Mortgage Free in Three Yrs

Move_To_Portugal

Kaz2904, I know what you mean about wishing your life away. The countdown timer on my desktop looks at me every day and I wish the mortgage was gone! I'm trying to make everyday fun between then and now:D

do it today, you're doing great. 50p a day is 50p a day!:T

mtp

angelavdavis

As I have been on a bit of a downer lately, I decided to put myself together a visual motivator to incentivise myself to continue on the challenge.

A while back, someone had posted a picture of their house to demonstrate how much had been paid similar to the concept on the BBC program (apols to the OP I couldn't find the original thread).

So, I have decided to do the same.

Using a photo scanned of the property details when I bought the house, I have blanked out 150 squares to represent the £150k mortgage I started when I bought the house some 5+ years ago, and have revealed the squares representing the amount paid off. So, as you can see, as of Jan 08, I now own up to the middle of my ground floor! Its my first go at using photobucket, so here goes:

Kaz2904

Looking good there!
Just think, you don't have to save for a wedding anymore so you may be able to throw a little more at it this year?
Even if you can't you're doing well. Almost £29000 cleared in that time and it will only start getting better. Remeber the more interest saved the harder your money works for you.

angelavdavis

Thanks Kaz,

Yes, much as we loved every minute of the wedding and honeymoon, it did carve a big hole right through our Mortgage Wannabee aspirations for 2007!!! (It actually would have meant us being to the top of the ground floor - but then I wouldn't have my lovely husband or the fabulous memories and MFiT is about balance too!!)

I have just stoozed another £10k to go into the offset account next month and am expecting a nice cheque for my Britannia membership bonus any day now (£250), that will go straight off the capital too, together with my AQA earnings (about £30 after tax) and cashback cheque (£60)- so, its all helping.

Once I know what is happening with regard to the permanent job (still negotiating salary and package), that will enable me to make a decision whether to pay more off the capital and less into the offset - at the moment, only extra money such as the items above go into the capital - the rest goes into the offset in case of changes to work circumstances.

rockrat

Ok, i want to submit my figures for the april update whilst its on my mind.
I have one payment to make between now and then, but know what it is and what effect it will have.

I started with a £97,500 mortgage.
my the deadline that figure will be down to £89,818.
not bad to say i didnt join till october.

i have also added a further £6k to my wife and I's ISA, which is offsett in the mortgage, and as far as i am concerned i now have this amount off my mortgage as well. I will leave it to your judgment as to if included, but i know what its for.
The reason why i put this cash in the ISA rather than directly off the capital is it give me options for the future where i am not losing the ISA allowance for the year, as i cannot afford to max my ISA and make the max overpayments i would like as well.
thats why i chose to re-mortgage with a bank that allows me to offset the ISA.

Kaz2904

Well it is sensible to still use the ISA allowance- use it or lose it as they say!
If you can't afford to do both then that's the next best way of going about it isn't it. Once you are fully offset you can then look at slowly transferring your ISA's out elsewhere so that eventually you have full use of ISA and no mortgage at all.
I think this is probably what we will do when we come to remortgage. For the time being we will shove everything possible into ISA's each year and anything over we will put to the mortgage or a higher rate savings account.
I still don't fully understand whether we are going about things the best way but I am doing the best I can. It's better than I was doing 3 years ago so I'm slowly improving! Go for it!

setmefree2

Nice house AD;)

evab_2

HI can you tell me how to do the squares on photobucket or point me to the op, i've uploaded my pic but don't know how to do the next bit.

Lots of thanks Ev

angelavdavis

I did it using the graphics package on my PC first, then loaded it onto photobucket. Do you have a graphics package you can open the photo up in and edit?

evab_2

ummm no just the bog standard picture manager!