Onwards to freedom!

Calfuray

:j:T:beer::j:T:beer:

Well done you!

lavinia21

you are going great guns super secret squirrel. Your a forced to be reckoned with at the moment.

Yorkielass

You're doing brilliantly, we're in a similar position to you in that we took a 10 year fix at 4.79% in August 2012. Although the amount of interest at the moment might seem painful to a 2 year fixed rate I'm not going to decide if it was a bad thing until we're at least 8 years into it.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks for stopping by all

Great smileys party Calfuray A force to be reckoned with lavinia, I like that Do you have diary on here? I've looked but not found it... Yorkielass, it seems being cautious ended up costing us in terms of rate, but I bet we'll come out on top in the long run, a higher rate encourages me to OP as much as possible, cancelling out the cost of the higher rate. We both have years to run on our fixes too, anything can happen in that time, you never know, we may yet find reason to be thankful for our fixed rates!

Today's mortgage news - Just sent this weeks planned £499.99 OP... Balance is now £62,042.61, and another mini-milestone has been achieved - daily interest is now £8.99 _party_ _party_ _party_

S&S direct debits all setup, so I'm all set for £200pm contributions now. Started looking into pension stuff too, leaving it alone til after baby is born, but have started mulling over my options, that's better than nothing I suppose! Final thing on the long term stuff, I've been seriously discussing the future with OH, and it seems BTL is no longer met with negativity. The idea is that once we have this mortgage wiped out, we could afford to cover an investment mortgage even without tenants, so there's nothing to fear really. Of course the idea is to have tenants, but knowing that we're secure no matter what has helped confidence levels massively! This plan is a good few years away from being put into action, but I still can't help checking rightmove every now and then

Anyway, back down from far future daydream land (I'm not comfortable staying there too long, I'm well aware that circumstances change easily!) and back to the immediate future - more OP's to come, this should be a good month for overpaying the mortgage!

lavinia21

Hi supersecretsquirrel,


No don't have my own diary on here love popping in and reading others. Sounds like your plans for the future are like mine and husbands. Were looking at getting a BTL got our mortgage statement today and we have 11 years and 3 months left and have a total of £60,000 equity. Other half wants to get BTL now but we both have a bit of debt and I also don't want our mortgage payments to go up and hoping this year will be the year we get pregnant. Sorry for a big long post on your diary.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Please don't apologise Lavinia, all posts are welcome here! Good luck with your plans for this year and the future beyond

New Clydesdale account opening has not gone smoothly so I'm not expecting great things from them, but their ineptitude caused me to look into alternatives, and once again I've found the cloud's silver lining

Lloyds/TSB split recently, I have three Vantage accounts with Lloyds, turns out I can also have up to three TSB Enhance accounts. The terms are exactly the same on the Vantage and Enhance accounts. Woohoo! An inflation or thereabouts after tax interest rate on up to a further 15k, that'll do me for the forseeable! I'm hoping the rates will remain reasonable on these accounts for quite some time, in fairness Lloyds have maintained the 3% for ages. I know Clydesdale offers 4% as an intro offer, but after 12 months it drops to 2%. Oh, and there's also the possibility of opening 3 BOS Vantage accounts for a further 15k at 3%!

These accounts work great for my circumstances. I can fill them up slowly, then when it's the new financial year withdraw a chunk to fill my cash isa, and in January withdraw another chunk to pay my tax bill. Very much easy access savings accounts in my mind. The banks are happy with that arrangement too, I have been totally honest when applying that the purpose of each account is for savings not for use as a current account, never had a problem with any applications

There's not much in the way of better returns at low to no risk for savings at the moment, so worth looking into these accounts if you are currently saving in very low interest instant access accounts. All I want from a savings account at the moment is inflation proofing, not profit, so these will do the job. Hopefully when things get back to normal (6 years and counting, don't hold your breath) there will be rewards for savers again, but for now just avoiding losses is fine. Of course there's the hope that pension and S&S will grow at a greater pace, but until we have achieved mortgage neutrality the lions share of our money will remain in cash.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Today's standard mortgage repayment has reduced our balance down to £61,259. The mini-target of 60k by April is looking pretty achievable! :money:

sweetdaisy

SuperSecretSquirrel wrote: »

Today's standard mortgage repayment has reduced our balance down to £61,259. The mini-target of 60k by April is looking pretty achievable! :money:

Congratulations SSS :T.

SuperSecretSquirrel

A further £407.93 OP'd today :T

Our balance is now £60,877 :j

Another square on the spreadsheet house coloured in, that's the second this month Feels like huge progress being made early in the year, boosted by a lot of freelance work and a couple of months of no council tax or water rates payments. Won't be able to maintain the pace once baby's here, but am making the most of the opportunities available between now and then. We'll have an easier ride later in the year as our allowed 10% OP for the year is a smidge over 6k, and we don't want to pay any ERC's, so the monthly OP's should average out to under £400 for the remainder of the year, hopefully that'll be doable even after scaling right back on freelance earnings and dropping down to statutory maternity pay.

Hope you're all doing well and enjoying your own personal journeys!

lavinia21

fab job supersecretsquirrel your doing great. Like the saying goes make hay whilst the sun is shining. Fingers crossed on you smashing your target. Keep up the great work.