Mortgage Free in Three Yrs

Desperate_Housewife_2-2

dawnylou wrote: »

Happy Birthday Desperate Housewife!!! x

Thank you!

AnW'sMum

Desperate_Housewife wrote: »

:bdaycake:

Just popped in to share some cake as its my birthday today!

Happy Birthday and thanks for sharing, yum yum

angelavdavis

Happy Birthday DH!

Congrats Jonesy for doing so well.

ailuro2

Happy Birthday DH!

Is this not taking things a bit far though - you saved money for the overpayment fund by having a virtual birthday cake?

:rotfl:

Hope you had a great day!

Keep up the good work everyone - had a bill for £500 this week for MOT servicing and fixing the brakes, but we should have enough to cover everything without dipping into the holiday saving fund.:rolleyes:

setmefree2

Desperate_Housewife wrote: »

:bdaycake:

Just popped in to share some cake as its my birthday today!

FreedomGirl

Hi everyone,

I was talking with the OH, and we were contemplating switching away from our One account. Rationale is that we are not likely to have much surplus over and above our turnover. We're not expert MFiTers with the One account, and I'm wondering whether it might be best to have a normal repayment with overpayment facility, so we can drip feed £50 in here and there. (More as the salary goes up - hopefully)

And the changes to T&Cs seems to prep the ground for them charging us for operating the account.

Balance needed - likely to be 27-28K...

Do we need to wait until we've finished our probationary period in our jobs to be taken seriously?

What about these monster arrangement fees - are they are a regular feature of the landscape now? (They weren't around back in 2001!)

I have ~15K cash reserve in ISAs too which would help with temporary cash flow. No cc debts etc.

Don't worry, I plan to read the remortgage guide on this website and doing the detailed leg work.

Just fancied hearing other people's thoughts about the general idea...

FG

Desperate_Housewife_2-2

Hi Freedom girl, I have done well with the one account but I agree that they seem to be preparing the way for charges. Could you put your isa pot in there to bring down the balance and thereby reduce interest? The arrangement fees are a lot on some new mortgages and there doesn't seem to be much choice at the mo.

Righto...confession time! We re arranged the front room yesterday in an attempt to freshen things up but realised that in fact the whole place is ready for a lick of paint as the last time we did it was 2000! oops! Anyway, we went out today and I spent around 500 quid on paint, a new rug, cushions, and 2 pairs of curtains (one pair made to measure as the window is too large for ready made ones) and some new net curtains. One wall is done and we'll do the rest tomorrow. It is starting to look lovely!

I think we needed to do it and I am happy to spend a bit of money to treat ourselves as we deserve it, we've all been working hard on paying off the mortgage and it was getting a bit embarrassing when people came round.

Its a little blip on out progress chart but sometimes you need to spend the money otherwise it can get you down.

AnW'sMum

My gut instinct says stick with the One account if you can. Like you say a lot of mortgages out there these days have arrangement fees and any arrangement fee no matter how small seems a big price to pay for separating your finances out again. You need to consider the deals out there, if you can get one that is a better rate than you are currently on then it might be worth it. Work out the cost of swapping to a 'regular' repayment mortgage an keeping your savings intact as opposed to sticking everything on the one account. What would the difference be per year? If it's negligible (what amount is classed as negligible is for another discussion!) then go for it.

One accounts in my view are only really any good for those with a strong self control, who will not be tempted to 'dip' into that which has already been repaid for luxuries. If you can treat it as a reducing overdraft and mentally not cross an upper limit each month, a limit which reduces every month, then I believe it can work very well. If both parties to the mortgage can maintain such self control then stick with the one account, if not then long term it may be more cost effective to split things up. HTH

FreedomGirl

Hi,

Thanks ever so much for the replies. We've been quite good at running the One Account ever since we stopped using it as the day to day account and just ran the background direct debits through it. When we were putting through the food shopping spends, even running separate paper accounting, it just seemed difficult to see the numbers going in the right direction.

So, we'll stick with it. I suspect it will take at least another five years to pay off the current balance, but at least things are going in the right direction. I'll be off to the MFiT-2 thread at the end of the year.

FG

Trying_to_be_good

Hi everyone - how's it going?

I'm getting a bit demoralised at the moment, as although I'm making my 'normal' overpayments, I'm not able to pay any extra off - this week my car broke down and has cost over £300 to fix, plus £45 air con recharge. It cost over £400 in February and over £100 last month. I'm not going backwards with the challenge, just not going forward as fast as I'd like. I anyone else seeing money just disappear at the moment? I'm sure my luck will change soon!