I have a dream...to be a MFW

ajmoney

I am hoping that starting a new diary may give me a new purpose with paying money to the mortgage.

So a little about us. I am in the armed forces as a musician and my DH is a music teacher in a secondary school. We got married in July 2011 and moved into our marital home the following month. I used to OP on our old house but moving here was a big financial change, mainly because we didn't want to change our lifestyle. All OPs I used to make came from my money and I was lucky enough not to need to cut back to do it.

We live and earn money to go on holiday and this is very important to us so hence the reason we have not OPd yet but I have dreams so am looking to other ways to fund being mortgage free. We are quite wasteful so I am hoping to start there with saving some money. We also eat out quite a bit but hopefully we can make a decision to cut back on this a bit. I have recently gone through all our insurances etc and we are on the best deals, although I want to see if I can be cheeky with our utility company.

We have 2 cars which are needed as we both work 9 miles away in different directions and DH has a motorbike for fun fair-weather days.

So I guess I need to give the mortgage bits!

Mortgage 1 (the largest)
Total today £140,064.79
Interest rate 4%
Due to end February 2030
Monthly payment £928.77
Nationwide tracker with no limit on OPs

Mortgage 2 (transferred from old property)
Total today £39,708.25
Interest rate 2.68%
Due to end February 2030
Monthly payment £237.13
Nationwide lifetime tracker with limits on OPs until February 2013.

I have a lot of dates in mind for when I would like to be mortgage free;
3 September 2022 - the date I leave my job
1 January 2022 - 10 years from the date I decided we should and could do this with a bit of hard work
9 July 2021 - maybe a bit ambitious but our 10 year anniversary and would allow us a year to save before my contract ends.

The goal is to be mortgage free so we don't have to work to pay the mortgage when I finish my job. We both have a good wage now and DH also has pension which he gets a monthly wage from. We have a fair amount in savings and are about to book an appointment to see a financial advisor as I believe DH can do better things with his money and our ISAs are about to come out of their bonus period.

I will leave it there for now before I bore you. I need to do a SOA but it scares me and I know we both need to do one for this to work. I will be back soon but hopefully you will support me in my quest

ajmoney

So the plan is to work at getting the larger mortgage down as we would have enough in savings between us now to clear the smaller one. I would like to aim to OP £459 in September (the amount of interest we will pay through the month) so I need to find £229.50 as DH will not have a problem with that. This would clear the mortgage by November 2022 which is a good start on the larger one. I get a pay rise as of tomorrow which after tax should work out about £50 extra in my wages a month. After bills I am left with around £450 which should make it easy but life doesn't always work like that.

I am going to advertise tonight to teach privately, if I could get 2 pupils a week that would cover what I want to OP and I certainly have time for that. I also have a lot of books etc that I want to get rid of so am going to sell as many of them as I can.

I will need to do the SOA soon :eek:

ajmoney

I have registered to teach and I have managed to rescue some bread before DH chucked it, I will be using it tomorrow so a little closer to not spending so much money. Looking at my finances I think the OP in September may be achievable :j

ajmoney

Just chatted to DH, we will be OPing £460 in September but it will be at the end of the month to make sure I can afford it.

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi AJM, good luck on your journey, Tilly

ajmoney

Had to go and but a dress for a wedding today as none of my stuff fits. I had some extra cash from a savings account at work so decided I would use that rather than eat into the £230ish that I am trying to stick to this month. Finally found something, got to the till and DH said he would buy it for me :j and I haven't spent any of my own money today so I still have enough money
We are going out to the motorbike racing tomorrow so will be taking a flask of tea and snacks with us and just buying a small lunch to keep us going. We normally eat out on the way back but I thought about it early this time and have some beef to put in the slow cooker before we leave so dinner will be ready when we get back. DH has a bike season ticket that my mum bought him last Christmas and my ticket cost £10 (bought last month), it would be good if tomorrow could cost us less than £20.

ajmoney

Once again I have spent none of my own money today, we spent about £14 in total from our joint account and I managed to convince DH that we didn't need the bread he wanted to buy as I have everything sorted for dinner. Put the slow cooker on this morning and dinner should be ready in an hour, think I might experiment with not browning food next time as it takes too long and there is less likelihood of me using it.

I really want to be able to contribute my £230 to the mortgage OP at the end of the month and am so happy with how it is going

ajmoney

Slow cooker dinner a success with enough left for dinner tomorrow too so I should only need to buy essentials if anything at all :j

ajmoney

I am very busy at work this week which is good as it means I still haven't spent anything from my allocated £220. However I have a wedding to go to on Saturday so have some girly treatments booked (all with discount vouchers), I think I should still be able to make my target though, I am quite determined this time.

I haven't heard anything from my teaching ad yet but I didn't really expect to, DH doesn't really want to take any more on though and he gets most of his pupils through word of mouth so has said he may pass people on to me if anyone else contacts him.

I have a bag of stuff to take to a charity shop or one of the places that pay by weight which seems a better idea, I am taking those tomorrow.

ajmoney

I still haven't spent any money from my account :j although I my spare cash from work has now gone. The real test will be the end of this week as I am away with work and we have a free day near shops, however every time I think about spending I remember how much I want to pay the mortgage off early, it must be working as I am not spending.

I can't decide whether to keep a savings account linked to my current account to transfer money I save through the month into or just pay it into the mortgage as I get it, any ideas? I want DH and I to match payments so it may be easier to save it up through the month and then pay it off.

I am going to raid my moneybox next as I know there are a couple of pounds in there that I can add. Still no word from my teaching ad but I didn't expect to hear anything yet.

I need to start looking to sell my books as we have decided that they take up too much room, I don't really want to pay commission so need to work out where to sell them.

ajmoney

I have opened a new savings account linked to my current account and now have £8.08 in it from cashback with Quidco. I have yet to decide whether to include this towards my monthly OP or for it to be extra.

I have a bag of clothes for cash for clothes and am going to try and get to the shop on Wednesday, I doubt I will get much for it but it will be good to see the total increase.