FlashBarry's £97k in 3 years MFW mission!

FlashBarry

Hello all!

I’m FlashBarry and since last week, I’m a Mortgage FreeWannabe!

Inspired by everyone else’s MFW Diary threads on here, I wouldlike this to capture my thoughts and experiences during this epic journey. I’m hoping that you might be able to giveme some hints and tips as well as picking me up if I trip up along the way.

The mission – pay off our £97,000 24 year mortgage in just 3years! Aiming to be mortgage free inSeptember 2015, aged 36.

A little about me:

I consider myself to be pretty good with money in terms ofme never taking a loan other than the Mortgage and never missing a credit cardpayment. Regrettably, I have neverreally paid attention to the mortgage until a couple of months ago.

We are aiming to pay £2000/month in overpayments, which willleave us a meagre £250/month each for savings, treats or unforeseen costs. I hope this will be enough!

Initial concerns:

I don’t want to feel like this challenge is controlling ourlives.

I don’t want to be living off value beans for the next 3years!

We have also been living a bit of a flash lifestyle over thelast few years (Holidays, treats, sports cars, etc.) and I am not sure how itwill feel to suddenly “lose” all these things.

I have about £12,000 tied up in an old Sports Car that I mayhave to sell to give me a mortgage boost. This is my pride & joy, but I feel 100% committed to my new mission.

Also, I am aware that I have only had this challenge for afew days and I don’t want to lose motivation in a few month’s time. I’m hoping this thread will keep me ontrack! Please give me a nudge if I startdrifting away from the mission! :A

FlashBarry

My first steps:

Making the MSE forums my web browser homepage! :money:

Adding “Overpayment” as a new payee on my online banking

Telling my family about our new mission

Making my first overpayment: £1000 in August 2012
(Can't do my "regular" £2000 OP as my credit card took a hammering in my hols earlier this month before I started my mission. Oops!)

Anything else I need to be doing early on?

coldcazzie

FlashBarry wrote: »

Anything else I need to be doing early on?

Doing a statement of affairs (ie, a review of everything you spend each month on bills, food etc) and seeing if there are any areas where you may be spending more than you need to? Not necessarily so that you can OP that money, but you would have a slightly larger margin for error each month

lulabelle1

Welcome to the site and very best of luck with your MF Mission...

It sounds like you are fired up and ready to go which is a good start...

I've been on my MF mission officially for around a year now and it's had its up and downs. Keeping a diary on here definitely helps.

I've steered clear or telling many friends or family as no one seems to really understand and it just meets with strange looking faces when I even bother to start to mention my MF plans... so, I pretty much keep stum about it nowadays.

Good Luck!

FlashBarry

Coldcazzie – Good idea! I will go back through the last few months of our joint account ononline banking to see how much money Tesco have been taking of me! We regularly go in for a loaf of bread andcome out with £50 of stuff. THAT has tochange.

lulabelle1 – I hope your year 1 has gone to plan! Looks like your overpayments are even moreambitious than mine! I have only told myparents and inlaws, but good point - I think I won’t tell many more people than that.

I’m pumped up for this challenge, but I am acutely awarethat it depends on steady employment and I have only been in my new job forabout 6 months. I hope it all works out!

beachie

What is your mortgage interest rate? You might be better off saving it in a separate account rather than paying it off the mortgage.

Good luck on your journey!

YoungBusinessman

£20k + OP's in a year is amazing, some dedication.

cod3

What else do you need? A spreadsheet addiction!

Good luck on your mission, FlashBarry.

numptyknownothing

Oooh - a sprinter - good for you. I am more a marathon girl plod rather than pace but wish you luck. Go flashbarry go!

coldcazzie

FlashBarry wrote: »

Coldcazzie – Good idea! I will go back through the last few months of our joint account ononline banking to see how much money Tesco have been taking of me! We regularly go in for a loaf of bread andcome out with £50 of stuff. THAT has tochange.

Ooh yes, know that feeling! :rotfl: worst bit is when you look at it and think "I haven't even bought anything really worth it". :mad:

My spreadsheet has a worksheet in it in which I have all our regular outgoings divided up into essentials (mortgage, life ins, council tax, monitored alarm), bills (utilities, mobiles, sky/tv, cat ins, washer/boiler cover), extras (milkman, park christmas savings, magazine subscriptions), credit card purchases (food, petrol, toiletries, pet food etc), savings (both regular savings and the money we put aside each month for clothes, gifts and annual bike expenses), and cash. That way I can see at a glance what I'm spending on each category individually, plus what we spend overall on "bills" or are aiming for on "the credit card" each month.

Hmm... maybe I shouldn't confess to that although I'm not as big of a spreadsheet-oholic as some other members on here :rotfl::rotfl:

FlashBarry

Beachie – As we have now dropped off our 2 year fixed rate,I think we are only on about 1.5-2.5%. Ireally like the idea of committing the money into the mortgage rather than intoa savings account. I don’t want to betempted to dip into it. (Bad day at work = "what car could I get for the £XXXXX I have in that savings account?")

YoungBusinessman – £2k a month does sound like a lot, but I thinkit should be do-able. Having said that,I can’t figure out why we haven’t had loads of spare cash in the past. I hope I haven’t miscalculated or forgottensomething expensive!

Cod3 – I have been known to dabble with Spread sheets atwork, so I feel half way there!

Numptyknownothing – I feel that I have been walkingbackwards mortgage-wise for the last 6 years, so it’s about time I caught up! Better late than never!

Coldcazzie – Hmmm, your spread sheet sounds more complexthan I imagined. I was thinking: ColumnA, month number, Column B, mortgage amount, Column C, mortgage target = nicegraph. Yours sounds far more useful!

By the way, I like to type my replies into Word and pastethem into MSE but I have noticed it keeps removing spaces between words. Any ideas why?