The loooooong road to being MF!!

chocoholic_chick

I've ventured over this part of the forum fairly recently and have been reading in shock and awe at how many people manage to pay their mortgages off early and have thought well if others can do it, so can I!

So we bought our home in 2007 and took out a mortgage of £112,150.00 over 35 years ( yes you read that right, 35 years :eek: ). We were both on pretty rubbish wages at the time and it's the only way we could make buying a home affordable for us. Since our fixed rate ended a little over 2 years ago we increased our mortgage payments so have been overpaying by around £130 a month so have managed to make a small dent in what we owe. We've had an expensive few years with a new kitchen, new conservatory and wedding to pay for so had no spare cash to throw at the mortgage until now.

As it stands we have around £99,500 outstanding and the plan is to

• Increase our monthly payments by a further £50 a month from next month
• Make ad-hoc payments when we can this year with the aim of paying another £200 off
• Once 2 loans we have are paid off next year increase our repayments by a further £50
• Hit the target I've set us to make £2000 in overpayments next year on top of our increased mortgage payments
• By January 2014 be making regular overpayments of a minimum of £300 per month

If we manage to do the above then by the end of 2013 we should reduced our mortgage to just under £93,000. If, and its a big if, we can continue overpaying as above we could be mortgage free by the time I'm 38 instead of 57 which was the original age when we took out the mortgage!!



We're in negative equity at the moment so we're really hoping to start building equity now so we have some options available to us in terms of getting new mortgage deals.


Obviously alot can, and will, change over the years. For one we are hoping to have children in the near future, and I hear they're expensive:rotfl: So I'm allowing us a little leeway and say that the goal is to be MF by the time I'm 40

I've already signed myself up to the MFW 2012 thread as a little motivator to overpay by the £200 I've aimed for this year. A drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things but still every little helps and I'll be signing up for the 2013 thread to overpay the £2000.

So I'll be updating this as and when, knowing me I'll be inundating this with updates to begin with then forget about it for a while before coming back, but I'm hoping by tracking our little journey it'll keep me motivated and be nice to read back in the future to see how far we've come.

So far this month I've put £50 in a "mortgage overpayment" pot I've created on my online banking which should still leave us with enough money for day to day living and any money left over from petrol money, grocery shopping etc will be put into this account and then whatevers in there at the end of the month will be paid off the mortgage.

Really excited to be starting on the road to MFW!!

Mortgage_Reduction_Novice

Welcome... great plans. I'm looking forward to reading your diary and following you actioning those plans!

lulabelle1

Welcome to the forum and best of luck with your MF plans..... It will be a long and rocky journey, but we're all here to support each other along the way...

The odd few pounds here and there sometimes doesn't seem like much, but it will all add up.

Best of luck, L x

newgirly

Hi and welcome to the board. Even small amounts make a big difference when overpaying the mortgage. There are also ways of making a bit extra to overpay which is what lots of us on here do.

For example:

• selling on ebay/bootsales
• doing surveys online for vouchers
• joining a cashback site-topcashback/quidco
• mystery shopping

Have you thought of posting a statement of account incase your outgoings could be slimlined a bit?, and last but not least the oldstyle board has great ideas for cutting costs grocery shopping wise.

Anyway , best of luck with your new plan.

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Good luck to you in your journey. It is true that small payments add up, and will make a big difference. Sometimes it is worth gritting your teeth and making a few more sacrifices, ie a bit of overtime or skip a night out, to make the payments bigger. Perhaps I am obsessed but it makes me happy and I kick myself when we don't hit our target.

All the best,

Squirrel

ammonite

Good luck chocoholic. I can't make huge overpayments like some on these boards but I've been amazed at how squirreling away savings bit by bit soon adds up. If I get a payment from Quidco for £3.40, I round it up with £1.60 and put £5 into the savings. I often round numbers up and it is amazing how you don't miss a few quid but how they add up.

