SF's road to mortgage freedom!

taka

slowlyfading wrote: »

THank you I know, DH tells me often that I'm far too hard on myself I just worry about things!

Me too but worrying can be really unhelpful if it makes you question everything and tie yourself up in knots about the "what ifs"! You can only do your best... you might make the right decision, you may not. That is ok - no-one is perfect and no-one expects you to be! :kisses3:

If only crystal balls existed... :cool: :rotfl:

sweetdaisy

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS wrote: »

Hi SF, Edinburgher splits his 'spare' money between emergency fund and OP pot and I have a feeling Sweet Daisy may do as well.

Good luck with your plans

Tilly

Yes, Tilly is right .

I split mine 3 ways:

1) offset savings account which is our 'Rainy Day/Emergency Fund account (money I can't/won't touch unless it's an emergency!)
2) mortgage overpayment 'pot' (which is part of the above offset savings account, but I have separated it from my 'Rainy Day' money as I am building this up to use it as a large mortgage overpayment.
3) direct mortgage overpayments

My reason for doing this is that DH was made redundant last October and he is now in a temp job, but I realised that we need to build up as much of an emergency fund as possible. As I have an offset account, all my money in the accounts is working hard at reducing our interest, so I am technically overpaying all the time. I make direct overpayments, because I like to see the mortgage balance go down and it gives me the motivation to carry on with my MFW journey .

pavlovs_dog

The thing with an EF is that everyone's circumstances are different.

We're fortunate in that our jobs are reasonably secure, mine more so than OH's. Were he to loose his job, we could probably scrape by on my wage without dipping into EF too much, by making changes such as cutting our groceries spends right back, not paying ourselves pocket money, stopping our standing orders into savings etc. It would be an existance rather than a lifestyle, but we wouldn't starve and debt accrual would be minor.

Were I to lose my job, I could take on supply/tutoring/exam marking to keep things ticking over. As a Welsh speaker, minimum wage style jobs are always easy to come by if I was desperate for a temporary stop gap. If that wasn't possible our savings would then have to come to our rescue.

If the car were to die, we could afford to replace it, although it would make a big dent in our savings. Were something big to go wrong with the house, our savings would soften the blow even if they wouldn't cover the cost of all the work.

In absolute dire straits we could call on the help of ILs, either financially or by moving in with them and renting out our place.

Whilst I do want to get a better grip on my bottom line and EF, I'm not drastically worried about it because we're as safe as you can hope to be jobswise and we have plenty of options financially before anyone would send around the bailiffs - a very fortunate position to be in.

slowlyfading

Thanks for taking the time to post that daisy and pavlovs_dog - I think I need to think about our situation and the "what ifs" scenarios that might occur, and then make a plan from that. In the meantime I'm going to keep chipping away at both mortgage/EF as and when I can

Phew! This grown up malarky is confusing at times

catshark88

I think "what if" plans change over time too. When we started overpaying our last mortgage, every penny went straight off the mortgage. This time round, we have an offset mortgage and I'm paying into a linked savings pot. The money is firmly earmarked as only for the mortgage, but if something fell off the rails with DH's business, the cash would still be there.

I know you can pull money back out of an offset, I just prefer to organise it thar way round!

Jo4

Glad the week went well for you SF!

Can anyone inform me where can I find information about Martin's emergency pot targets?

slowlyfading

Jo - think he says having 6 months savings of your essential outgoings, just in case.

It's not a NSD for me today - I've had a girlie day out with my mum and then a takeaway I've also ordered 5 books for my new kindle fire HD for all of 20p each, so that's me sorted for a while I've also ordered DH a treat - if I can manage to hide it from him, it'll be an anniversary gift, if not then it'll be a nice treat

slowlyfading

So, I've OP'd £400 today. For the rest of the month, any spare monies are going to go straight into the EF

We've had lots of snow today, but it's melting now it's going to be cold overnight though, so I don't know how icy it's going to be in the morning. Trying not to put the heating back on, but it's very cold. I'm sat having a cuppa, brrr. I'm going to make tea soon - we're having mushroom and pesto pasta, using up the dodgy mushrooms and pesto from the fridge that need eating.

Got some exciting news to share at the weekend.....

beanielou

Bl;imey, that is some overpayment :j

pavlovs_dog

£400? Nice healthy start to the year :T

slowlyfading wrote: »

Got some exciting news to share at the weekend.....

don't keep us in suspenders Tell us now you KNOW you WANT to...