Onwards to freedom!

SuperSecretSquirrel

I just received payment for some freelance work I did a couple of months ago. I've put some to one side so I can pay the tax man his cut when the time comes, and the remaining £499.99 I've spent overpaying the mortgage (£500 or more reduces the monthly payments, £499.99 or less comes off the capital without altering monthly payments).

Mortgage estimate today: £71,031.10 (spreadsheet calculated, not official balance)

Feels like a really good start to the third quarter of my MFiT3 challenge Best part is I've been doing a bit more extra work recently so I'm hoping this could become a regular thing :cool: Not counting my chickens just yet though...

The mortgage term alteration form arrived in the post this morning too, so I'll try to get that filled in and sent off this weekend.

Hope you are all doing well in your quests to become mortgage free!

SuperSecretSquirrel

Regular saver account has just matured, netting me a nice £124.36 in interest - off the mortgage it goes!

Todays calculated balance is £70,927.33

Looking forward to getting the balance below £70k and daily interest under £10!

SuperSecretSquirrel

Well, it's official, the mortgage term has been altered... Our new end date is July 2022, a reduction of 13 years!

The minimum payments have near enough doubled and now stand at £828.48 a month, but provided there are no major disasters around the corner that shouldn't be a problem. I still hope to overpay a little extra whenever possible, so the real mortgage end date will hopefully be even sooner than 2022.

I need to come up with a new MFiT3 challenge target now, 60k by the end of 2015 isn't a great target considering our new minimum payments will get us down to 55k by then I'm thinking of aiming for 50k, but maybe I should be more ambitious that that... Watch this space

SuperSecretSquirrel

New super ambitious MFiT3 target has been set!

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=62340871&postcount=671

Reduce balance down to 40k by December 2015! Also keep building savings to try and become mortgage neutral asap. It's going to be tough, but a challenge isn't a challenge if it's easy

SuperSecretSquirrel

I've overpaid the mortgage by £499.99 this morning... According to my spreadsheet, mortgage balance is now £69,985.12 - got past the 70k milestone sooner than expected!

Here's an extract from my mortgage terms:

"Overpayments of up to £499.99 will be applied to your mortgage account on the day of receipt. This will reduce your balance and we will recalculate your interest in line with your account terms and conditions, your monthly repayments will remain the same. If you overpay by more than £500 your monthly repayment will be recalculated, however you will also have the option to have your mortgage term recalculated. Please advise us if you would like your mortgage term to be re-calculated. Charges may apply."

I have tried on many occasions to have our account set to 'reduce term if overpaying £500+', not the default 'reduce payments if overpaying £500+'. The call center staff are either in dire need of training, or are being deliberately obstructive. On at least three occasions they have failed to do what I asked. Getting to a branch is not that easy, though if this months experiment fails I'll have no choice but to make the extra effort to get to one and just hope the staff there have a clue about their own products...

Last month I overpaid £499.99 one day and £124.36 a couple of days later, unfortunately a few days later I received a letter specifying our new reduced monthly payment amount. I was not overly impressed, but as we were formally reducing the term soon after it made no difference. I guess it's possible that payments so close together might easily get lumped together and considered a single overpayment over £500.

This month's experiment is £499.99 today, and hopefully a nice extra 'current account leftovers' OP just before payday (in two weeks time). If they mess that up I'll have no choice other than get to the nearest branch and try to get it sorted out properly! If it goes smoothly though, I will leave things as they stand and just be careful to leave a big gap between OP's, the reason being I most likely will want a large OP to trigger an automatic recalculation of monthly payments eventually, and this way I'll be in control, not relying on other people to get things right twice - once to switch to term reduction, and again to switch back later on. Experience has taught me I'm better off relying on myself getting things right than the mortgage company!

SuperSecretSquirrel

Up until five minutes ago I had enough physical cash on me to last til payday, and £100.27 in my current account... I now have 27p in my current account, and the mortgage is £100 lighter

Got a few big spends coming up over the next few months (some were expected and budgeted, but not all, far from it!), and am already kicking myself for setting quite such an ambitious MFiT3 target. Nevermind, it's better to try your best and come up a little short than not try at all. If we aim for 40k, and "only" achieve 50k, that's better than the original aim of 60k, and even better compared to the non-overpayment balance year end 2015 which would have been over 77k! :eek: Looking at it like that, not meeting your target isn't so much of a failure

Hope you've all had a good month chipping away at your mortgages!

TheFactory

Hi SSS,

Your financial arrangements with you OH are exactly the same as mine and TBH I think thats the best way to work things

kitjos

Just read through your diary ~ your doing a fab job!! Was in anticipation whether you would see £69k instead of the horrid 70's .

Well done!

Will hopefully follow along with your progress till you reach £0

xx

SuperSecretSquirrel

Hi TheFactory and kitjos, thanks for stopping by

Another £499.99 overpayment today... That brings the total outstanding down to £68,828.82.

Not only that, but I've also achieved another milestone - interest is now under £10 a day (£9.98 to be exact) :j

These big monthly OPs aren't going to last forever. I know I'm going to have to reduce the amount of freelance work I do soon, and life is about to get a whole lot more expensive, but in the short term I'm going to try to pay off as much as possible.

Having achieved daily interest below £10, I think it's time for another minitarget... I want to get the outstanding total below £65k by the end of this year :cool: Having accounted for interest, that means paying in around 5k in the next four and a bit months :eek: I'll give it my best shot

SuperSecretSquirrel

I had a massive £34.57 left over in my current account on payday... Off the mortgage it comes, every little helps