Mortgage Free in 15 Years..... 2025

didabuf

Wow isn't it funny how you have great plans of starting a bit of a diary and then it goes out the window.

Here I am 8 years later.

It must of been a couple of days after my last post that we accepted an offer on the house. We didn't have a house in mind but within a week we had an offer accepted on a house we had previously dismissed. It wasn't where we want to live (same town just not the street) and front the outside it looked tiny, but on first viewing we realised it had a lot of potential and we would be very happy there.

We moved in May 2012 with a mortgage of £112,500. House price was £150,000. to enable us to get the mortgage we had to borrow £5000 off my parents which wasn't really a problem and there was no set time scale to paying them back.

At that point I obviously didn’t pay any extra off the mortgage other than the automatic payment that bumped it up to £500, when it came to closing the mortgage with C&G I had to pay a ‘fine’ as I was still tied into a rate but it wasn’t much and it was worth every penny.
We took our new mortgage out with Nationwide and we are still with them now.
Now the triplets are almost 10 and certainly cost us a lot more than we did back then. The plan is still to have rid of the mortgage by the time they are 18 (2028), ideally 16 (2026) but I can’t push us because we still have to save for extra things in life.
I can’t remember exact figures but in 2012 out mortgage rate was about 3.79 on £112,500 for 25 years. In that time, I made the odd over payment but nothing major, we fixed for 3 years.
In 2015 I renewed with Nationwide and we dropped from 22 years to 18 years with a rate of 2.79% fixed for 5 years and it was about £102,000. Over the last 5 years I have made a few over payments, totalling about £6000.
I just renewed again last month with my first payment being taken yesterday and we stood at £74,552 on a 1.74% rate fixed for 5 years, now we are looking at 10 years. That potentially takes us to 2030 but I know it will be gone by then.
So we have been here almost 8 years and have already shaved 7 years off the mortgage.
In the time we have been here we have spent around £50,000 on renovations to the house, including new windows, new garage roof, fully plastered, a few internal walls have come down and a couple back up in different places, new electrics, a new downstairs toilet refit and a brand new kitchen and backroom renovation. We have also bought a new (to us car) which cost us about £9000 and are currently looking at quotes to have a new bedroom created with a dorma for my daughters, this also includes a full new bathroom refit. We’ve had the plans approved and have the money saved (looking at £35,000 by the time we’ve finished). So if we hadn’t of done anything to our house we’d have been close to paying it all off by now but actually we’ve lived, we’ve sacrificed and we’ve saved hard and we have a beautiful home. But we are still on track to pay off the pesky mortgage in 15 years like I first said.

I plan to update this a bit more now we are on the downward slope to freedom and I will keep this diary updated with my overpayments and how I plan to achieve £74552 in 6-8 years.

didabuf

2020 brings the year the mortgage free dream seems within reach. As I said above we are planning on building an extension soon. This will be entirely funded by savings. I made my last overpayment January 2019 as we decided then that we wanted to build a 4th bedroom. Realistically we would of loved to have moved house to a bigger place with a little land but more realistically we would like to be mortgage free, so that won.
We are close the our goal of £30,000 savings and are hoping some of the quotes we have asked for come in somewhere near our budget or we are going to have to keep saving a bit longer. Once the extension has been done we will be carry on the saving and hope to eventually in the next couple of years have an en-suit built in our bedroom, I am sure this wont be cheap as it will involved some ground works. As this is our forever home and we finance this all through savings, I dont worry about how much this all costs in comparison to how much the house is worth. I am sure that it will all be adding value.
Once this extension is done the I will be getting back on with overpaying and trying to get rid of the mortgage as soon as possible. Max 8 years as I said but 6 years would be a dream.
I have begun to look at long term savings to help with this goal and 18 months ago I opened two Help to Save accounts which I deposit £50 a month into each, the government will give me a 50% bonus on these after 4 years. I pay in the maximum every month so come September 2022 that should give us £7200 which I will use to pay £500 a month off the mortgage until it is gone (£500 is the maximum I can pay without a penalty). That should shave off a year.

I have also begun looking into stocks and shares and have opened an account. I'm not adding much in at the moment but its a small regular amount that I would hope would give me a little something one day to use, if it never really amounts to much then so be it and if I have to wait 20 years and not take it out in 8 years to help it make more money then thats OK too.
I also opened a LISA stocks and shares account but again thats only a small amount for now and I obviously cant touch that until I am 60 anyway.

didabuf

Haven't quite left it so many years this time. 
Here we are in the middle of a world wide pandemic, nothing quite like that to make you want to get rid of a mortgage.

April 20th was supposed to be the day our extension work was starting but obviously that didn't happen. We had our savings ready to pay for that and the quote we got came in alot cheaper that expected so we are hoping it will be done for maximum £27k, originally quote was about £17k but we added lots more too it so we knew it would increase. We currently have no idea what the building  work will start. I hope it's soon, but we all need to keep safe and well so I'm not too bothered.

We've been shielding as a family since the schools closed in March, I work in a school so finished the same day the triplets did, as my OH has CF he is on the extremely critically vulnerable list so we havwnt left the house in 12 weeks. 
We've saved loads of money... no fuel, gym membership suspended, however food bills are high but we recieve free school meals vouchers from the government so that has helped.
We've also done loads of work in the garden that wasn't planned, to the tune of about £600, it would of happened in 2021 but we needed Something to keep us busy.

