Onwards to freedom!

ajmoney

SSS- did you set up your own spreadsheet for that? I would like to have one for a more visual idea of how things are going but I don't know how to go about it.

Teacher2

I've calculated the optimal mortgage pay off route from today to cost a total of £36,855.52 (£3,499.45 of which would be interest). If I were to repay in full today, the cost would be £35,311.83 (£1,955.76 of which would be early repayment charge), but losing that amount of savings would likely cost us over £5k of lost interest over the mortgage repayment period (assuming I manage a minimum of 3% over the next four and a half years). Overall we would be at least £3k worse off, which is no small amount over a relatively short period of time.

Hi there,

You are ahead of the game and, being well informed and, more importantly, disciplined in your approach, can easily make the calculation that paying off your mortgage early isn't sensible in money terms.

It's going to feel good when you do get to the end of the term, however!

The dear OH and I celebrated with a bottle of fizz when we 'ex-ed' our mortgage. But, being us, it was nice Champagne bought at a rock bottom Christmas-offer price and stored up for such an occasion. We are skinflints in this respect. We live like kings but pay like beggars!

SuperSecretSquirrel

ajmoney wrote: »

SSS- did you set up your own spreadsheet for that? I would like to have one for a more visual idea of how things are going but I don't know how to go about it.

Hi ajmoney The house is just another worksheet, we paid 116k for our house, so I drew up a primary school child's idea of a "house" made up of 116 rectangles, and just used cell borders and background colours to help it take form. Every time the mortgage drops into a new 1k range I manually change the background colour of a cell from a pastel shade to a bold shade. I know if you're willing to put in the effort you could have the colours set automatically based on the mortgage value, but it wasn't worth the effort for me as I quite like the ritual of colouring in a block when the balance drops

Teacher2 wrote: »

The dear OH and I celebrated with a bottle of fizz when we 'ex-ed' our mortgage. But, being us, it was nice Champagne bought at a rock bottom Christmas-offer price and stored up for such an occasion. We are skinflints in this respect. We live like kings but pay like beggars!

That is absolutely the best way to be in my opinion You still have nice things, but pay the lowest price possible for those things, that's what we aim to do too We won't be joining in with the fizz as neither of us are particularly fond of the stuff, but I'm sure a more exotic than normal holiday will be on the cards when the time comes :cool:

SuperSecretSquirrel

I have just sent my last OP of the year (£266), and that sees the 10% annual allowance maxed out.

Balance is now £32,637.93 and we are MN+£16,295.94

edinburgher

Well done - my 10% OP allowance is higher than your MN figure for the year! :eek:

Watty1

Love it. I drew a house on a sheet of graph paper and coloured in the squares as I paid off a chunk. The visual was fun Might do the same for the BTL that we are saving to pay off once we start making the overpayments.

Teacher2

SuperSecretSquirrel wrote: »

I have just sent my last OP of the year (£266), and that sees the 10% annual allowance maxed out.

Balance is now £32,637.93 and we are MN+£16,295.94

Wow! Excellent. Well done you.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Quarterly update time!

Here are the figures for 1st April 2016:

House Value: £125,000.00 (no change)
Cash: £44,672.63 (-4908.98)
Pensions: £44,011.97 (+2841.56)
Car Value: £10,250.00 (-450.00)
S&S: £7,744.74 (+1256.21)
Mortgage: -£31,991.54 (+5724.50)
Due to HMRC: -£661.34 (+1821.86)
Student Loan: -£2,879.73 (+236.50)
Total: £196,146.73 (+6521.65)

That sees us at 65.4% of the 300k by 2020 target, and £19,764.49 ahead of mortgage neutral in liquid assets

Had we simply stuck to the original mortgage repayment schedule, we would have paid out £35,927.82 over the past 6 years, but reduced the balance by just £11,200.44 :eek: Our ltv would still be over 60% :mad: Thanks to OPs, the next monthly repayment should see us below 25% ltv

In non mortgage news, I'm close to maxing out the credit limit of my slow stooze card, so will need to start looking into other options soon. One of my 6% regular savers has just matured too, so I should open another one (or two) of those this month.

We have been a little spendier recently, bought some nice gifts (and some were even given to ourselves ), enjoyed some great food, done some home improvements, and had some nice days out. We're still heading in the right direction with the finances so it feels like we may have the balance just right between fun and sensible at the moment

Finally, I don't tend to adjust our house value estimate often, but I may do a little research into sold prices of similar local houses over the next couple of months. I think I'm probably underestimating its value a little too much

Luckyinlife

ohh i love a good update SSS :]

Some amazing figures there to :]

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks Lucky

(...and ed, Watty1, and Teacher2!)