Hurdler's Race to be Mortgage-Free

gallygirl

Hurdler

I am sooooo looking forward to increasing the gap in mine - at the moment I feel like I've paid off the skirting boards, or something!

PixieFace

Hi Hurdler :wave:,

Finally have made it through your diary, although I had brain ache part way through and am not sure how much I took in.

Love the excel house, it's a great idea.

Good luck with the Journalism course, you'll be in your dream job before you know it I'm sure.

Pixie

Hurdler

Having a bit of a rough time of things... and looking for opportunities to get more writing experience so arranging to meet my course director for some help polishing up my CV of what little scrawling I have done to date to help get an internship.

Saw my IFA who finally got to the bottom of a couple of archaic pension policies I opened with my bank - one that was effectively replaced by my former job's final salary pension, and the other which was an AVC.

So that's going into a new pot for me to belatedly start up a new pension plan.
We also had a long chat about the shares I had - about a third of my portfolio was mine, and the rest I inherited from my late father.
I asked my mum if she was OK if I used the money to pay off the mortgage and reinvest some in a properly managed fund instead of having it all concentrated in 10 or so investments - some of which have seen REAL bad publicity downturns (BP/SBkyB, for example). Initially she was ok and then she was a bit sentimental as they were dad's.
But in light of maybe dropping to non-existent salary levels from where I am now... it might be best to gradually liquidate the proceeds to help fund the early years of my fledgling journo career.

All I know is... I think I needed to get to this point to know that my heart lies in pursuing a career (and let's face it, a LIFE) change...

I feel a bit glum, chums... and can't really go into too much detail here...
I know people say things happen for a reason... but I am really struggling to find out why I feel so trapped other than my initial doubts about taking the first job that came along...

Hurdler

Bit confused.com here...
I got a letter from the Mortgage company acknowledging my over-payment of £4025... and at that point my monthly payment was £574.47.

Now it seems my payment is going to be £687.12!!!!

I have absolutely NO idea what they're playing at... so roll on 8:30 when I can ring and ask them WHAT THE HELL?????

Surely this needs to come DOWN and I have the option of asking them to set a monthly payment at higher (but given I want to leave shortly, getting that figure DOWN is the name of the game!)

Grrrrrr

edit:
well just rang them up and had a bit of an idiot on the line who tried to tell me first that the mortgage had been reduced by £30,000 (well yes but that was before the recalculation which set my payment to around £575 - letter dated 19th October)
Then he said that the £4025 over-payment hadn't been taken off the balance - well the letter states quite clearly that £133K-4K equals circa £129K (letter dated 7th November)

Anyway the upshot of it is that when I make my next over-payments, I have to call them 3 days later to tell them NOT to recalculate (even though the letters quite clearly state that they won't change the payments until instructed).
Then he fobbed me off with "the letter says that but the 'system' hasn't allowed for it" - uh huh that STILL doesn't explain why a payment reduced to £575 goes up to £687.
Dipstick. I gave up at that point because it was quite clear he had absolutely no idea other than it was some kind of system screw-up.

It would have come down to somewhere around £560 and I was genuinely surprised when he said "so it's not really worth it to overpay to try and reduce the amount is it"... I did a quick few sums and pointed out that £180 saved in a twelve month period equates to just over a couple of months of money I put away for food every month... when you are considering moving into a career where in the first few years you are largely going to have to live off savings... that is a HUGE amount.

It has made me realise that for this mortgage I am definitely going to stick to paying off monthly chunks as lord knows if they would every track smaller payments.

Sepa74

Hi Hurdler, you sound really down

Don't be fooled when people say things happen for a reason - that's rubbish! Things happen because they happen, and all you can do is deal with it the best way you can. Trust me on this one!!

So the question is then... how are you going to deal with it? If you don't want to talk about it openly, then feel free to pm me if that would help. We're peers in a lot of ways, so may help to talk it through with a complete stranger but who is at a similar stage in life?!

Hurdler

Oh Sepa - it's been AWFUL!
I have to get an article in to go towards my portfolio, and I would very much like to PM you a bit of a stream of consciousness sometime tomoz, if that's ok. I saw your message come in at Journo School, where I screwed up a Grammer test royally... so was welling up a bit.

BUT... I have to end this with SOME positivity - I got another article published; found out then I got home after the pub...

Sepp Blatter - A Controversy too far?

sweetdaisy

Congratulations on having your article published .

MatyMoo

*sneaks out of lurkedom*

I have been following your diary with interest as I wanted to be a writer when I was little.

Congratulations on getting some of your articles published, I think you are doing brilliantly! I know very little about sport and didn't understand why people were upset with Sepp Blatter's comment upset so many people but, having read your article, I now understand so thank you!

*sneaks back out again quietly*

Sepa74

Hi Hurdler, congrats on the article being published. That's brilliant... see, screwing up on a grammar test is nothing!

Ready and waiting for the stream of consciousness