inigma's bimble to mortgage freedom

inigma

Watch out for the storm tonight!

inigma

Hello Mortgage Slayers,

Another month another overpayment!

Had a mixed month really, work has been getting me really down, I am now suffering anxiety attacks in the morning so I took the plunge and went to a job agency, they told me that I am massively being under paid as a manager, if I went to another company and worked as a grunt rather than the manager I would be on another £6k a year (more money less stress). I spoke to my family and asked them, they asked me what is keeping me in my current role and I realised it was just the friends I had made (who are just as fed up as me). So I have decided that I should go forth and I should be interviewing this month.

In more positive news I had an estate agent come over to value my flat and on the basis of their valuation it means my flat has gone up £120k in 2 years. As much as I love London I can't help but feel as though the property market has just got silly; after a discussion with Mrs Inigma I explained that I wanted a place outside of London (within 45 mins of a mainline terminus in London) that has a garden, 3 or 4 bedrooms, an en suite, conservatory... you get the idea. I am going to assume (very conservatively) my flat will go up another £20k, then with my OP I should have almost £200k to spend on a house, which means if I found a place for £250k then I would only have a £50k mortgage...

First things first I need to focus on getting a new job, I like to think being mortgage free will help with my anxiety attacks.

Till next month!

gallygirl

Great that things are looking up, it's so easy to just carry on but you're taking control which is great :T. Hopefully that will make things easier to deal with in the mean time .

inigma

Hello Mortgage Slayers!

I did it, I met my overpayment target for 2013! Think I am going to set the same goal for 2014 (I am fixed at only being allowed to OP £500 a month).

2013 was a tough year so I am hoping 2014 is a better one, I hope you all had wonderful Christmas's and I wish prosperity and Mortgage Slaying 2014.

Till next month!

inigma

Hello Mortgage Slayers!

Another month another over payment!

Well I am trying my hardest to keep my head down and battle on through work, I have been moved to another team but I still get called back to the "other place" every so often and it really sucks the life out of me, but the new team is a lot happier place to be, long term I will have nothing to do with the dark place.

In slightly more positive news I calculated how much I have saved myself on my mortgage interest since starting overpaying is close £30k. One of the motivators I have is to take my original start date of then minus the months saved through overpaying, so it is currently the equivalent of November 2007 that I purchased my house, rather than September 2011... it's the little things that keep me going, I think when I get it back to June 2004 when I was finishing university I will be really happy.

Compound interest, those who understand it earn it, those who don't pay it.

Till next month!

inigma

Hello Mortgage Slayers!
Another month another overpayment. So wow we have now gone and done it, what Mervyn started Carney carried on, 0.50% base rate for 5 years, "A fad" some called it, "A joke" others decried. No matter what you call it for us mortgage folk it has been a marvellous hiatus, oh how we have basked in the glory of obscenely low mortgage rates. Not just that but I am one of the 1 million homeowners who have never known a rates hike, that's right since March 2009 1 million of us have purchased houses for the first time. This pretty much makes us the blind ignorant, you know debtors born into the tabula rasa, so let me ask you this:
What was the Mortgage Rate in March 2006 (8 years ago)?
6.5%, yep, that's not a typo 6.5%, whilst we are living the life of riley on the 2%-3% it used to be the norm to have mortgage rates upwards of 6%.
Question 2, if your mortgage deal ran out tomorrow and the best rate you could get was 6.5% what would be your new out goings?
Well let's assume that we started out on a 2 year fix at 3% for 25 years on £150k, your monthly mortgage payment would be £711.32 and 2 years later your debt would be around £141,500.
Assuming the best deal you could find was a 2 year fix at 6.5% and you took the mortgage life down to 23 years then for the next 24 months your monthly mortgage payment would be £989.18.
I don't know about you but £277.86 a month more seems crazy to me, I want my mortgage payments to go down not up! There is a lot of talk about next spring the interest rates going up 0.50% to 1% and you can bet your !!! that the banks will reflect that in loans straight away (not straight away for the savers though). Eventually we will get back up to 6% mortgage rates but will house prices have to collapse or will wages have to rise to quantify it?
So when you make your packed lunch, have a movie night in with homemade pop corn, pay for a meal with a voucher and Over Pay the savings just know your future self is thanking you, we don't know what is round the corner. I for one think the UK housing market is stupid, I would rather have a controlled slow growth rather than this 30% by 2018 malarky.
Till next month

inigma

I'm back and the mission to freedom is still on. I want this mother flapping albatross off from around my neck by September 2021.

inigma

Hello Mortgage Slayers,

Another month another over payment.

Well it has been a while and I apologise for the lack of communication, since I last updated, over 4 years ago, I managed to get myself married and I have just been focusing on enjoying life. That is not to say we haven't been focusing on our debt, but we did manage to rack up a lot of debt but that is now cleared. We are now in a position to kick off over paying again. My 5 year fix I took out in 2011 at 5.04% has been replaced with a 5 year fix at 2.29%, the maximum we can overpay is 10% of our initial mortgage amount, that is £14,450 a year or £1,204.16r. We are currently on track to hit this years over payment, we missed last years due to the debt repayment!

So I am currently 35.71% paid off, we are hoping to hammer the mortgage down over the next 3.5 years so when our current 5 year fix finished we will hopefully be mortgage free. As with all plans the original idea of paying off the full amount by 2018 isn't going to happen, but we are both on good money and have a solid budget and we are planning on hitting over payments and make serious savings each month.

Till next month.

inigma

Looks like I am on quarterly updates, still chugging along making overpayments, keeping my head down and making my packed lunches. I think in September I will reduce the length of my Mortgage from 13 years to 6 years, with overpayments we should then be mortgage free when the 5 year fix finishes in September 2021. We keep reviewing our incomings and our outgoings trying to make sure we make each penny count and go as far as we can. So hopefully if things stay as they are we can find ourselves celebrating in 3 years and 3 months.

inigma

Term of mortgage reduced from 13 years outstanding to 8 years outstanding, current 5 year fix finished in 3 years, therefore any over payment I make from next month onward will reduce the remaining term to under 5 years. I will aim to over pay another 10% for my mortgage year starting 1st October 2018. This journey was originally supposed to end this month this year, I wanted to be free of this within 7 years of buying, it didn't happen but I won't give up.

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in