetter · 2 May 2013 at 10:40AM

Halifax reward account fiver is in.

+£5 straight off the mortgage.

Feels good

Thanks HBOS!

mbbetter · 3 May 2013 at 9:04AM

Last night met up for a few beers, but decided to quickly eat at home rather than the pub grub. Probably saved around £15 in total. Gotta be a good thing.

More soup and bread for lunch - breads a bit stale, but hey it will do the job of nutrition!

Going to try and list at least one item on ebay this weekend.

mbbetter · 4 May 2013 at 10:52PM

Cheap lunch today

A bit of curry sauce from last night, combined with some seafood sticks for £1,29 makes for an affordable lunch. Nice one.

Note to self - don't event consider paying £6 to get my car washed at the supermarket. What are people thinking!

Good luck all,

mbbetter · 7 May 2013 at 10:23AM

Cheap weekend – yay

Managed to spend very little on food by living on a few scraps. Only went out for a cheeky drink with the OH on Friday whilst the curry was in the oven. Rather than cracking into a beautiful fresh £20 note, managed to find enough change around the house. Didn’t really save any money, but felt better!?

Garden project underway, so some expenses here but doing all the work ourselves. Laying a patio yesterday managed to find paving at 30% less than originally planned. Had to pick it up in the boot of the car, but all worked out very well.

Had a bit of a result on the matched betting over the weekend, just need to do some accounting and whack it into the offset.

Free lunch today – yay!

Cheers and good luck all.

mbbetter · 7 August 2013 at 1:22PM

mbbetter wrote: »

Ok I’m back on it and motivated once again. I’ve been number crunching and things are getting fairly interesting. More on that later.

Mortgage today stands at -£117817.83 however our offset is really starting to crank-up. We are now at a tipping point where our savings in our offset are worth nearly 50% of the mortgage. This is where things in the next 8 months could get pretty exciting.

Time get serious for the remainder of the year once again and magical things could happen!

Always a bit odd to quote yourself I think! But since this post in May the magical things are really starting to happen!

It seems 2013 could be the year of the fully offset mortgage.

Myself and the other 1/2 have embarked on the task of shifting our mortgage onto 0% credit cards and overdrafts. We do this by putting all spend on these cards and dumping our entire salary into the offset mortgage. My calculations figure that by Jan we our savings in our offset will completely match that of the balance of the mortgage. Therefore essentially mortgage free!

Kind of cheating. We will still have debt of course. But at 0% and this should be knocked off in 6 months (but infact we may keep it to stooze!).

Current mortgage now down to £114,300
Offset savings at 76%
Monthly interest after offsetting now down to only £98

6 more salary payments and we should be 100% offset :A

mbbetter · 16 December 2013 at 2:20PM

Friday 29th November 2013. This is the date that mortgage died. We are now mortgage free.

Our offset account now completely balances our remaining mortgage. We are therefore effectively mortgage free and the MFW journey has come to an end.

I’ve had 2 weeks for it to sink in and it does feel fantastic. The best feeling is knowing that next month’s pay packet does not need to go towards a mortgage payment (or overpayment). It is also rather liberating to know that the house we live in is all ours. However the actual mechanics of it didn’t give me the mind blowing experience I envisaged. I transferred the remaining £400 and that was it. My spreadsheet balanced and I smiled. A week later First Direct wrote to me and told me my offset balanced my mortgage – I should not deposit any more. Nice.

We haven’t really celebrated as such, although it did coincide with a couple of weeks off work, so it was nice to have time to reflect. What next? Who knows really... I feel a whole world of opportunity available but I’m not sure quite how to approach it. I expect we may have another mortgage in the future, but right now with no housing costs, it is time to build a bit of savings. It may sound a little strange, but now that I’m no longer paying a debt or interest, it makes me even more determined to keep hold of the cash I do earn.

Thanks to a bit of perseverance, non-procrastination and some serious support from the wife we made it. I look back at the first entry for this diary just over 3 years ago. I could never have dreamed back then that we’d be in the situation we are now.

Thanks all and keep chipping away.