Here we go...a new MFW!

feelingfestive

Well...I'll start with a bit about us and why we've started this journey! I happened to come across MSE a couple of months ago when I had a question about a new mortgage and then found you guys in MFW! Previously I had assumed that you just pay it off every month and sit it out! How naive was I? You lot opened our eyes to the possibility of becoming Mortgage Free and so here we are! :T

Background: Both of us are in our late 20's with our first home which we bought in 2007 for £129,000. I am a secondary school teacher and Mr FF is a manager for a transport company. We don't have any children and earn a decent crust although we do have 1 horse, 1 cat and a few fish!

The plan is to move house and I intended on starting this diary once we had moved and had our bigger mortgage however, it all seems to have gone wrong this morning and it seems it'll be a while before we move so I thought there's no time like the present and I better begin.
The mortgage stands at the grand total of £99859.45 and is on 5.78% until November 2013 when it drops to the base rate. At the moment there is a limit of £500 per month OP however, due to the move we have been piling everything into our savings so that we don't have to mortgage all the fees to move house. After November the mortgage drops to the base rate and then we can OP as much as we want without paying penalties. The idea is to port our current mortgage over to a new property and spend time getting rid of that one before focusing on the second, new mortgage.

So, that's us and that's the plan so far. We now need to try and find a house ot buy as the one we wanted seems to have fallen through. Going to keep saving as much as possible and then see what we can do with OPing! I'll be back later to fill you in on some figures etc. but I think this'll do for now! Turned out to be more epic than I was expecting!

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Beckyy

Welcome and good luck on your MF journey!

feelingfestive

Thank you Beckyy! It's really great to be part of such a supportive forum! :j I'm sure it'll help to keep us on track.

Lois_E

Hello FF and welcome to MFW. :wave:

Sorry to hear about your house purchase falling through. Hope an even nicer house comes along soon.

In the meantime, you'll fit right in here. There are quite a few of us teachers - you'll notice that people like me post loads more in school holidays!!

Good luck for the journey.

feelingfestive

Thanks Louis_E! You're so right about the holidays! I thought it was now or never to get going. I must say I have read your diary and found loads of great tips and inspiration so thank you! :T

Just in the process of checking that I'm on the best energy tariff so I feel as though I'm making MFW progress already! :rotfl:

TwinnyD

Welcome & good luck with your journey, MFW is a lovely place to be with some really inspiring diaries. Hope you find another house you like soon

if_at_first...

Hi there,

Best of luck on your challenge :T

LauraJo

Good luck!! Just a thought - have you looked at buying yourself out of your high ish rate mortgage now? If its due to expire in Nov the fee may be quite low. There are lots of good offers out there at the mo and you might claw the fee back after a couple of months? My diary shows that I did it (my fee was £6k tho!!) but we saved about £1k a month on interest so it paid back really quickly - that was about 2.5 yrs ago so we have more than made our money back!! Just a thought

LauraJo

Oh god just realised we started posting tips already to you

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Hi Laura Jo! All tips are good tips! We did have a look at getting out early but Nationwide won't budge at all so we thought that if we've lasted this long then we may as well sit it out til November.

Had a look today at checking the utility bills issue and npower's website say I should be paying £52 per month but they've put my direct debit up to £66 as a fixed tariff had ended. I called them but they've lost all my details in the change over of their systems so only Mr FF is on there and they won't let me do it without a letter! :mad: So I'm going to have to get Mr FF to call them on Monday or wait til they receive the letter.

Went to look at a lovely house today too and put a cheeky offer in but it needs so much work doing to it we really couldn't justify spending so much more so hopefully they'll accept the offer and things start moving again! Obviously I'll update you all tomorrow.

Overall then, not so money saving as I had hoped for but tomorrow will be a NSD and Friday will be a NSD & a no drive day!

Thanks all for the support and messages so far!

Miss_Money_Magnet

I have subscribed. Look forward to seeing how you go on.