A blissful home - mortgage_girl's MF diary 2 February 2011 at 9:20PM in Mortgage-free wannabe 529 replies 70.8K views

mortgage_girl

After lurking around this board for the past 4 years I decided that it was time to take the bull by the horns and start my own diary.

A bit about me, I have a mortgage of just over £82,000 with a current term of 19 years. I live on my own, with the exception of a sleepy snugglepuss , and work full time. I have recently split from my partner, while together we always overpaid on the mortgage, so i'm a convert to the benefits of overpaying. Now the mortgage is my sole responsibility i'm even more committed to making overpayments, both for the security it will offer me as well as the money I can save in the long run.

At the moment i'm overpaying by £100 a month, although i'm hoping that this diary will help me to keep focussed on the task at hand and keep me motivated when the going gets tough.

Hopefully some of you wonderful MFW's out there might also be able to give me some tips too

mortgage_girl

Here's my SOA:

Salary: £1643

Monthly outgoings:
Mortgage - £454
Council tax - £103
Water - £34
Gas/Electric - £66
Phone bill - £14
Internet - £14
Mobile phone contract - £28
Life/critical illness insurance - £25
Food/household shopping - £100
Car expenses (insurance, maintenance, tax, petrol) - £92
TV licence - £13
Christmas/holiday savings £60
Clothes - £20
Dentist/opticians - £20
Union payment - £14
Charity - £5
Spending - £100
Home/Contents Insurance - £20
Savings/Emergency fund - £333


Total outgoings - £1515


Okay, I think that's about everything...

pawlala

good luck!

JimLad

Looks like your in control of your finances!

Make sure you keep us up to date!

museumworker

Welcome and good luck . Your SOA looks fine, would probably say combined gas/electric looks quite high as I tend to use about £500 pa and have a 3 (now 5) bed house.

Have you discovered the joys of topcashback, surveys, ebaying, batch cooking etc? And you could try the £100pa clothing challenge, which would save you up to £140 if you could do it!

yukkibear

Good luck with your journey

mortgage_girl

Thanks for your well wishes everyone

@museumworker - yeah, I agree that the bill for my gas and electric is a bit high. My monthly direct debit has recently been increased (i'm putting it down to the very cold winter we've had and having the heating on much more than I probably should have ). I'm hoping that by giving them monthly meter readings and being a bit more careful with switching the heating on it should drop back down again - fingers crossed. I love the sound of the clothes challenge btw - i'll look into it

So i've been thinking that i'd like to be a little more proactive than just making regular monthly overpayments towards my mortgage. I'm currently overpaying by £100 per month but by the end of the year i'd like to have overpaid around £3000, so that leaves me £1800 to find. I don't want to dip into my savings as I feel that I need to put some money aside to give myself a bit of a cushion against any 'occurences' that might take place in the future. So my challenge for this year will be to find as many ways as I can to make the extra £1800. As well as saving (where possible) on my outgoings, i'll also be trying to make some extra money by selling things on amazon and ebay, using cashback sites for online purchases, completing surveys etc. It looks like i'll have plenty to keep me busy - wish me luck!

newgirly

Hi mortgage girl, welcome :hello: sounds like you are off to a good start, best of luck with your MF journey.

CathT

Wishing you good luck.

dimbo61

You dont give your interest rate but you have little in the way of savings/emergency funds and you need to build up 3 months of income unless you are paying 5%+ on your mortgage

mortgage_girl

dimbo61 wrote: »

You dont give your interest rate but you have little in the way of savings/emergency funds and you need to build up 3 months of income unless you are paying 5%+ on your mortgage

Good point dimbo but I think I was unclear in my previous post. I do have a chunk of savings in an ISA and the £333 is what I plan to contribute to it monthly. So far I think my savings could keep me going for at least 6 months if I lost my job and if I really scrimped i'm sure I could make them stretch for a year.

My current interest rate is 2.5%. We were on a fixed rate of around 5.6% for 3 years so I want to pay off as much as i'm able to while the rate is so low.

Thanks everyone for your supportive comments. Have a great Friday! :j