Mortgage Free in Three Yrs

chickadee

Hi there,

Well, the end of the challenge has finally arrived and I am amazed and elated at how well we have all done. It just goes to show that if you put your mind to something, you can achieve it!

I am delighted to tell you that my balance is now £23,122 as at 31st March 2010. My original target was to pay off £11k from my original balance of £65k, and I am stunned to have paid off £41,878!!! I would never have thought this was possible, and there have been a couple of unexpected bonuses along the way. The silver lining of my recent redundancy was that I could pay off another chunk of my mortgage. I have another job, so I'm quite happy really.

Thanks must go to DD for kicking this off in the first place and to Tall Girl and the cheerleaders for keeping the chart updated and for keeping us all motivated.

I can't wait until I've got rid of the last £23k!

angelavdavis

#47 reporting in for the last time. Thanks to DD and TG for their hard work over the three years. Well done everyone for your brilliant achievements! Best of luck to you guys who are doing the take 2 challenge. It is the best thing to have paid off the mortgage - I wish you all the freedom we are enjoying now.

Ange x

setmefree2

Final post from the Setmefree2s.

We started with a mortgage of £182k and finished with a mortgage of £90k. We also increased our cash pile - so that our £90k mortgage is now fully offset with cash:)

Thanks to everyone:T:T Particularly TG for her wonderful reporting :T:T

ailuro2

Anyone else feeling a little sad at all these 'final' posts, it feels like we're all breaking up!

What a way to end it though, hundreds of thousands of pounds of mortgages GONE in just a few years instead of almost a lifetime that the banks would prefer.

Thanks to Dithering Dad for starting us all off, and to TallGirl for all the charts and statistics, to everyone who was part of the challenge and helped make it all possible, thanks to the cheerleaders, and to those who stopped by to wish us luck (and ask if they could be MF too!) when it went in the weekly e-mail.

Thanks should go to Martin Lewis too, :money: without his site this challenge would never have happened, and I know our family would probably not have known about overpayments, about Quidco, about phoning up Virgin Media and getting £25 every months knocked off the bill!

Best of Luck to those who still have another challenge to let them deal the finishing blow to their mortgages.

Happy Holidays, Happy Retirement, or whatever the rest of us are doing now we've no mortgage to pay....
We'll be thinking of you all as we cruise Alaska this summer, without your help it would not have been possible.....

p.s. the decorating of this house that we own outright can wait till next year!!:beer:

Desperate_Housewife_2-2

Just signing off for the very last time. Goodbye to everyone, we'll bump into each other on the forums I expect.
Its been nice knowing you all, thanks for all the support, good luck with you future efforts.
Cheerio from Desperate housewife

black_taxi_2

interesting reading thru 2007 threads and looking at up-dated chart 2010

although i wasnt part of this challenge well done to you all on the effort you have made since 2007

:beer:

Kaz2904

Funnily enough, I hadn't heard of MSE until I signed up to the forums at Motley fool. There was a mortgage free thread on there which I was posting on (think it was just a how to- deffo no time on it!), I posted one day about the savings I had made on samll food items and someone quite scathingly said "I think that you put far too much chat in your post's. It's quite boring why don't you go to MSE where you'll be welcome?"
Well, quite hurtful being chucked off a forum for being boring so I came here with my tail between my legs and had a look around. After a little while this funny little thread appeared.
3 years later, look where we are now (and I've not been back to motley fool since then!

FreedomGirl

Hi everyone,

Well, it's Easter sunday and the F1 is on the telly, and I have my netbook on my lap, just signing in to say hello and (with a lump in the throat) a "first" goodbye. Firstly, a huge big thank you to DD and TallGirl for starting all this off. And secondly to all of you for keeping me going, especially during the period when both me and the hubby were unemployed. (Certainly felt a bit embarrassed with my negative numbers, but figured I was also a poster child for "hanging on in there" spirit )

I'm guessing TG will print the final chart a bit after the 16th April which is when we'll all convene for a collective group hug. Let's all turn up and give TG that final thank you!

I'm planning to print off the final chart, and to either frame it (possibility not so good - we know how it goes with) or laminating it and using it as a very large bookmark I might print out the intro letter or something similar for the other side.

I may not be on a cruise in Alaska (though that sounds totally cool!!) but I am now the proud owner of a very lovely diamond "engagement" ring. When we got married a few years ago, it was a very budget event. My hubby had been wanting to buy something nice but this was the first time when we could contemplate something like this. So have to confess that a not-small sum has been spent - to buy something _very_ nice. Absolutely gorgeous, in fact.

I'm naturally the saver (or at least I was) and it feels rather strange not to be topping up the ISA this year. But, we're in the lee of paying off the mortgage and I'm a bit demob happy...

A "sparkly" FreedomGirl xx

ailuro2

Diamonds are a freedomgirl's best friend!

Hope you love your 'forever' engagement ring.:beer:

I too have an engagement ring that didn't cost an awful lot, it does still mean a lot to me though.... we had recently moved house and were expecting our DD when we got engaged, so the cost of it had to be within our budget.
Thankfully by the time it came to buy an eternity ring a few years later we were a bit flusher, so the emeralds in that ring are a bit bigger and clearer.:)

It's strange to be mortgage free but have little or no money in the bank, because we've spent it all on holidays so far...previously there was always a bit of money waiting to be paid off in a lump sum.:o

Superfast_Gran

Didn't we all do well :j:j:j:j:j

Even though some of us didn't make the figure we set ourselves - through changes of circumstances or other unavoidable events - I'm sure we would all agree that we are better off than we were 3 years ago. We certainly are even though we've had a new kitchen and bathroom refurbishment, job loss etc!! Have signed up to the take 2 challenge with a lower figure than we think we'll make, in order to feel really good when we do surpass it!

Anyhoo, onwards and upwards & "pea soup" to the banks!!

:beer::beer::T:T:T:T:T :beer::beer: