Hurdler's Race to be Mortgage-Free

Hurdler

It does... I need to take a look at the schemes this company offers and then compare outside in the real world, because of course my master plan is to turn my back on IT and be a journo, but it's worth having this stuff lined up and having Contracting work as a fall back - and things like critical health cover and starting a new pension are gong to be vital whatever the outcome.

In other news - my journo course has been put back a week - so I don't start until next week.... so that at least gives me one weekend to myself!

Hurdler

Tomorrow going to work from home (sigh - documentation woes)... but... tomorrow I am gonna do it. I am going to make my Voluntary Redundancy overpayment... I feel quite excited now... time for some spreadsheetness!

Hurdler

... well Vernon was going to be one of two accounts.
A "Sweepsave" feature that I was given when I first became a Premier customer ... that has now been discontinued but was useful to have.
I used to leave a balance of £250 in my account as I was always paid on the 6th.
With the new job, I get paid (HAH!) at the end of the month... so I decided to change the Sweepsave feature to leave £2500 in there to cover the bills and the rest would live in the account (now my virtual mortgage pig)...
However - the setup was visited by the muck-up fairies and the bank created this weird Opensave Pot that is supposed to swoosh money in and out to always keep a balance of £1000 in the current account!
When I queried this I was told (by a helpful woman in L2 Customer Service) that the new Pot would be taken away and things would be as we agreed with no minimum £1000 balance.

Then I rang to ask why the account was still in my list, and was told that the woman was wrong and the guy (quite friendly and chatty) guaranteed that the sweep on the first would go to the Pot and not the old account.

Can you see where I am going with this!?
Sweepsave has the money... Pot has not one penny.

So ... as well as ringing Woolwich to categorically understand that my lump sum will come off my capital, I need to call Barclays to see what's going to happen now. I don't want to hoof £1500 into the Pot to just sit there to cover a (mythical?) £1000 balance in my current account... but I am kinda glad my little Sweepsave Vernon is still in use.

Now - all I need to do is:
1) Register for my company's Healthcare Plan, and Critical Illness Cover
2) Arrange a new pension OUTSIDE the company (as I hope not to be here that long)
3) Also understand from either Cavendish Online or Hargreaves Lansdowne (my choices) what they can do with my probably now defunct Barclays Pension that I started before I joined my old company's scheme, and a Barclays FSAVC (as the bank now no longer does Pensions).
4) Somewhere in all this lot - I have to (re)write a document for the umpteenth time - that was put together by my manager who is on holiday and the scope keeps being changed by the Project Manager who has the memory of a sieve when it comes to stuff we've agreed in other meetings!

PS - how do some of you have such long sigs - I kept being told mine was too long and finally got it to what it is now...

Edit: Weird... I went to edit my signature and it says that "as a new user I am not allowed to post links" and prompting me to remove the thread link in my sig. New user??? I don't think so!

Hurdler

IT'S DONE!!!!!!!

I have made an overpayment ahead of my race of £30,000 so I am expecting my starting figure to be circa £135K at the recalculation!

My, it feels liberating - I have taken approx £60,000 off my original amount in 3 years! Although of course I have been helped by making overpayments the norm for a couple of years and the interest rate plummeting.

Of course... I now have to stay gainfully employed for a bit!

I am going to take Phelpsie's advice and leave the monthly amount as it is and then make overpayments so that psychologically I feel I am taking off huge numbers of months. I know it's weird but I think it will work better for me as a motivator!

Oh and I had a right good natter to the woman at Barclays - the Pot thing is an empty account and all greyed out - so it will NEVER work. So no point in shuffling money into it at all... so long live Vernon the Virtual Money Pig!

A Happy Hurdler now consigns herself to document (re)writing with a celebratory coffee!

BaconandEggs

Wow - congratulations - that is fantastic!

I love the idea of the excel spreadsheet with coloured bricks. You've got a fair bit of colouring to do now!

Would you be able to post up the excel spreadsheet (obviously after removing your own info) or give us an idea of how you created it. It sounds like a great way to visualise the goal and what has been achieved so far.

Hurdler

Well - the colouring of bricks is going to start in earnest from October - but this will get the starting figure down by quite a respectable way.
I shamelessly copied the idea from someone else - and I have to say - their house is WAYYYYYYYY better than mine!
They were able to do theirs in £1000 chunks but that would have made it too large - so I did mine in months as that's how they do the recalculation annually to the original end of term.
Quite what I am going to do at the end of the first year, I'm not sure! Logically it will make no real difference as I will have still reduced the overall term by some way.

But you get the idea!

I'm hoping to be colouring in bricks from October AT LEAST 2 at a time, but really want it to be three.

I am hoping my mortgage will get recalculated to about £525 a month for the full term of the mortgage.

Fingers crossed!

BaconandEggs

That's brilliant. I have implemented something similar in Excel - using £250 "bricks".
It will go up somewhere to motivate us!
Thank you.

Lois_E

Hurdler wrote: »

Edit: Weird... I went to edit my signature and it says that "as a new user I am not allowed to post links" and prompting me to remove the thread link in my sig. New user??? I don't think so!

I got this too. It turns out we're not allowed to have links in our sigs, even to threads here on MSE, unless we ask permission. They've recently introduced an automated thing to stop us putting links, which never used to be there. Confusingly, they've just made it use the same message as the thing that stops new users putting links in posts.

Your excel house is great, BTW. Why would it make a difference when you get to the end of the first year? I assumed you would start colouring from the bottom as you make regular payments, and colour from the top as you reduce the term. Then it'll be paid off when you meet in the middle.

Hurdler

That's exactly what I was going to do - to account for the fact that next Sept, they will work it out to 2033, but of course the cost will come down (quite considerably, I hope).

Hurdler

Introducing Vernon - The Virtual Mortgage Pig - he has accumulated £1814.66 already to go towards October's overpayments ... it could be as much as 3 additional months!!!

:beer:

Vernon and the Excel house will soon be appearing in "Huff, Puff, blow the house down"...

:rotfl: