Mortgage Free in Three Yrs

gallygirl

OverlandLandy wrote: »

I'm also waiting on them to clarify their 'its complicated' and 'not straight forward' comments during my last hour long phone call.....about 'loss off offset' due to them taking the money from my current account but it taking 8 days to reach my mortgage! All because of their silly systems!!!

Yikes,that's awful :eek: . I've an Egg mortgage and when I transfer money in to offset account (using Egg's sytem to request rather than my bank to send it) they credit my account immediately even though it doesn't leave my account for a few days. Obviously it works the same in reverse, but as long as I pay more in than I take out I'm better off.

Congrats on your comp winnings by the way :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: . Methinks it will take a while to pay the mortgage off that way . (I'm allowed to joke as my 1st win was Levi Roots singing Reggae Reggae sauce....... I haven't given it a value...... ). Keep entering, I've had a fairly steady stream of small prizes.

catshark88

Haven't given an update for a while so thought I should report in.

Overpayments have been going quite well and we are now down to £213k.:eek:

We are still trying to live as frugally as poss (thanks to the lovely, supportive live on £4k a year thread) but it does get a bit draining after a while! Have started dreaming about tall, skinny, decaff lattes...

What has really helped is the tiny business we set up taking pics at horse shows. It is not going to lead to retirement in Monte Carlo, but we make a profit of £200-250 on a really good day. Where we are struggling is that DH works long hours and commutes 4 hours a day but then really wants to help with the photos. That is super but pretty hard on him on the weeks that we have 2 weekend bookings. That's the problem with a small business, I moan when we are not busy and I moan when we are....:rotfl:

I am still putting all purchases through Quidco and using a cashback card but have rather lost energy on daily clicks now some of them have gone to 2p a time.

Good to hear how well you are all doing and how well the Woolwich contingent are bearing it. Just think, when we have paid off our mortgages we can avoid Barclays FOREVER!!! :beer: :j

comping_cat

Cheeky Northern Rock sent me a letter today to say thank you for my overpayments, but they will now reduce my monthly payments.

Phoned them to ask why, and the chap said did i not want to reduce my payment? No, said i so they are keeping it the same - did wonder if i was going to have to fight for it, but they have changed it back no problem - just waiting for a letter to confirm now. Saves me manually transferring it!!

AnW'sMum

You'd have thought they'd be pleased of any extra cash at the moment!

angelavdavis

As so many of you have been able to reduce the term of the mortgage, I thought I would phone Britannia and ask about this. They want £50 to change the term!

I have been uploading the reducing direct debit payment through a standing order, but thought it might be nice to see the term reducing too, but that £50 is better in my offset!

So I guess I will forget it.

AnW'sMum

£50 to press a couple of buttons :eek: that is extortionate. I would be tempted to write in and complain. Then again if you call back someone else may give you a different answer!

getmeoutofhere

financialbliss wrote: »

Hi Moneygoes2money.

Actually, with a Nationwide mortgage - you can pay whatever you want, providing you're paying the minimum they require to service the debt.

Yes, you're right in that you can only do a maximum of 500 per month in overpayments, but what I did was ask them to alter my standard payment from 600/pm to 900/pm by reducing the term.

So instead of being able to pay 600 to 1,100 per month, I can now pay between 900 and 1,400 per month (factoring in 500/pm overpayments).

Note - at one point when our monthly payments were reducing before I realised I should be reducing term, we were paying a mere 473.80.

See my diary "FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…" - post #71 on page 4, posts #93 and #98 on page 5, which are all related to my Nationwide mortgage

Hope that helps.

FB.

Hi all, hopefully you can offer some advice as I am becoming increasingly confused on the overpayment rules with Alliance & Leicester.

I rang them for the sort codes to set up my Nationwide online banking to enable variable monthly transfers as overpayments. I was also told that as I had a fully flexible mortgage there was no limit on what I could pay.

Subsequently in the next two months I made payments of £1000 & £700.

I then received a letter that reduced the monthly repayments from £214 to £194. I queried why, and was told that it was because the additional payments my minimum payment had been lowered. I asked if I could alter the mortgage term in order to keep the payments the same as before, but was told this could not be done. The only way would be to add a regular overpayment to the monthly minimum to compensate.

Could anyone clarify/explain what the advantages/disadvantages are when lowering the term or lowering the minimum payment?

Also, does anyone know if the comment relating to the no limit to monthly overpayments is true or not, as I don't want any nasty surprises.

Trying_to_be_good

Whether you have unlimited overpayment ability depends on the terms of your mortgage - we can't know. Dig them out, or ask them to put in writing that you have no chrages for overpayments.

Reducing the monthly payment means you're paying less off, unless you up the overpayment by a corresponding amount. But it does mean that the minimum monthly payment is less should you for some reason not be able to keep up your current levels of payment.

Reducing the term, i.e. keeping the monthly payment the same, means the mortgage will be paid off sooner and by definition you will pay less interest overall.

Hope this helps

Kaz2904

My mortgage company have never offered to reduce the payments on my mortgage. It means that my mortgage is automatically reducing in term.
When I first started overpaying I thought that I was going to be charged 4% of any overpayment so I started paying £104 a month. When I recieved my statement the following time I noticed that I had not been charged so I had paid even more than I thought!
I have been overpaying since January 2006 and am a long way off repaying it. I need to reassess the overpayments when I've cleared all of my money into my ISAs come April.
When I've worked it all out I can plough on but my main thing is to remember to leave enough money in savings to pay off our Egg card! I may then just start shoving all money into our ISA instead of overpaying the mortgage.
I'm enjoying looking at my snowball at the moment because it's looking good.
No water to pay out of this months wages so I've transferred that over to the mortgage account too.
I think that once the interest has been added on for this month and it has updated itself I will be debt free on 22/07/2013 and the mortgage will be gone on the 22/11/2012 which is the day after DD's 12th birthday.
I feel like I'm wishing my life away at the moment!
Hope you're all OK and ploughing through it!

do_it_today!

Hi all :hello:
Abit cheerier re mortgage as:
1. have automated my overpayment
2. have reduced the daily interest charged by 50p per day!!!

now Im sure some of you are thinking 50p a day so what.... but thats £15 a month £176 a year! that can go towards overinpaying the old ball and chain :j :j :j

....anyway thats my revelation over ....

keep going everyone :j