Mortgage Free in Three Yrs

djbd1973

mountainlioness wrote: »

Employers are getting pretty flexible with working arrangements too now so you can accommodate both (if you want to that is!!)

I suppose at the end of the day its if you also have to option to choose whether to or not so you can make your own choice rather than having a choice forced upon you.

mountainlioness

well, yes of course, it's better to have choice... but even if you don't have a choice, having some flexibility in how you do work makes a difference to how hard/easy it is. We don't have the luxury of choice but I certainly appreciate that my employer has some provision in place to make balancing work/family just that little bit easier...

ailuro2

Congratulations Biggywee on getting rid of your mortgasge, and thanks for your good wishes to the rest of us.

I agree to an extent about kids having a good role model as parents, as with all things it is about work life balance....no point in being clever and holding down a good job if it means long hours and many business trips which of course means the kids get no quality time with their parents.

When the shoe is on the other foot and a parent stays at home, sometimes 'quality time' can dispappear into the day to day running of the home, so, as I said already, we all strive to find the best balance that works for us.

Now DD is school age, working dayshift full time 8 to 4 gives me the best of both worlds.:D

Desperate_Housewife_2-2

Kaz2904 wrote: »

She's only just started? I've nearly finished!:rotfl:

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This has got me moving! I was spurred on by your post and today I bought a few bits for xmas and actually wrapped them up! I've been saving since January and have also been saving FOR January as it is always a tight month. I am definitely downsizing this xmas and not spending as much but methinks its time to get more organised. I somehow feel better for doing some xmas shopping so thanks for the boot up the b***side post!

shazzany

Thanks for all your experiences/ views on the 'whether to stay home with my daughter or not' thing. It's a tricky one. I def thought the same as mountain lioness before I had my daughter and def do want to be a positive role model for my daughter. Spose I am wondering whether to have 3 or 4 years out of work to care for her and hopefully a brother or sister and then return to work.Still haven't made up my mind but all your views are great to get a rounded view on it. Cheers!

Kaz2904

Really when it comes down to brass tacks, it doesn't matter what you do because with children comes guilt (and grandparents and they normally make the guilt worse!):rotfl:

minimoocow

Hi all,

This debate about children is interesting - one of the main reasons for paying our mortgage off is so I can give up work however we have been discussing how this would work the other day which brought up a few issues:

I wouldn't want to go back to work full time - I think I have trust issues as I don't think any nursery would be good enough and I'd spend all day stressing!!! (Again - that's just me - I'm sure they are actually fine and I've never looked) However, I mentioned that I'd quite like to do a couple of evenings a week odd job - bar/restaurant (I'm not fussed!). OH wasn't that keen: he wouldn't see me as much, wouldn't be using my skills etc. I however feel I'd still like to contribute something financially and doing evenings would mean someone was always at home.

I'm not sure what we'll end up doing - I'm sure it will be fun finding out!

MMC

financialbliss

Hi all,

Hope you don't mind me adding my tuppence to this talk of giving up work. It can be done...

I can't stress how fortunate I feel we are being able to manage on one wage. I've fancied starting my own thread for some time about my mortgage free journey, but with a recent spot of posts, I'm holding off for now.

Anyway, here's where we're at...
Bought our first house in 1996 with an endowment mortgage for 42.5k. Endowment was presented as being cheapest option, probably via growth projections - can't remember. Interest only mortgage vehicle was a 2 year fixed, but had a 4 year overhang, with any re-payments attracting a 5% charge. Was young, naive and didn't research options.

About a year or so later, wanted to make an overpayment on mortgage capital and couldn't without 5% charge until the 6 years were up. This snapped us into doing something about our product choice. We saved via TESSAs and then ISAs, remortgaged after the 6 year term and hammered down the mortgage without incurring penalties.

The now mrs bliss was pregnant mid-203 and proclaimed that she wasn't having children in this house - more space needed - a 3 bedroom terraced. So on September 2003, we sold our house for 105k with a mortgage remainder of just 4k.

