Can I live up to my MSE name?

mfwin2019

Hi

I am a long time lurker & occasional poster & i think it is about time I started my own diary to keep me on track.

I am married in my 40s with 2 junior school aged daughters. DH & I were mortgage free at 40 then fell in love with a bigger house with bigger garden in need of a total renovation & extension - so we sold up & bought it ending up with a bigger mortgage than we had ever had.

Starting point for mortgage was £190k, during MFiT TS we managed to reduce it to £147,700 which we thought was totally unachievable when we set our target (£150K) So we have signed up again to reduce it to £90K in the next challenge.

We really would like to be MF by 2019 but at the moment are more on target for 2022. So i am using this diary to keep focussed & hopefully surprise myself with what can be achieved.

Ramble over for now - I am aiming to post at least once a week just to keep me thinking of my end goal

Thanks for reading

MFWin2019

Lois_E

Hi mfwin2019. :wave:
Hope your new challenge goes well. I'm sure you'll make much faster progress than me!

mfwin2019

Thanks Lois_E - still lots to be finished off on the house so more money to pay out over the next couple of years.

On the plus side we have a savings policy that matures this year paying out about £20k so that will be thrown at the mortgage to give us a boost near the start of the MFit T3 challenge

HelenDaveKids

MFWIN you sound like your situation is similar to ours. MF early thirties, 40 very soon (now down to less than a month) married with 3 DD (1 at primary but will join sisters in sept). Saw the forever house but 40k difference plus a lot smaller and ended up completely gutting (windows, doors, electrics, heating, roof, demolishing of dodgy extension etc etc) and then added a large extension (spent 85k). Now perfect.. for us anyway.

We did have reasonable savings as had a few years MF and continued to save plus worked stupid hours during renovation as were available and needed it as set a limit on what we wanted to borrow, so extras had to be earnt first. So lucky for us, we never went above 100k ( few pennies under as had 3 morgages, 2 being advances during the build)

Soon as big bills stopped coming in - finished December 2011, started OP'ing again immediately and now down to just under 85K. Hate having a mortgage so attacking. Would like to be MF before I turn 45....

We also have a lovely big garden.

PaddyPaws

mfwin2019 just read your diary and, datewise, our morgage is also looking likely to be paid off in 2022 (was originally 2026). Ours is a lot smaller though, don't envy you that mortgage. You sound really focused and I'm seriously impressed with how money savvy so many younger folk are. I really wish I'd done this much earlier

I'll follow with interest as I'd also like to have ours cleared by 2019 (or sooner)

good luck
PP

mfwin2019

Thanks PP the following really made my day

"I'm seriously impressed with how money savvy so many younger folk are. I really wish I'd done this much earlier"

Not sure if you were meaning me but it made me feel good

mfwin2019

Hi

Just thought I would post a bit about my mortgages.

Mortgage 1 - taken out 5 years ago at base + .17 for £70K to buy the money pit - sorry dream home. It was taken on a 19 year term so 14 years left to run, o/s balance £53084

This one just ticks along with its normal £333.24 a month payments, all overpayments are made to mortgage 2

Mortgage 2 - taken out 4 years ago to extend & refurbish at 4.84 fixed for 7 years (had 1st mortgage in late 1980s & had variable rate that went up to 15% so wanted a bit of piece of mind) for £120k. This was taken on a 25 year term with 21 years left to run, o/s balance £94178.

All extra repayments are used to reduce the monthly repayment on this mortgage - currently £598.39 not the term. But any reduction rounded up to the next £5 is put into overpayment savings a/c (currently £430 a month)

We over pay from this savings a/c every 3 months to tie in with MFiT updates. Any other extra bits - next 2 months council tax amounts, interest from savings, dividends etc are also put in overpayment savings a/c.

Well that's it for now - hope that wasn't too boring but it is helping me to get it straight where I am now & what I want to achieve

mfwin2019

Well just because I havn't posted doesn't mean I havn't been thinking about my mortgage.

Me & DH have decided to have a big holiday in Florida next year as girls will be in year 5 & year 6 so monthly amount that was going into overpayments is going into holiday fund for a year. To counteract this we are going to sell some shares to make a lump sum repayment of at least £5k in the next couple of months.

I have such good memories from my childhood of our annual holidays & we have great holidays with our kids every year in this country but just thought we would treat ourselves next year - no good waiting until the mortgage is totally gone as girls will be into different things by then.

We also have an endowment policy coming out in April so £20k is earmarked for mortgage fund.

So all in all this year the mortgage balance should be racing down, then we need to regroup thoughts to see how we get to our MFiT3 target of £90k

I may not post often but I do love reading everybody elses

Thanks

MFWin2019

mfwin2019

Well just updated my figures for MFiT3 £146192 - will be very red this time but due a £20k endowment pay out in the next couple of months which will go into the mortgage & put me well into the green on the next update.

Have worked out that after normal repayments I need to over pay about £500 a month for the rest of the challenge to achieve my target of £90k.

I am sure that barring major disasters it can be done & am staying positive.

thanks to all of you that post regularly, I do come on most days & read your posts & get lots of ideas & motivation