Little P Starting as I Mean to Carry On!!

LittleP

It’s probably a bit early to start this thread but I am getting my keys for my first house tomorrow. I from the word go intend to get mortgage free as soon as possible, even though I accept I have to spend a bit on decorating and furnishing.

I should be in a pretty good position because I bought at £85,000 with a £55,000 deposit (my life savings gone in the press of a button!!) and am using an offset mortgage. My aim once I have stabilised my finances from the mentioned decorating etc is to over pay every month.

Any way not much to say as I said above I haven’t even got the keys yet,
but I thought it would be nice to start a thread so I can pop in now an again and keep track of my progress.

sweetdaisy

LittleP wrote: »

It’s probably a bit early to start this thread but I am getting my keys for my first house tomorrow. I from the word go intend to get mortgage free as soon as possible, even though I accept I have to spend a bit on decorating and furnishing.

I should be in a pretty good position because I bought at £85,000 with a £55,000 deposit (my life savings gone in the press of a button!!) and am using an offset mortgage. My aim once I have stabilised my finances from the mentioned decorating etc is to over pay every month.

Any way not much to say as I said above I haven’t even got the keys yet,
but I thought it would be nice to start a thread so I can pop in now an again and keep track of my progress.

Good luck LittleP . That is a huge deposit you have paid, so your mortgage balance is £30,000. If you don't have any savings left I would consider saving up 6 months of your salary first (as a safety net). You can use this money in savings to then offset against your mortgage.

Bet you are really excited to be picking up your keys tomorrow.

LittleP

Thank you for the reply Sweetdaisy. I’m pretty fortunate that I was brought up to be a saver, and have been putting money away since I was about fifteen. My mum and dad joke that they made the fifty pence that shape to get it out of my hand with a crowbar!!

I have some money left over for decorating and furnishing the house and should hopefully have some left over to offset. I will start building my savings up as well as trying to overpay when everything is done.

I’m defiantly excited but a bit apprehensive too as there is a great deal of decorating to do. When all that is done its going to be a great place to live though so it will all be worth it.

sweetdaisy

You are like me. My parents taught me to save and the best thing they did was set up a bank account for me at 13 years old and my pocket money was paid into my account, so if I wanted to waste it all on sweets (which is what I initially did ) it meant that I had to keep some money back and catch a bus to get to the ATM!. So the novelty of wasting my pocket money wore off and I began saving.

I have an Offset Mortgage too and only now really starting to overpay - even though we have had the Offset mortgage for almost 4 years because we got married, had a house extension and had two children.

So, now I have decided to be a MFW and hopefully can pay mortgage off at least 4 years earlier, which will be around 2022.

LittleP

I’m single so I don’t have any children to provide for so in that respect I should have more flexibility into my offsetting/overpaying. I must confess though I am determined to start treating myself a bit more in the future, within reason of course.

Good luck with your mortgage free goal also.

Jock_Tight

All the best for picking up the keys

Could you not have put down a smaller deposit then offset the rest of your savings against the mortgage, that way you would still have access to it for an emergency fund ?

Thats what we did when we switched to an offset mortgage, we had £64k savings offset against a £64k mortgage. The mortgage interest rate was much higher that the savings rate so it was win win.

Jock

LittleP

I thought about it, but this way just felt better to me. To be honest my monthly repayments are very manageable at a 30k mortgage so I should build up emergency fund quite quickly anyway.

lulabelle1

Congrats and good luck!
I wish my mum had taught me to save, I still can't go shopping with her too often as she is a nightmare and encourages me to spend all of my money and more.
Thankfully I saw sense myself eventually but not until I was around 30, so a lot of lost years in regards to wasted money, but never mind. Onwards and upwards now, thats all that matters!!

LittleP

Thanks Lulabelle. Saving is a good lesson for anybody, because it teaches you to only buy want you really, really want/need. So you dont have my regrets with items you bought.

Anyway I have picked up my keys so I have now started the mortgage free ride.

sweetdaisy

Hope all went well today - moving into your new home .

LittleP

Sweetdaisy all went well apart from a slight problem with the boiler but that is fixed now. Im going to decorate before I move in but I should be in before christmas.

Also I have got a small up date as its payday. I got my annual profit related bonus which was just over £440 after deductions which I have used as an overpayment. I know its probably early but I have always earmarked my bonuses as to go towards the House Deposit and now its going towards the mortgage free goal. It only comes around once a year, but it will make a difference.

So far my mortgage has gone this way:-

£30,134 - £134 fees - £440 Bonus = £29,560 left to pay.