Onwards and upwards....

marlasinger

Addyboy, who is your provider who only allows you £500 minimum overpayments? Is that quite a standard practice? That would frustrate me! :eek:

'If at first' - definitely agree with you on the shopping lists and meal plans. I've always done it loosely in the past which means I may as well not have done it (if my current grocery spend is anything to go by :rotfl:), but starting from now I'm going to be uber-strict about it. I find a lot of money seems to be wasted on low-nutritional empty snack type foods. I bet if I cut those out I could save £15 a week.

Annieddiva

hi Marlasinger - you've made great inroads into your mortgage so far, great stuff!! We moved to our dream home on 2009, and had lived on rightmove too, and thought we'd never find our dream place as we kept seeing them all being snapped up...

I'm like you, I do overpayments - only small ones like £3 throughout the month from surveys/ebay etc, and then I wait to see what's left at the end of month to put the bulk of the overpayment through, as I too keep thinking what if something happens too. So we have a small emergency fund.

Watch the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves....

jenniemiller177

I love Rightmove and looking at possible houses for the future. I can dream!

We always find budgeting for food difficult. We go through stages of making meal plans for a couple of weeks and then go back to normal! We spend about £375 a month on food. After reading all your comments, I'm going back to the meal plans for next week!

marlasinger

I've joined some online survey sites, based on the recommendations on here, so hopefully that will be a bit extra I can overpay in the month. :j

Spent far too much time today looking on Rightmove. I swear I'm addicted.

Jennie, may I ask how many people your grocery bill is for? I'm vowing to be strict on the meal plan thing as well, so I hope you have success with it.

marlasinger

Updated my sig with my mortgage balance details. Hope this will keep me more focussed to see it staring at me all the time. They haven't yet registered my most recent overpayment - will have to wait for bank holiday to be over.

I know it's a 'smallish' mortgage compared to many, but it's still a bit depressing to see such a large balance. :eek:

marlasinger

Edited for privacy

marlasinger

Haven't made any extra payments this week, but I should be able to put down £150 at the end of next week, just before payday.

I've also been a busy bee with surveys. I'm only accruing small amounts, but I'm find it fun as well.

I've been doing some 'deep and meaningful' thinking over the last few days. Our original plan was to move up the ladder and get our 'dream house' in about 5 years or so. The only problem is that to do so, I'm counting on being on a salary at that time that is in no way guaranteed. Also, we would be mortgaged to the hilt, with no savings, and paying high mortgage repayments (with little money left over to save or overpay). It kind of goes against the whole point of fighting so hard to be mortgage free. I think I need a reality check and get my head out of the clouds. It's just the fantasy of having a rural property is just so damn nice.

So, I think we need to downgrade our expectations to something a bit more achievable. The main thing we want in a new home is off-street parking (something which I don't have now, and unfortunately I live on a street where people get funny if you park outside their house) and a decent sized garden for the dog. At the moment, we have a concrete terraced garden, with a knee-high fence on the top terrace and a 10 foot drop down the other side. Not a good idea for someone with a dog. Also, we're on a main road. Blech. Also, we've done some exploring over the weekend, and there are some nice and affordable places almost right under our noses, surrounded by woodland which would be ideal for walking our labrador. Funny what you miss when you get an idea in your head!

I feel a bit better now that I've sorted this in my head. So we won't have the ultimate dream home (who does?), but it will be a nicer house in a nicer area. It won't tick all the boxes, but the majority of them. And most importantly, it should enable us to pay it off significantly earlier.

I'm probably talking about something that won't happen for another year or so, but nothing like planning ahead, eh?

marlasinger

Have just spent a bit of time doing up a realistic budget. I'm going to set aside money each month for 'annual spends' such as car insurance, TV licence etc. Previously I would just put it on the credit card, with the end result being that I couldn't pay off the balance in full at the end of the month (my big bills all seem to come along at the same time). Hopefully by creating this 'money pot' I'll get a truer idea of what I can overpay each month, without having the 'down' months where I can overpay nothing because I'm trying to pay off the credit card.

I feel like I'm not being proactive enough in overpaying. It just feels like I'm sat around twiddling my thumbs not really doing anything until payday when I make my one overpayment. I've noticed a lot of people do the 'little and often' approach, which is something I'd like to try but we don't have anything else coming into the bank account aside from my salary so it's not like I'm finding extra bits of money to put to the mortgage. We don't even have much to flog on Ebay as we did a big clean out years ago when we moved. :eek:

Guess I have to stick with doing my surveys and not be so damn impatient. :rotfl:

elantan

We now put £175 a month by for car insurance contents insurance car repairs tv license etc and I have to admit it helps a lot ... We no longer are scared invade the car breaks down or we can't afford to insure anything ... Took a bit if getting used to but now that we are life is much easier

Good luck

marlasinger

Thanks elantan. It makes sense and I'm surprised I didn't think of it sooner. Our bad month is December when loads of the annual charges come out (plus Xmas on top!), and I'd really dread it and prepare to have no money for a couple of months afterwards.

By building up a pot we can just draw against that for our yearly bills and take the pressure off a bit. :j