My first Mortgage, want to be MF ASAP!

gymsalesjames

Bufger wrote: »

Overpayments are optional. The first thing I would do is settle into your new income and see how far it stretches. If you end up with £200 left over then make a one off payment against the mortgage but dont challenge yourself to hit your £500 target every month and potentially use up an emergency fund doing so!

Circumstances can and will change and you might find yourself being able to overpay by £1000 in a years time but dont put yourself into difficulty.

That sounds pretty sensible. I'm limited to OPing £500 per month as if I OP more I get charged a stupid amount (Nationwide's rules).

I'll leave the emergency fund as is, make sure my OH and I aren't missing out on anything we really want/need and try to keep up the 500 monthly OP, if that's not possible, I'll cut it down!

How much is a sensible amount to have in an emergency fund though? Keeping in mind, because of my overpayments on the mortgage, if I need to I can have a "payment holiday" of pretty much a year.

Bufger

gymsalesjames wrote: »

That sounds pretty sensible. I'm limited to OPing £500 per month as if I OP more I get charged a stupid amount (Nationwide's rules).

I'll leave the emergency fund as is, make sure my OH and I aren't missing out on anything we really want/need and try to keep up the 500 monthly OP, if that's not possible, I'll cut it down!

How much is a sensible amount to have in an emergency fund though? Keeping in mind, because of my overpayments on the mortgage, if I need to I can have a "payment holiday" of pretty much a year.

I'm currently building up my emergency fund again which was dipped into last year for a wedding and for a boiler emergency (i guess its why its there!). 3-6 months wages but it really does depend on what type of job you have as some jobs are far more common than others.

Personally i've gone for 10k as its a nice rounded figure. I'll also have other savings for holidays etc and if push came to shove these would also be used. (in emergency only!)

gymsalesjames

Thank you very much for the advice. .