Mr and Mrs P are going mortgage free...

I_want_a_baby

Hi,

Just read your posts quickly and just wanted to check your figures...... we are just about to move into our first home and the paperwork says we can overpay by 10% a year each year until we are out of the fix. It is however 10% of the balance at the start of the year so for example on a £100k mortgage we could overpay by £10k in the first year.

Therefore I wondered if you should check your paperwork as based on the above & your post you would be able to OP 20% of the balance (£115k) per year/period of fix. Just wanted to say as I wasn't sure how you calculated your OP figure - if you just added 20% of the monthly payment on top of it?

Sorry if I am way out as I am new to this!

Stacey x

MrsP1983

Hi Stacey, the bank told us that we can make a maximum of a 20% overpayment of each monthly payment, and that we can only do it by increasing the monthly direct debit. I wish we could make overpayments up to 20% of the balance!

MrsP1983

I found out, to my delight, that my salary is approximately £100 more than I expected it to be. I returned to work part time at the start of September, having been full time before my maternity leave, and when I was working out what to expect after tax, NI and pension I must have miscalculated. So that's good news for the savings pot!

MrsP1983

Just back from an experimental first shop at Aldi. It wasn't a full shop, just stuff for the weekend as we have a house full-mainly cheeses if I'm honest! But I'm chuffed; the total was £17.30 and when I got back I checked on mysupermarket and it would have been £24.31 in Waitrose (all essential brand where possible) and £20.67 even in Asda. The shopping experience left something to be desired and I found the lay out pretty random and irritating to navigate, but I can put up with it if I'm saving 30%-odd on my usual bill every time.

MrsP1983

Waitrose sent me a £5 off a shop voucher that didn't have a minimum spend so I just spent a grand total of 31p on some kale, celery, yogurts and soups :rotfl: All stuff I'd have bought on Sunday anyway but I was so excited by the idea of a free shoo that I couldn't stop myself doing it today instead!

MrsP1983

Just done a full week's shop at Aldi for the frankly astonishing price of...

£39.83!!

Mysupermarket tells me the same shop would have been...

£61.79 at Tesco (saving of £21.96)
£63.92 at Asda (saving of £24.09)
£68.76 at Sainsbury's (saving of £28.93)
£74.89 at Waitrose (saving of £35.06)

I am officially and forever an Aldi convert!

ammonite

Good luck with this. I'm aiming for the long term goal without compromising too much on every day living. Whoever above me wrote that it is a marathon not a sprint is right. We've decided to do some work on our house which will cost a few thousand....when I think that could be overpaid it makes me sad, but the work on the house will make me happy and long term I'll be glad the work has been done. Similarly I don't intend on being so frugal we don't go away on holiday ever again. Other people do it differently but I'm taking the scenic route and this works for us.

Best of luck.

MrsP1983

Hi Ammonite, thanks for your words of wisdom We're probably going too overboard but we want to try and be as strict as we can until 2013, just to see how possible it is. Then in January we'll reassess and see how we want to continue and whether we want to ease up a bit. I'm very keen to get our emergency savings pot built up as it was decimated by the house purchase, so I'm focused on filling at least one ISA before the new tax year; it seems sensible while our overpayments are so limited by the bank.

Anyway, our first overpayment was made today :j. Our budget includes very little room for error, so fingers crossed we'll be able to stick to it. We should have a total of £15.01 left at the end of the month, possibly more if we underspend on groceries... We have budgeted £100 a month for 'fun' though so hopefully we won't be totally bored and money-obsessed!

MrsP1983

I want to try and show our budget but am rubbish on the iPad and can't work out how to do it sensibly, so I'm just going to copy and paste bits from the spreadsheet and hope it makes sense! Nearly everything is in my name and comes out of my account and we haven't got a joint bank account yet (despite having been married for four years :rotfl:) so Mr P sends me £850 each month. The £250 savings is a regular saver that's nearly finished (this month is the last payment) so once that's done the £250 will be diverted to make the ISA payment £400 a month.

My Monthly Outgoings

Nursery 361.07
Cleaner 60
Mobile 50
Petrol 50
Buildings Insurance 22.89
Contents Insurance 3.75
Life Insurance 24.6
Union 8
Account Fee 12.95
Dentist 14.6
Action Aid 15
Groceries 280
Savings 250
Cleaning Agency 21.67
Baby activities 50
Toiletries 25
Nappies 30
Phone and internet 15
Fun 50
ISA 150

Total per month 1494.53

MrsP1983

Yearly Outgoings

Council tax 962.09
MOT and service 600
Electricity 900
Gas 900
Water 250
Car tax 135
RAC 95
TV license 145.5
Presents 300
Clothes 300
Mini P clothes 200
Car Insurance 276

Per year 5063.59
Per month 421.96

The per month figure goes into a separate savings account to be used when needed on the above things. Because we've only recently moved in and because prior to this we didn't have to pay any bills (yes, really, God bless my old job!) we don't really know how much to allow for gas and electricity so I hope we're erring on the side of caution. If it turns out to be much less than what we've budgeted then that will be a nice pot to add to savings/overpayments! If it turns out to be more then...we'll cross that bridge when we come to it! We pay the council tax, water and tv license up front each year. The MOT cost is obviously approximate. The car has passed every year but one, and that one year was HORRIFICALLY expensive so I'm budgeting for the worst case scenario.