Sweetdaisy's aim to be mortgage-free

chumpy45

Hope you enjoyed your first week - you won't be the new girl on Monday! Our overpayment this month has also meant we are in the 'forties' - really motivating me to keep going

sweetdaisy

chumpy45 wrote: »

Hope you enjoyed your first week - you won't be the new girl on Monday! Our overpayment this month has also meant we are in the 'forties' - really motivating me to keep going

Hi chumpy 45, new job is going well and really enjoying. Congratulations on getting into the £40,000's . Before you know it you'll be in the £30,000's.

sweetdaisy

Hope that everyone has had a good Christmas :xmassmile. I’ve not posted for a while as life has been hectic. I’ve been in my new job for two months and thoroughly enjoying. There is a lot to learn and the days are flying by.

I had an ACCA exam last week in Birmingham and passed. I didn’t think I would as it’s been difficult studying and starting a new job, but glad it was all done before Christmas. I start back in College mid-January and the next exam will be around June, so am looking forward to having a break from studying for a week or two.

Interest of £36.13 was applied to the mortgage on Christmas Eve. I also made an overpayment of £79 so that I start the New Year with a mortgage balance of £45,000.

Mortgage Stats:
Mortgage balance at start of 2015: £55,198
Balance end of December 2015: £45,000
Total overpayments made: £5,105
Total interest paid: £975
Mortgage Offset: 70%

Spent an hour or so last night looking over the finances, moving money around and setting up new financial spreadsheets for 2016. I’m not making any New Year’s Resolutions or setting myself any MFW goals, as I am just hoping to chip away at the mortgage as and when I am able to .

Lexi-lu

Hello sweetdaisy,

I have just been enjoying reading through your diary. The mortgage overpayments are great, an inspiration to those of us just starting our MF journey.

Well done on passing the exam! I'm sure it was a lot of hard work.

Hope that you are still enjoying your new job.

LL

sweetdaisy

Lexi-lu wrote: »

Hello sweetdaisy,

I have just been enjoying reading through your diary. The mortgage overpayments are great, an inspiration to those of us just starting our MF journey.

Well done on passing the exam! I'm sure it was a lot of hard work.

Hope that you are still enjoying your new job.

LL

Thanks Lexi-lu . Not going to be making many overpayments this month as we have a lot of outgoings, but any little overpayment made helps to reduce the term and keep my motivation going.

sweetdaisy

I’ve not posted for a while. Since the New Year I have only managed an overpayment of £50. This has reduced the term by a further month and we are now on target to repay the mortgage by June 2021 (4 years and 6 months earlier than original end date).

Unfortunately, there is some uncertainty with regards to both of our jobs and in a few weeks we will know if we are being made redundant . Obviously, should we both lose our jobs it means that I will reduce the monthly mortgage payments to the minimum amount, my Emergency Fund will come into use and as a last resort it may mean having to claim back the mortgage overpayments we have made. As we have an Offset mortgage I have looked into this and can claim back 90% of our overpayments. This means that our term would go back to the original end date, but obviously needs must in order for us not to lose our home.

January and February (so far) have been very expensive for us - these were our additional expenses:
£485 - DH’s car needed a full service, two new tyres and a cam belt change
£180 - DH’s annual Car Tax renewal
£130 - My annual Car Tax renewal
£370 - Building and Contents Insurance renewal
£319 - DH’s Car Insurance renewal (done through Topcashback, so waiting for £52 in cashback to be paid)
£374 - My Car Insurance renewal (done through Topcashback, so waiting for £52 in cashback to be paid)

I used my cashback credit card to pay for House Insurance and our Car Insurances, so earned Cashback Rewards which I’ll be able to redeem for cash next month.

Roll on ‘free’ Council Tax this month and in March - can’t wait.

QB_Wolf

Sorry to hear about the prospect of redundancies SD fingers crossed for you.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Good luck sweetdaisy.

A positive spin - you have OPs and emergency funds to draw on, and have got the major car bills sorted ahead of time. If the worst happens you are in a good position to deal with it :-)

sweetdaisy

SuperSecretSquirrel wrote: »

Good luck sweetdaisy.

A positive spin - you have OPs and emergency funds to draw on, and have got the major car bills sorted ahead of time. If the worst happens you are in a good position to deal with it :-)

Thank you QBW & SSS.

I am thankful that I scaled back on our Mortgage OP's over the past year in order to increase our Emergency Fund, otherwise I would be in much more of a panic.

DH was made redundant a few years ago, so we have been through this before, but the prospect of us both losing our jobs is scary. What will be, will be and we will just have to deal with whatever comes our way.

sweetdaisy

I’ve not posted for a long time – a lot has happened which has resulted in us having to re-evaluate our finances. Just as I was in touching distance of becoming fully Offset (managed to get to 98%), DH was initially told that his job was safe and then a fortnight later, we received the news that we were both potentially facing redundancy. This is an ongoing and long process, but for the time being things are looking positive and we are still in our jobs.

As much as we wanted to be fully Offset, we had to be sensible and decided that we needed to reduce our monthly outgoings as much as we could in the prospect of us both losing our jobs.

So, over the past 6 months or so I’ve been like a busy bee haggling my car breakdown cover and reduced this by £58; repaid my car loan in full at a cost of £7,400 out of Savings, which has saved us £1,110 in interest and reduced our monthly outgoings by £240; I also repaid £4,700 which I had on a Virgin Credit Card (interest free) as I did a balance transfer to stooze the money so that we could save interest on the mortgage - this saved us £47 a month; and I have shaved £10 a week from our weekly spending money.

All in all, we have gone from being 98% Offset and only paying £4 mortgage interest a month to now being 66% Offset . This is very disheartening, however on the positive side we have reduced our monthly outgoings and I can honestly say that without having an Emergency Fund behind us, we would be in a much bleaker situation.
For the time being I have kept my Mortgage payments as they are as it is manageable. We currently pay £750 a month, however the minimum payment reduced to £433 in June, so we are automatically overpaying by £317 per month. The mortgage balance is now £38,200 and it is a great feeling to be in the £30,000s.

At present, I am not making any additional Mortgage Overpayments as I am building up my Emergency Fund again, however according to my spreadsheet we could be 100% fully Offset by November 2017 – if all continues well on the job front.

I am also going to try and post once a month to keep up the motivation .