The long road to being mortgage free!

Mortgagefreeby50

I agree about the gas and electricity, the house used to be empty for most of the day, and we used to do 2 loads of washing a week maximum!

misscousinitt

Its a great achievement to have done work to the house AND got your savings intact.

Hope you are all keeping well.

MCI
xxx

catshark88

misscousinitt wrote: »

Its a great achievement to have done work to the house AND got your savings intact.

Hope you are all keeping well.

MCI
xxx

Absolutely!! Well done!!

& many congratulations too. :beer:

ammonite

Hi everyone! Well we did manage to keep the savings intact except for £600 which we were pleased with as we had estimated around £3500 to come out of the savings so we are really pleased!!!

I have started back on DooYoo again (lots of baby related reviews!) and I have 3 items to go on eBay. Must get back to adpoints, I need to get into a little routine now.

We have become much better at not abusing the tumble drier since it broke, we now dry the clothes on the maiden and finish them in the drier for 20 minutes saving some electricity! God knows what our gas bill will be

Apart from the little things, there is nothing happening on the MFW front, we want to pay a little bit off each month, hoping for about £80-£100 and we will be re-mortgaging in December and HOPE the interest rate goes down (currently at 5%) and we will keep the repayments at what we currently pay so we will be hopefully overpaying that amount too which will hopefully be around £100 a month.

Hope everyone is well, sorry I haven't kept up with your diaries, mini ammonite keeps me busy!

Mortgagefreeby50

I wouldn't bother with adpoints to be honest! They have dropped down to 1 point per ad, so it takes forever to rack up any decent points, and there aren't many new ads on that often. They're going mad about it on the freebies board!

I hope you are all ok, did you have a little boy or girl?

ammonite

Hello!

*waves sheepishly*

I have to admit apart from keeping on top of the bills I have been really slack at trying to be MFW. I have however been enjoying my time with my gorgeous daughter who is growing at a rate of knots and is a joy to be with!

Despite having a significant income cut this month (and next month is even worse), we are still doing well, we haven't touched our savings and are well on the way to paying off the small amount of debt on the 0% credit card and will have it paid back by the time the 0% runs out (or sooner) - this was a tiny bit left over from the building work that we had done.

My long term plan when I started this diary almost a year ago was to save up £2100 and overpay the mortgage by this amount in December 2012. Unfortunately as our financial situation is a wee bit precarious, I'm going to work part time but as yet don't know my hours, I'm not sure we can afford to pay that amount off the mortgage just in case we actually need those savings. However, we still have the money there earmarked for that purpose.

Indeed, we actually managed to save 3.5 times the amount we wanted to which gives us a bit of breathing space over the next 18 months or so.

Still, belts can be tightened! We have a freezer full of food, the cupboards are well stocked, so from now, I'm back on the grocery challenge! We aren't spending much on petrol as I'm not at work so that is a hefty saving each month.

As for additional baby costs, I'm a convert to Asda's Little Angel nappies which work out at 2 packs for £10 instead of the 2 for £17 on Pampers (and they are better!) which is quite a saving. I've saved a fortune by breastfeeding (just sheer luck that the baby was good at it - I'm not one of the breastfeeding police - she has a formula bottle at night) which I estimate has saved us around £120-£150 so far. I'll be making as much pureed food as possible with a few jars thrown in for when we go out and about when I start to wean her. We have been so lucky with clothes as people have been really generous with gifts plus we have loads of vouchers left for when she needs stuff when she is a bit older.

So I guess at my 1 year review I'm a bit disappointed that I haven't paid actual cash off the mortgage but I'm very proud of the fact we still have our savings intact despite initially calculating that we would need to spend the majority of it on the house improvements.

That is all from me, hope you are all doing really well

[Deleted User]

Lovely to see you again ammonite and great to hear you and mini ammonite are doing well
You have achieved fantastic things - 3.5 times what your savings goal was - that's fab!! Even if you keep it in savings to act as a buffer you have still done brilliantly!
Good luck on the grocery challenge- I know this is the biggest area we can save on , its a bit hit n miss sometimes as I think there is something addictive about trawling the supermarkets! :rotfl:

shala_moo

Lovely to hear from you Ammonite.. :wave:

Glad everything's well xx

ammonite

Evening all!

So sorry to all the lovely MFW who supported me and this diary so well last year, I just don't seem to be able to fit in updates with mini ammonite!

The most MFW things I've been doing is trying not to dip into our savings whilst on maternity leave (which is rapidly approaching it's end!). Pleased to say only used about 5% of savings which I'm pleased about - the entire stash was earmarked to help us out but we have tried hard to be frugal. Our remortgage is due this year and based on Martin's e-mail we may be able to pre-book a rate of interest.

The plan is to get a 5-10 year fix at around 3% and overpay the difference which will be around £200 a month based on our current figures which will hopefully mean we can achieve our dream of being mortgage free by 40 and hopefully taking around 10 years off the mortgage term. I've yet to look to see if such a mortgage exists but I hope it will!

Getting very little time to do surveys etc. but managing to keep up with consumer pulse and the two credit cards I have pay amazon loyalty points so just redeemed £30 argos and £20 amazon which will be going towards our expensive week of the year: mini-ammonite's birthday and christmas in the same week!!!

I am so sorry I haven't had chance to catch up with you all but I'd love to hear how you are getting on if you have a little minute to post here. I'll probably be able to post more and catch up when I go back to work (which speaks volumes in itself!!)

Lots of MFW fairy dust to you all!

Mortgagefreeby50

Hi Ammonite!
I have also been MIA for a few months, just popping in occasionally to update MFW2013 and the 3 year challenge. Mini-MSE is 10 and a half months now and I'm loving being at home with her. I am meeting work next week to discuss going back-boo! You have coped a lot better financially than I have, the paltry £5k I saved up before maternity has not lasted at all and we have a hefty credit card bill that will be a priority when I'm working again. Shouldn't take too long to shift it but I hate being in debt after being debt-free and savings-rich for so long. Consequently my overpayment savings are not really getting bigger, just the odd quidco and mystery shop here and there. I think I'll cut and paste this to my own diary as I've just typed more of an update here than I've written in months on mine!