Goodbye Mortgage - the beginning of the end!

Beckyy

I think I've been underpaid this month, hopefully. In which case the extra I get will go towards an OP.

New job is going well, so busy though. Went grocery shopping at 9pm last night - just not enough hours in the day!

Packed lunches are going well and meal plan is sorted and bought for until next weekend, bar 1 item that was out of stock in the supermarket.

Waiting to hear back on progress at BTL, fingers crossed it's positive.

lilmissmup

Hope things are all good hun!

Beckyy

Thanks lilmissup, will stop by to say hi in your thread

Haven't updated for a while...

Work still hasn't started with BTL, getting there with having everything in place but had a lot of hoops to jump through with the insurance company so it's been a slow process. Fingers crossed the actual works will go smoothly.

Work is going well, enjoying my new job and keeping very busy. My course is also plodding along quite quickly, toying with the idea of a degree afterwards but it will depend a lot on what job I'm doing then and if we want to have children sooner rather than later as a degree would mean waiting another 3/4 years.

I've made a few OPs in February, it was such a short month I didn't really post any updates! I didn't buy a slow cooker (yet?) as I'm running out of kitchen space, both cupboard and worktop!

Beckyy

We received the letter from our lender reminding us that our fix is coming to an end... they obviously have people forget! I'm considering a tracker mortgage purely because many of them have no ERC and I'm not really sure when we'll end up moving, so to have the freedom of being able to sell up or remortgage whenever is very appealing, the interest rates are also much lower than fixes and whilst I know they are very likely to rise within the next 2 years they would have to rise by about 3% for repayments to come anywhere close to what we're paying now.

I'm also looking into offset mortgages. I've always been a bit annoyed that any money we save is a 'wasted' OP as we earn less interest than we pay, however need to save the cash also as we will be saving for our next deposit once we're remortgaged. An offset could potentially be the best option and food for thought.

I've been drip feed-OPing the money we had saved to get our mortgage balance down to £87,500 for a better LTV for out remortgage so my OPs are much higher than they would be otherwise at the moment.

Watty1

Good plan re LTV though. Def worth doing whatever you decide as it gives you more options when decision time comes.

Beckyy

Another month during which we've managed to stick to the grocery budget. I think my new job is meaning I have less time to cook extra stuff during the day, and less time to pop to the shop for things.

We've OP'ed enough to bring our mortgage balance down to where we wanted to be for our remortgage - it's currently £87,648.18 and we still have 2 monthly payments to go through before then so we should be well below the £87,500.

I'm not too certain what's going to happen with the remortgage as we've both had changed to work and I don't know how it will affect the products available to us as some specific minimum periods in a role etc.

We have agreed we would like to move to a bigger house as soon as the right one becomes available and we can afford it. This poses the question of whether we should sell up or let our current house out when the time comes. Unless we can save ALOT we may well have to sell up, as our currently deposit would be pretty small otherwise. Time will tell!

I made this curry yesterday (omitted the chicken for myself):
http://thekitchenshed.co.uk/clean-eating-chicken-and-sweet-potato-curry/
Very nice!

Beckyy

The TSB shuffle is done, and the interest + rewards from our other current accounts have been added to the savings pot. I've been working on looking for the best remortgage deal, I think I've found one fingers crossed. It will mean paying over £150 less each month for the same term! So hopefully we should be able to save a lot more towards our next house.

My car insurance renewal is coming up and it's gone down again which is excellent. I'll be adding the small extra I'd put aside that it's come down by into the pot.

I still need to meal plan for the next week (inc. tonight!). I hope you all have a lovely Easter

lilmissmup

Hi Hun.


I am back with a new diary, will be posting lots!


http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=68261176#post68261176

Beckyy

Lovely to see you back lillmissup, I'll keep an eye on your diary!

I haven't posted much lately but have been on, I need to update the MFW thread with our OP totals for the last couple of months.

Still haven't got to do our remortgage, not enough hours in a day at the moment! I'm unsure if we may have to wait due to new jobs though - we'll soon find out!

Ploughing through this months food budget which isn't so great. It's trying to find organic food that hammers it, we went to Asda today who don't have so much organic choice so our bill was a lot less. We're cooking a nice curry tonight and I've meal planned up until next weekend

Beckyy

I've sent in our OP updates for the spreadsheet, and also applied for a rate switch now that the end of our fix is near. We're staying with the same lender so hopefully the process will be relatively easy and quick!

Over the next 2 years I would like to get our LTV down to 60% - currently 70%, and I would like to boost our savings by another £9,000 if possible. (preferably more but I'm not sure if even that figure is realistic without beans on toast every day!)

We're still waiting to BTL to get sorted following the flood, so I can't budget too much for rent etc until we know when it will be let out again, and if we will manage it ourselves etc.

That will mean our new targets are:
2015 OP - £6,000 (gulp!!) £1800.50 currently
2015 Savings - £4,500 (2nd gulp!!) £847.53 currently.

Although I need to remember our rate switch should save up approx £2K each year in interest.

Now that I've put that in writing I can't avoid it!