Anyway the reason why I am here. I just can't stop thinking that I need this mortgage gone and while saving needs to continue for the extension work, I also REALLY want to be mortgage free. I have about £1200 sat in a different account, so I just thought, sod it and send it over to the mortgage, £500 this month, £500 in July and then I'll add to the last bit and send some money in August. In September I am due the first bonus from the Help to Save accounts we opened so I am going to use that to send 3 more monthly payments go the mortgage. That will take us to December, by that time the extension should be done and we should be back on the saving train and I can reassess if I can cope with the £500 OP a month. Either way those 6 payments I will of made by then  will of knocked off 5 months of the mortgage. Woohoo. I'll just keep chipping  away and see where I can get us in the next year.

longway2go

Well done on your progress to date. It has certainly made me feel like the mortgage just had to go. Good luck with your plans and everything crossed for the 6 years 

didabuf

Just sent my mortgage overpayment across, it appears straight away but it never feels real until the letter arrives advising me of my new mortgage free dates. About 9y8m I think.
But I've been thinking (dangerous my partner says). I absolutely love playing around with the overpayment  spreadsheet I have. It tells me daily, monthly & yearly interest. This month we hit a little bit of a milestone if you will. Our monthly interest is under £100. That's a pretty amazing feeling. It also means that every month we pay off over £500 capital, that also means that if we over pay, we pay off over £1000 capital. WOW WOW WOW, for a mortgage that is now under £70k it means 70 more payments 🤯 if we keep up the OP.
So here's where I am. I have my plan for another 4 payments and  then after that I will reassess, provisionally the extension work is due to start in August now and will take about 4-6 weeks. Once that's all done and dusted we will slowly get decor, carpets, beds and furniture sorted. It will all just be paid for as and when we can afford it but I am sure it will be no problem. 
My plan now is to continue with my £500 overpayments for the foreable. I can't see why we can afford it. What this does, if we continue for the next 4.5 years, it puts us at about £15k when the mortgage is up for renewal......Well I think that we will have that saved somewhere else easily by the anyway so I'm wondering if at that point  we could wave good by to the mortgage. 
It's all just a bit of a pipe dream at the moment and so much can change in the next 4 and a bit years. My kids won't be 10, I'll have 3  14 year olds and they cost a lot more that 10 year olds. Well no doubt need a new car in that time. We still want to live a little, but we are definetly more homebodies than going outers. The ensuite is still a dream that I would like to achieve. We need new sofa and the house will obviously need updating too. But if I have a plan than it's something to work towards at least. 

didabuf

I'm a saver not a spender.
I spend my days trying to earn a little extra here and there, now a days it's called a 'side hussle', but to me it's a hobby that I have always done.
Surveys, market research, online focus groups, freebies product tests, it's amazing how much I can earn just spending my free time doing stuff  like that. I've done it for years, easily 12 and over the years the things i have bought with my vouchers has been amazing. I almost never pay for anything off amazon with my own money, it's always been vouchers I have earned. My PayPal is always in credit so that's another thing that saves me using my debit card. I love selling stuff on eBay that I have lying around the house, or if someone has given me. 
Recently I have began investing too. That's part of my future plan, what got me started was the offer of a 'free share', something that has made me over £200, all from depositing £1 (that's withdrable after the freeshare arrives). It's really given me a new outlook on my future and is something I plan to continue with to fund my old age.
Let me know if you would like an hints and tips on this and I can send you some information on that or my other side hustle. 
If it wasn't for all these side hustle I'm not sure overpaying would be possible. But in the end it will all be worth it. And I enjoy it. If I didn't, I wouldn't do it.

longway2go

Hi, 
I would actually really like some info on side hussles. I have started doing some survey sites and signed up for some research but would be good to compare what you do and maybe get some ebay guidance as I have never done that. Can you send me a PM when you get a chance please

mumof3.12kindebt

Hi , I have just read your diary.  Amazing progress. ! 

You have done so well. 


Can I ask what spreadsheet you use to calculate your interest on overpayments ? 

Good luck. I'll be following the rest of your journey ! Not long and you would of paid off your mortgage ! 

didabuf

mumof3.12kindebt said:

Hi , I have just read your diary.  Amazing progress. ! 

You have done so well. 


Can I ask what spreadsheet you use to calculate your interest on overpayments ? 

Good luck. I'll be following the rest of your journey ! Not long and you would of paid off your mortgage ! 

Absolutely. Pop me a message with your email and I will send you a copy of it x 

didabuf

"ohh you're so lucky!"

That was the reponse from my mil when we told her we wanted to pay our mortgage off in 4.5 years, before we have to renue in February 2025.
SERIOUSLY!!
"It's not luck" I replied, "it's hard work and dedication".
I'm not sure if she thinks we are going to be given the money or something but we are really not. She knows we are savers and not spenders, we prefer to be at home and we don't buy unles we can afford, we save for what we want. Her reponse made me laugh so much.
It took her 20 years to pay off a mortgage of about £25k, not one over payment because apparently they couldn't afford to pay anything over the £200 base payment, but she could afford a holiday every year. This is how we are different.

We plan to live a little more when we dont have a £700 a month burden on our shoulders......