Its time to grow up and pay off the mortgage

OS_QS

yay £15 amazon voucher from a survey site. which is good as I've had another spendy morning!

Car repairs and MOT might cost around £600 then we also have £200 road tax due at the end of the month :eek:

Just waiting to see what I get paid and will shift that to the mortgage...

a beautiful day here so off to the country park for a walk with the baby.....will try to avoid the cafe!!:money:

OS_QS

yay the pay day shuffle :rotfl:

Moved the relevant monies about to secure relevant rewards and made a £1000 mortgage overpayment. Then I saw that the balance was £78,399 so I just HAD to find £400 to take the balance down into the £77k bracket
I was pleased, hubby not so much as I had 'found' the money in our spending account (covers meals out, cinema, drinks out, etc)! I'm not bothered tho - feeding and looking after a newborn means no alcohol or nights out for me, so welcome to my world hubby!:rotfl:

Luckyinlife

Great overpayment
haha funny how hubby is with you when you dip into the account hehe
he wont miss it that much just keep telling him 77k hubby 77k lol

OS_QS

woo received NW letter acknowledging our OP and recalculating the 'normal' payment down to £495/ month to maintain the March 2032 redemption......I don't think so!!

I then use anything extra in our accounts to bump it up, our aim is to at least match mortgage payments with OPs (i.e. double payments), so hoping to find £500 by the end of the month to make this happen. The hubby likes it this way as its nice and simple - the spreadsheet doesn't do it for him :rotfl:

I've downloaded the bounts app, since I'm out for a daily walk with the little one anyways, may as well get some pennies for it, and it may just make me go for slightly longer walks. win win:D

OS_QS

oh forgot to add, that we sold 6 items on an auction site, and we should receive around £450, which will pay for the balance of our holiday next month

OS_QS

Year-end update….

Our monthly mortgage payments are now down to £450. Partly because of the interest rate reduction, but mostly because of us steadily chipping away at the overpayments. Total OP for 2016 currently stands at £16,620.

The NW app showed me today that we have an overpayment pot of £49,432.67. I would love to see that a nice round, even £50k for starting 2017 with, so my mission for the last few weeks of December is to find £567.33! Will be tough, but I’m gonna give it a go!
Worst case I will try and find £380 to make the 2016 OP total reach £17k

I’m hoping to find the majority of this in the grocery spending – I’ve gotten out of control again, with going back to work, and trying to tempt a fussy little eater too.

We’ve paid out over £1000 in insurance (2x car + home) this week. That was a sore one!

Just jumped through all the hoops to switch over to HSBC for me and hubby, so hopefully 2x £150 appearing in the next few months, with 2x£50 to follow.

In other good news, we have sold a number of items recently, which pays for 50% of our holiday next year

OS_QS

Spoke with Hubby, and he ‘found’ £300 in his spending account, making me search through mine, and I’ve managed to make up the balance and overpaid the final £500 to bring my OP pot to £50,006!!! Wow!

Super pleased! Our balance is now £68,800 going into 2017. However I’ve been giving clearing the full amount a bit of thought, as since starting our MFW journey in 2012, our situation has changed….

My (current!) idea is to get the mortgage down to £20,000 or £30,000 and also have the same saved in savings accounts(hopefully at +2% interest!). That way, technically we are mortgage neutral, if not free, but if necessary we could have access to not only the savings, but from the entire OP pot…

Also part of me feels a bit apprehensive in getting rid of a reasonably good tracker 2%+base, portable mortgage, just for the sake of it? Obviously if rates go up then we could just pay off and not worry. Am I being sensible or silly?

Also, hubby has expressed a wish to go self employed / contracting, and we have been delaying it as a result of both being risk adverse, and with recently starting a family and me being on maternity. I’d worry about not getting another mortgage should we want to (based on not having the required years of accounts and me being part time)…..? However, if we have a really low mortgage repayment (as a result of all the overpayments) then it wouldn’t matter if he had a few lean months / took time to look for good contract roles, as we have reduced our financial obligations…. Hmmmm….

OS_QS

Happy New Year Everyone!


Love the opportunity of a fresh start and reassessing goals.


We managed to pay £23,000 towards the mortgage last year. This total includes our normal, obligatory mortgage repayment. If we keep this up, then we are exactly 3 years away from being mortgage free (+/- a couple of K for interest) !!


Outstanding balance is under £69,000 and our daily interest rate is £4.24.


We have cash savings of £7,000 and approx. £8000 of shares maturing this year (conservative amount as does not include any rise in share price over 3yrs).
So if we were going 'mortgage neutral' our balance would stand at £54,000.


We have both successfully switched and opened a HSBC account, and am away to set up a regular saver at £250 each. This will mean by February 2018, we will have over 6,000 saved to start the year with. I find for me that these automatic savers the best way to save, and have done one with FD every year, and basically recycle the same money through, but this is the first time I will have 3 on the go!


I also have a goal to spend less than £80/ week on groceries, which will be basically 2x £40 online grocery deliveries / week.....with the goal as soon as possible to reduce this to 3x £40 shops per fortnight.
Which means I will HAVE to get back into meal planning, which I need to do for my sanity as juggling running the house, chores, working (and commuting) 50+hrs/week and having a lively toddler is taking its toll! Any tips gratefully received!!

OS_QS

Right, just opened up the regular savers (one for hubby, one for me) with HSBC (trying not to be the procrastination queen this year!).


Hopefully with the amounts coming out so close to payday (last working day of month) then I wont notice, and will get used to having less money to play with. This works better for me than trying to find £250 at the end of the month to save!


I got the £150 bonus from HSBC just before Christmas, and hubby should get his next week sometime, once both his DD's go out.


trying to think what else I can do to overhaul / improve our finances...

OS_QS

Regular savers:
opened up HSBC each 2x £250
opened up NW joint at £500 / month


so have £1000/month going into regular savers all at 5%. should make January 2018 a bit easier!


Still no £150 incentive for hubby's account.....


Seem to be doing ok on the grocery spend (1.5wks in LOL!)