We have saved up triple the amount we hoped to over 12 months in just 6 months and I'm totally addicted to it now! Will check by your diary soon

chocoholic_chick

Thank you all for the warm welcome It's why I'm addicted to these forums, everyones so friendly and encouraging!

I think I'll wait a bit before posting a SOA as our finances are a little all over the place at the moment and hubbys waiting to hear about a pay increase so it won't really be an accurate reflection. I've cancelled our gym memberships this month as we weren't using them so thats £50 we'll have extra each month from next month. Also planning on cancelling one of our insurance policies for basically PPI which we don't really need which will free up another £36.26 a month. Whether this all then goes towards the mortgage I'm not sure of yet as we still need a few things to finish off the home improvements we're doing.

Food budget has gone up recently, I'm trying to lose about a stone to get to a healthy BMI for when we start trying for a baby, I've been doing some of the hairy bikers diet recipes and trying recipes out of my good food magazines ( subscription was free using tesco vouchers ), but they aren't always exactly cheap. I've increased our food budget to £260 this month ( I can hear you all gasping in horror! ) but I'm hoping to not spend anywhere near that, though our weekly food bill is now closer to £60 because of this healthy eating whereas it used to be closer to £40. I'm hoping that will settle down though once I build my store cupboard up a bit ( alot of the things I don't have in so am having to buy but then will have plenty left over for other meals IYSWIM )

I already use topcashback, though in the past I've just got the money as amazon vouchers and used them on there, I think thats what the plan is but will use them towards Christmas presents. Have ebayed things in the past and don't really have anything left to sell now, used to do the surveys alot though so could get back into that again.

This month we're making a real effort to watch our "entertainment" spends. Normally when pay day rolls around we blow £100 that weekend on meals out etc but so far we haven't spent anything, not even bought a lunch while at work! I've got vouchers for Strada for £50 from the tesco exchange, so that will pay for 1 night out this month, and I have £40 vouchers for another restaurant I got given when we complained about a bad meal, so between these two we might have to pay £20 at most out of our own pocket as the vouchers don't cover drinks, not bad when we would spend £100+ normally.

Dug out my mortgage statement from last year last night to find out my mortgage account number to ring them to increase our repayments. It was too late to ring by the time I found it last night so will hopefully ring them tonight to sort it and to see how I go about making ad hoc payments.

I have a voucher for Mr S for £7.50 off a £50 spend so will be shopping there next week, debating putting this £7.50 saved into our mortgage pot, does anyone else do that when you get these kinds of vouchers??

Anyways best get back to work!!

LauraJo

Hey, welcome!! You will prob find that once you look at everything you spend (this journey is good for that!!) you will be able to make savings all over the place...I know I did!
We recently got a logder in so that is an easy (ish!) way of earning some cash (you don't need to pay tax for the first 4 and a bit thousand)
Good luck - keep sticking in those small amounts it is amazing how they add up!

ammonite

I do occasionally put the voucher money in the savings but not very often, I know some folk on here do though.

Try review sites - DooYoo is good when you get into it and Ciao if they have bonuses on. The more you get into it the more people will read and rate you back and it gets easier. I'd sign up, write a good review then leave it until your 'newbie' status is removed after a month and then get writing again. People are dubious of new reviewers (as they are often bad!) so once your label is removed they'll read and rate you more frequently. It has become a habit for me now and I don't find it a chore.

Good luck with the healthy eating, I agree that healthy food is more expensive. It is SO wrong.

kandfs_mam

Hi chocoholic_chick - great new diary - good luck! x

Mortgage_Reduction_Novice

chocoholic_chick wrote: »

I've cancelled our gym memberships this month as we weren't using them so thats £50 we'll have extra each month from next month.

We took a 4 month break after our last annual membership ran out. However, now the nights are getting darker earlier I can't go for a run in the evenings without MrMRN (often works late). So we've rejoined and we're actually finding it fairly cheap evening entertainment (£31.50 per person per month). It stops me browsing online shops and visiting late night shopping centers after work for something to do.