Onwards to freedom!

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks for reading and posting pathtofreedom I've read your thread and must say it's looking very good from the start! Your SOA shows a very good monthly surplus, I'm sure you'll meet your mortgage and savings targets this year If your anything like me, getting under that 100k barrier is far too tempting a target to miss!
_____________________________

First overpayment of 2015 done, £499.99 off the mortgage this morning

Our balance is now £50,068.52. Once the standard monthly payment goes out this week we'll be well under the 50k mark, and should be under 40% LTV too... YAY!

edinburgher

Happy New Year SSS, your net worth growth over the last year has been impressive (to put it mildly) :beer:

You're a smart cookie, so avoid the ERCs. The only reason to pay them would be psychological safety, as you pointed out on the 10th, this is no longer a factor for you. Ignore your inner animal, you're doing great

My earlier post re. our last expected baby has reminded me how skint we are going to be shortly :rotfl:

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks Ed Increasing our net worth by near as dammit my gross salary is pretty ridiculous, not quite sure how it happened to be honest. Must be down to still earning a reasonable amount from self employment, and the fact that my pension is growing nicely now. Paying chunks off the mortgage to reduce the interest we pay will be doing its bit too I'm sure! On that subject, the standard monthly payment and another £499.99 OP came off the mortgage at the weekend, our balance is now £48,812.06
_____________________________

I tend to avoid making new years resolutions, but there's no arguing that January brings an opportunity to review the previous year and make plans for the new one. There's a thread here where people are posting lists of aims for the year, the idea being that you check back in December to see what you managed to achieve. Just writing something down makes me feel more accountable, and actually helps push me to get things done, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Here's my list for 2015 covering health, wellbeing, home, and finances:

• Healthy packed lunches at least four days a week.
• Finish a 5k run in under 25 minutes.
• Go on at least one family holiday.
• De-clutter the room of doom.
• Finish work on the garden.
• Devise and follow a photo backup process.
• Meet our MFiT3 target and end the year mortgage neutral.
• Increase self employment earnings without impacting quality family time (work smarter not longer).
• Investigate ways of making money through writing.
• Keep working towards financial independence, end the year with a nice increase to financial net worth.

lavinia21

supersecretsquirrel that seems like a good set of aims and its nothing ridiculous that you can't achieve.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks Lavinia

Another week has passed, and another £499.99 has moved from savings to mortgage

A couple of mini milestones reached today - mortgage under £48k (£47,882.40) and daily interest under £7 (£6.94)

A whole weekend of car shopping lies ahead of us... I've compiled a shortlist of 20ish cars to view (shortlist, ha!) hopefully the perfect car will be among them. My current car is being collected next week, so if I don't find something soon we may well be a one car family for a little while :eek: As for budget, I've set a maximum of £5k, and I'd like some change For that money I want a reliable and economical car in excellent condition with everything included (mot, tax, insurance, breakdown, full tank, etc). It'll set us back a little, but all being well properly mortgage neutral this summer should still be possible.

turtlemoose

SSS, just read your entire diary. Impressed doesn't even begin to cover it. Now if only I could get my OH on board like yours.....

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks for posting turtlemoose OH is on board as far as tolerating my mission and listening to the occasional financial ramble goes, but she's very hands off these days. We still have our separate bank accounts for spending money, but at the end of the day it's one household with various money streams coming in and out, and one aim of financial independence and stability/security for our family while having a nice life along the way. I'm happy that we've found a balance where I mostly OP my extra cash and she mostly spends her extra cash on treats for our LO etc. I think we compliment each other well, end result we're destroying the mortgage at a good pace while still enjoying daily life and having nice things along the way Good luck on your mission!
__________

Another £499.99 OP today takes our mortgage balance down to £47,430.78

We are definitely mortgage neutral at the moment (even when overestimating tax we have £47,509.86 offset). Sadly that won't last long thanks to the imminent car purchase, so it doesn't really count. Happily the car I'm pretty much set on will only end up pushing us back around £4k all in, so we should be able to make that ground up over the next few months

Cariad71

SSS, I've just read your entire diary (I was woken up at 6am by husband's snoring)! I must say it's very impressive (diary not snoring). I've subscribed.:)

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks Cariad71, I've reciprocated We may well end up on a similar path to you. Renting out our current house and starting all over again on a new house is one option we will consider in the future! No rush though, this house is plenty big enough for the next few years, maybe even forever
______________________________

Another £499.99 OP today and a huge milestone to report - we're now locked in to achieve the MFiT3 challenge target

Today's balance is £46,978.91 (coloured in another spreadsheet house brick - yay!). If we were to make no further OPs this year, our standard monthly repayments would result in a sub 40k balance by December! It wasn't all that long ago that we considered the 40k target to be ridiculously ambitious - I'm glad I decided to go for it now!

I still plan to OP the full 10% allowance this year, so by my reckoning we should actually manage a year end balance of under 38k. As for mortgage neutral, provided life keeps going smoothly we should be permanently mortgage neutral from May, and should have a nice end of year surplus

It looks like I'm going to have to think of some new targets soon. For the next couple of years we'll probably just keep overpaying the mortgage by the 10% fee free amount. In 2017 the ERCs start tapering off, then we'll consider paying off the mortgage completely. I guess it depends what savings rates look like by then, or if I really get into investing.

I find posting here helps me keep my eye on the ball, so I worry that once we're fully mortgage neutral there may not be anything interesting left to say. I liked the end of year asset/liability/networth breakdown I did recently, maybe doing something like that monthly or quarterly would help, but it probably doesn't belong here. I think there might be a self-indulgent PF blog in my future!

gallygirl

SuperSecretSquirrel wrote: »

It wasn't all that long ago that we considered the 40k target to be ridiculously ambitious - I'm glad I decided to go for it now!

:T well done, amazing what you can achieve when you set your mind to it :T.

I find posting here helps me keep my eye on the ball, so I worry that once we're fully mortgage neutral there may not be anything interesting left to say.

Doesn't stop anyone else from wittering on so don't let it stop you :rotfl:. I intend to go into full witter mode asap .