On 12th March 2004, which was the last day mrs bliss worked! we got the keys for our current house - 4 bedroom detached @ 200k with a 95k mortgage. See sig for details. Bliss-ling #1 turned up 2 weeks later! and bliss-ling #2 turned up in 2006. Boy and girl, now aged 3 and 1.


It can be hard - mrs bliss can have the kids to herself for 10 hours while I commute to work and back, we still have disturbed nights from the 1 year old, but we never saw staying off for 3-6 months then placing children in child care as an option. As I said before, I feel we've been very lucky. We don't have 2 or 3 cars - just one and we don't have 3 or 4 foreign holidays a year - kids being small 'n' all, but we should clear this mortgage in ~ 5-6 years and by that time we can live the good life with the kids being older, so I don't feel we're currently missing out.

Think the defining moment was when I really understood the IO mortgage and the endowment and decided that we wanted to address our choices. We had to adjust our term back to 25 years for this current mortgage, but we're very lucky in that it's working for us.

Thanks,
FB.

DickDastardly_2

:beer: Well done biggywee! Yep the benefit system only benefits the lazy, idle, and thieves. But who cares? You're out of the rut now!!

Kaz2904

I think that what we should all remember is that it is all relevant to when you bought your property (ie the price) and how old you were. It is also dependant on what stage your children came along at in relation to your mortgage.

I was 23 when we bought our first place and had DD <than 3 months after we moved in. I then had DS 2 years and 4 weeks later. I was a student when I had DD and had no option of giving up as I didn't qualify for any maternity benefits of any description. I wasn't unemployed because I had 2 part time jobs. I didn't work enough hours in either job to get mat pay and student nurses didn't get any support.
I eneded up going back to work when DD was 3 weeks old and uni when she was 9 weeks old.
I was the main earner then and still am now.
There have been plenty of opportunities for DH to give up work or change jobs but he doesn't want to. He has progressed in his job over 8 years or so and now in the last year or so is finally making a reasonable wage.
However his wage still wouldn't pay enough for me to give up work.

We could have tried to get on the property ladder sooner but wouldn't have been able to due to earnings. The first time in our lives when we had 2 full time wages coming in with no childcare going out was in November 2004 when I finally got work to agree to me going on permanent nights and was able to stop paying for childcare.
By this time we had a 3 year old and a 1 year old in a 2 bed upstairs flat with no garden. We went from having agressive neighbours who used to bang on the door in the middle of the night when DD was crying to a neighbour who used to complain about the noise all the time. It used to drive her nuts listening to us rumbling around all day as she didn't work (I don't think that she realised I could hear her and her dogs running up and down!). They sod their flat to someone about 3 months before we moved. The new owner was a pleasure. She was out at work all day and if we had had a noisy afternoon and apologised she used to say it was lovely to hear children around again.
We had got to the stage where we could no longer live in a flat with no garden and 2 very active children so something had to give.

I know for myself that had I not been out working when DD was young then I would have damaged her. The strain of having her was immense and going to work was my saving grace. Much as I love her she was a little beggar and I came to the stage many times where I had to put her in her cot and walk away.
I found it very damaging to my mental health to have a MIL who always looked down on myself and DH as we both worked. She even turned around to him and said that we used to just dump DD onto everyone. He was devastated by this as the only people who ever looked after her was us or our childminder. His brother who had a little boy 4 months older has a wife who doesn't work. They used to go off for weekends away a lot and leave DN with MIL. She didn't mind this because they weren't fobbing him off on her.
It wasn't until DH pointed out to her that BIL earned more than both of us put together, had a company car and mortgage payments half what ours were, that she even considered how difficult it was for us.
We were paying out double the mortgage and childcare and car running costs. That each and every month matched what SIL had lost in wages and he earned double what we both did. Surprisingly we were still better off with both of us working (by about £100 a month).

Whenever we could get away without having a car we didn't have one and we didn't have a holiday for years.

And can you tell I still get upset about this now?!
Like I said, guilt- it arrives with the baby and leaves you on your death bed.