I have a dream...to be a MFW

ajmoney

Just looked at the figures in my mortgage account online, we have managed to reduce our mortgage by £5k since 01/01/2016, if I can manage to pay just over this for the rest of the year I will achieve my goal of getting our larger mortgage under £100k by the end of the year. We are always helped in the first half of the year by council tax free months and insurance renewal savings that all go into the mortgage but with remortgaging next month and an interest free loan coming to an end in October this should be more than manageable. I feel giddy with excitement, I can only begin to imagine the feeling when the mortgage is gone

ajmoney

The person at the bank fibbed the other week, we can discuss remortgaging up to 90 days before so we have a telephone appointment at 2.30 this afternoon. I am a little nervous now but very excited. Although we took the (larger) mortgage out on 18th August the deal officially ends on the 31st. I am assuming the product takes effect from then and we are just reserving it in advance but I am sure that will all be clarified in the phone call. I hope today's OP is showing by the time we have the call!

Hmmm what can I do money wise now? I want to take on the world :j

ajmoney

Dilemma time for whenever the new mortgages take effect, to OP or to save. Our mortgage rate will be 1.84%, ISAs 1.3% and RS accounts 5%. I am not stupid, I can see what we should do but for our future it is really important to get rid of our mortgage or get it as low as possible. I think it would be really hard for us to save everything and remember that some of it is for the mortgage. I think a happy medium (if Mr AJM can budget to afford it) is to put £250 each towards the mortgage and £250 each into our RS accounts and then if we have any extra we can choose whether we add it to our RS's or spend it. This is the approach I plan to take but I would like the next 2 years of our mortgage term to be a joint effort. I can see many discussions coming up.

ajmoney

I have reviewed all our household bills and my own this morning and I can't make any savings anywhere, I guess this is good but I was hoping to find some extra cash to go to the mortgage.

I have done some initial OP calculations. We are on target to clear our larger mortgage in July 2025 and I think it will be reduced to February 2024 with the new planned payments. I want to reduce this by a further 18 months at least so I need to see how we are best doing this.

We have specific holiday plans for summer 2021 and 2022 which we need to save towards so I need to keep this in mind when I make any financial plans. However I am going to make most of my plans based on the next 2 years of our mortgage product.

I am sure this enthusiasm will wane soon enough...

ajmoney

We have reserved our new mortgage but after a lot of consideration we are only changing our larger mortgage. I had forgotten that we are on a lifetime tracker for our smaller mortgage and the benefits it gives us, it would only save us £20 but we would lose more in the long run so we are not changing that. We will now save £202.34 a month which has already been added to our monthly OP amount. We have used our overpayment reserve to take advantage of now having a LTV under 60% and from 1st August we will be on a rate of 1.74% rather than 4%. I am now playing with the OP spreadsheet to see what we can do. Mr AJM wants the mortgage to go quicker without any of the hard work and sacrifices so I need to find a way to get him around to my way of thinking. As much as I would like this to be a joint effort he doesn't see it in the same way so I am going to include him as much as I can and see if I can change his mindset.

Busy_Mee1

Blimey AJ I could do with some of whatever it is that you are on -talk about on fire today

ajmoney

Busy_Mee1 wrote: »

Blimey AJ I could do with some of whatever it is that you are on -talk about on fire today

I just need to keep this momentum. It is tough as I am pretty much doing this journey on my own and without any change in our lifestyle.

ajmoney

We are now looking at June 2024 as a worse case scenario based my current OP plans, April 2023 if we increase our OPs to £500pm

ajmoney

I was duty yesterday at work which meant having to go back a day earlier, leaving home on a Saturday night and sitting around at work on a Sunday is definitely not good for the soul. I had planned to play catch up on some of my work but I didn't want the whole day to feel like a work day so I did a few hours of sorting, the sort of thing that I want to get done but can't justify using my work day for.

I have already managed to get some of my work done this morning and am currently having a cuppa in the cafe at work. £1.80 but I want to factor proper breaks into my day and this is the only way at the moment. Need to make an action plan for the next 2 days and then see what I can get done.

I have decided to stop making any mortgage calculations until next month when the new deal takes effect. That way I can do some proper calculations and will know what our daily interest rate will be etc. I know that we can't be completely mortgage free by the dates I want and although this is a little bit upsetting we are still managing to keep the kind of lifestyle we want. I am going to switch my focus back to looking at the dates we are likely to be mortgage neutral. I am not keen on clearing our savings out to pay off the mortgage but if I know we can have enough of a buffer left over to do it then I will. I would love to be mortgage neutral by our 10 year wedding anniversary (July 2021), I am about 60% there with my own savings so the chances are we already have this in savings between us. I will still have a year of my contract to work at this point so can throw more money at my savings.

On top of this I need to work out how much we need for our holiday plans in 2021 and 2022 as the ideas won't be cheap. I also need to figure out how much I need to live off plus bills for my year at uni and then a year on a lower wage. During my last year of my contract I would like to try and live off a smaller amount of money so it is not so much of a shock when my wages stop. This will take a lot of self control but will be beneficial in the long run.

If you have read this far then well done...I am still feeling fairly positive. Once I have more of an idea of the mortgage neutral idea I will post it here and probably start a new diary. I guess I need to work out the mortgage totals for each year and come up with a savings plan to fit.

Watty1

Mortgage neutral was a great target that helped me stay motivated. Then once I had passed that it seemed a lot easier