Starting today

welshlovebiscuit

Today we did our first down-sizing shop at LIDL. We have set ourselves a target of being debt-free within 10 years (sooner if possible).

Currently we have £9,000 outstanding on a car loan and £147,000 on the mortgage. There's also £1000 on the CC at the moment but that's in hand - usually it's below £100.

The house cost us £167,000 - but we bought at the worst possible time (about 6 weeks before the crash!) and went and locked ourselves into a fixed rate deal for 7 years (doh!). We have another 3 years at fixed rate but can overpay up to 10%.

I am going to target the car loan first - we've already rounded the monthly payment up so have been overpaying for about a year. We've also rounded the mortgage payment up to the nearest £100 but now I'm thinking to pay the extra off the car loan instead as this is higher interest rate - wotcha think?

We are putting into practise all the tips and ideas here on this site and DH has persuaded his boss to let him work from home 2 days a week which will cut down on train fares (I teach so I can't really try that one!).

I would get a second job or do some tutoring but at the mo I'm working on my Phd so just don't have the time...so I'll just concentrate on saving ccaash for now :money:

someday_soon

Hi WLB

Great start- I would be clearing the loan first with the view of then attacking the mortgage full force. For me, credit card and loan debt are your only barriers to early mortgage freedom. No half measures here-get it cleared-quickly. You couldn't do it by this time next year? Could you?

Someday Soon

Emsky123

Ah a fellow Biscuit lover - Welcome

My favourite time is Saturday Morning when i bake cookies with my Son, they never last the day!

What rate is your fixed at? Have you looked at what it would cost to exit - Sometimes its actually cheeper to accept an ERC and take a lower fix.

Good luck on your MF Journey

Ems

welshlovebiscuit

Hello both,

Someday soon - yes we've decided to concentrate on the loan and then pay the £250 a month we pay on that straight onto the mortgage once it's gone. Not sure we can do it in a year but we're gonna have a damn good try! The credit card isn't usually an issue - we only use it in emergencies, but we've been a bit stupid with it this summer so now need to get rid of that too :-(

Emsky - we will look at the ER charges...it's on our 'to do' list but we have very little spare cash at the moment. This afternoon we are sitting down with spreadsheets and statements and making a firm plan.

I particularly want to do this as the mortgage term at present takes me beyond retirement age (hubby is a lot younger than me) - I don't want to be relying on him having a fab job just so as I can retire! We plan eventually to downsize as well as this house is too big for just the two of us...a move is off until the markets start to pick up though, so that is going to be a good few years I imagine!

welshlovebiscuit

OK, so have started looking at the finances in more detail. currently stunned at how much we are spending on food and general groceries. In July I spent £277.08....and that's just from my account, I know DH spent about the same!!! There's only 2 of us and the dog so that is going to change.

The mortgage is fixed at 5.69% (which at the time was good...but then the rates started free falling!). We've only been overpaying by £25 to round up. It's a 30 year term and is fixed for another 3 years - we don't have enough capital at the mo to pay the ER fee and shop around, so we're just going to stick with it and overpay what we can

Car loan is at 6.73% and, again we've only been overpaying £25.00 to round it up. Original amount was £15,000, balance is now £9000 ish, with 3 years to run. I reckon we could clear it in a year if we really tried . It's a new (3 yr old) car so we shouldn't need to replace it for a good few years either.

fishfins

welshlovebiscuit wrote: »

The mortgage is fixed at 5.69% (which at the time was good...but then the rates started free falling!). We've only been overpaying by £25 to round up. It's a 30 year term and is fixed for another 3 years - we don't have enough capital at the mo to pay the ER fee and shop around, so we're just going to stick with it and overpay what we can

Hi and welcome

I'm in almost the same situation as you, went for a 5 year fixed rate at 5.49%, got 3 years left and can't afford to buy out of it! I'm doing the same as you, nothing I can do about it now!

Good luck

Lois_E

welshlovebiscuit wrote: »

I would get a second job or do some tutoring but at the mo I'm working on my Phd so just don't have the time...so I'll just concentrate on saving ccaash for now :money:

Hi welshlovebiscuit and welcome to MFW. There are loads and loads of us teachers on here. What do you teach and at what kind of school/college?

Teaching and doing a PhD at the same time sounds like a crazy workload. You'd have to be insane to take on any tutoring on top, so don't beat yourself up about that. How far through the PhD are you? And are you one of those rare people that just love their PhD and sail happily through it, or are you the more usual type of "what have I got myself into? this is like wading through treacle" PhD student?

(Just read that through and hope it doesn't come across as rude. I mean it in the nicest possible way. I spent a lot of my 20s hanging out with lots of PhD students and I know they can be really demoralising.)

twinklie

Hiya, I'm a teacher too (secondary science). I'm doing my MA whilst teaching full time and I'm going to tutor too. It's a crazy workload, but hey ho.... Good luck with your PhD, my DH is doing his and is going slightly crazy.

Phelpsie001

Did your Lidl shop work out cheaper in the end?

I live by myself and only spend around £70 a month on my shopping at Tesco, but if Lidl would be cheaper, I'd easily change!!

welshlovebiscuit

Lois & twinklie - hello there, perhaps there are lots of teachers on here because our pay is so s***t! :-) I teach Post-16 - Geography, Sociology and communications. Only just beginning the research project - long hard slog ahead of me but I am one of those people who just loves studying (or I'm just a saddo, not sure which).

Phelpsie - we spent about £45 in LIDL and got most of the packaged things we need for a month (pasta, rice, tinned stuff etc, plus toilet/kitchen roll etc). We were pleased with this. We also went to ASDA to get meat and fruit (I'm a really fussy eater!) but only spent £25. I also did the ASDA price comparison thing and got a £1.85 voucher for this week...then put a few previous week's receipts through and got a total of another £5.00 in vouchers that need to be spent over the next 2 weeks. I'm going to stick to making lists and avoiding the supermarkets during the week (difficult as there is a Morrisons, Tesco and Asda all within walking distance of the house!

Today we re-financed the loan and paid the credit card off - the loan has gone up to £10,000 but the interest rate is fractionally lower than it was before - now 6.6% and we are going to overpay by £150 for now and see how we get on. I feel quite reinvigorated just by doing something to get control of this.

We have also checked and can make small payments through internet banking to both the loan and mortgage which will be useful.

One possibility the advisor suggested to us was to add to the loan to meet the early repayment charge and switch to a variable rate mortgage...I'm not convinced by this logic as I see creating more loan debt as counter-productive. We have however asked for an up to date early repayment quote just to see how much it would be. The other reason I'm dubious is that I'm fairly certain the value of the house has dropped by about £25,000 since we bought (remember - 6 weeks before the banks imploded!) My gut instinct is to just stick it out on the fixed rate and try to overpay as and when we can.

twinklie

Ha ha ha. I love studying too. But I'm meant to be doing my dissertation and I have no love for it at all. It doesn't help that the people running my course have no idea what they are doing and keep contradicting themselves. It's most annoying.