Starting the mortgage free path

bownyboy

Another month and another update.

• January 2014 - £106,929 / £358 / £11.96
• February 2014 - £105,967 / £355 / £11.85
• March 2014 - £105,002 / £352 / £11.74
• April 2014 - £104,034 / £349 / £11.64
• May 2014 - £103,562 / £345 / £11.53
• June 2014 - £103,088 / £342 / £11.42
• July 2014 - £102,802 / £213 / £7.13
• August 2014 - £101,828 / £213 / £7.11
• September 2014 - £100,542 / £211 / £7.04
• October 2014 - £99,575 / £208 / £6.95
• November 2014 - £98,605 / £206 / £6.89

Next mini milestone will be in March 2015 when the monthly interest should come under £200. That assumes no interest rate rises and from reading the news this is now looking unlikely for at least another 12 months.

bownyboy

In order to keep the motivation up month after month, I find keeping monthly records of all accounts in a google doc 'Net Worth' report very helpful.

In it I track assets such as current accounts, pensions, S&S ISA's, shares and any liabilities such as credit cards and mortgages.

Since I started doing this properly in July its really motivating to see month on month increases / decreases as well as year on year.

Since July our net worth is up 5.05%

I've also created some charts show how our retirement savings are compared to the early retirement target we have (hope to retire in 8 years!).

bownyboy

Payday again and this completes my updates for the year!

• January 2014 - £106,929 / £358 / £11.96
• February 2014 - £105,967 / £355 / £11.85
• March 2014 - £105,002 / £352 / £11.74
• April 2014 - £104,034 / £349 / £11.64
• May 2014 - £103,562 / £345 / £11.53
• June 2014 - £103,088 / £342 / £11.42
• July 2014 - £102,802 / £213 / £7.13
• August 2014 - £101,828 / £213 / £7.11
• September 2014 - £100,542 / £211 / £7.04
• October 2014 - £99,575 / £208 / £6.95
• November 2014 - £98,605 / £206 / £6.89
• December 2014 - £97,634 / £204 / £6.82

Can't believe another 12 months have flown by. I'll do a follow-up post with the before and after targets for the year and then challenges for 2015.

gallygirl

Fantastic progress - nearly below £200 :j:j:j

bownyboy

gallygirl wrote: »

Fantastic progress - nearly below £200 :j:j:j

Yep, it's those mini milestones that keep you going!

bownyboy

We got our monthly Virgin Broadband / Phone bill last week for £57! It's getting ridiculous now. They increase the costs above inflation every year, and now I've had enough.

I'm going to get the landline removed and downgrade to 50Mb broadband which is around £28 I think.

We won't miss the landline as its only PPI that call us and I think we only used the landline twice in six months.

Annoying that it's only Virgin who you can just get broadband only with.

bownyboy

Happy new year everyone! The sun is shining and I thought I'd review my 2014 targets from January last year to see how I did:

Overpay mortgage by £6,000
Fail! Due to the remortgage my overpayments were stopped for 2 months without me noticing, so I overpaid by about £5,000

Mortgage balance to be reduced down to £95,176
Fail! Because of above, end of year balance was apronx £97k

Remortgage when fix ends in June 2014 to a rate equal (or preferably lower than current 3.99%)
Pass! Remortgaged onto lifetime tracker BOE+1.99%

Daily interest to be £10.66
Pass! Daily interest is currently only £6.82

Save £12k in Stocks & Shares ISA
Pass! Currently balance is now £12,660

Have total savings & investments of £20,000 (up from £8k)
Pass! I moved my personal pension to half my AMC to 0.4% and started contributing heavily as part of a plan to become financially independent by 50. Current combined figure is now approx £45k

So all in all not a bad year, most of it takes care of itself with standing orders coming out on the 1st of every month, so its really about keeping an eye on costs and ensuring the figures match my projections.

While this diary has been great for motivation on paying off the mortgage, I feel I have learnt a lot in the last 12 months for more of a rounded approach to my financial planning which includes, S&S ISA's, Pensions and Cash Savings.

I'm thinking now of starting a diary on the Pensions board focusing more of my drive as a FIW (Financial Independence Wannabe) as that is where my focus is now.

Will still pop by here once a month, but not as frequently as before.

bownyboy

Got a welcome surprise when I logged onto my Santander 123 account today to see they've updated it to FINALLY show my tracker mortgage balance and when next payment is due.

Its only taken nearly 6 years for them to catch-up to the rest of the market.

Now lets see if they will add useful features such as interest rate, overpayments made, years & months left etc.

jodles16

Wow what an amazing job you have done over the last few years! Very inspirational!

Jodles

bownyboy

New year and time to do the yearly utilities cost review. After plugging in my kWH numbers for gas and electric for 2014 into the calculators, it appears I can save around £250 per year on dual fuel cost.

So pulled the trigger and am moving from my EDF fix (no exit fees) to a new NPower fix (no exit fees). Bonus through signing up via topcashback means I get £57 cashback! The cashback will be transferred straight to the mortgage account.