Back from the brink of disaster....now to pay off £160,400 interest only mortgage :-(

gallygirl

Belatedly caught up on your story and wow we are not worthy. Well done on your tenacity.

If you are scared of over-committing yourself, maybe ask NR about leaving as interest only but find out about making capital repayments? That way you could send regular amounts and all the little extras without putting yourself under undue pressure.

Looking forward to learning a thing or two from you .

GG

Cheapskate_Kate

penfriend wrote: »

Well done Kate, must be hard doing all that and with 4 children as well.

I'm so glad I followed what my Mother told me, she said
'don't be like the others and get a mortgage you can't afford and credit cards you have to pay off' 'live day to day and only buy what you can afford'.

I'm so glad I listened to her because I recently lost my job and I dread to think what would happen if I had a credit card, car and mortgage.

I found that I can have all the things I need by living day to day or pay by direct debit monthly, I'm so basic I don't even have a car, LOL !

Well done Kate.

This is exactly what I'm teaching my children - hopefully they will learn from my mistakes and be savvy with their finances. My boys argue over the calculator when we get home from shopping as they like to top up the spends and see how much we have left.

Cheapskate_Kate

:beer: i feel very motivated reading all these lovely comments. Not sure about having any 'tips' though. Will have to see!

Cheapskate_Kate

Well I've started this fasting diet today and am absolutely starving and have a teeny portion of mushroom risotto to look forward to _party_ But, on the bright side the good news is that it may save money with me fasting for 2 days a week. Thought I'd come on here and distract myself as no amount of herbal tea seems to be doing the trick.

So I manged to bumble through the weekend without any spending on daft stuff and yet still managed to spend alot!. £95.64 in total which leaves me with £361.62 until pay day. Most of that was on food but we have menu planned this week! Went to the market and Aldi and then Costco and bought some trays of meat/ fish so that should last a couple of weeks and I just need to buy fresh stuff next week.

If I manage on my remaining budget I should easily have enough to pay off the last of the debt (with a little bit spare if I'm ultra lucky). However I do still need to get through 2 more weekends and hold off takeaways, eating out and trips to the cinema. Nothing important is allowed to break and hopefully the school will try to restrain themselves from asking for any more money. At least until 1 May when the fun starts again.

Managed to trick the children into thinking they were having a treat on Sat by making a lasagne - they lurve it but I find it a faff with the bolognaise and bechamel sauce so rarely do it. Then we shared a £1 bag of popcorn and watched BGT so everyone was happy.

I also have purchased buildings and contents insurance but that money was already accounted for in my monthly budget. However, my renewal was £142 but I shopped around and got same level of cover for £118 with £40 cashback and £15 of Rackhams vouchers. Since I've somewhat sorted myself out I've taken to purchasing insurances etc annually rather than monthly.....saves so much interest and stops the huge amount of direct debits that seemed to go from my account all the time.

Because I'm totally obsessing with food now I'm going to post my menu plan for the week. I feel like if I write something here I can't deviate from it!

Mon - fishfingers, wedges, peas/ Mushroom risotto (fasting)
Tues - fish pie, green beans, broccoli
Wed - Chilli and rice
Thurs - baked pots with beans and cheese/ some sort of veg stirfry (fasting)
Fri - chicken fajitas
Sat - homemade pizza/ salad
Sun - roast lamb and trimmings

sillyinthepast

Hi Kate I have just read your thread and wow!!! I for one know that I would have dig myself deeper into a hole and been worse off well done you very inspirational. I am new to all this mortgage stuff but am with the thinking that anything is better than nothing x x

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi Kate, don't forget to try out the free cinema tickets thread - they have periods where there are few but on average I pick up tickets each month for nothing which is a big help to the entertainment at no cost

Best wishes Tilly

Thistlewhistle

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS wrote: »

Hi Kate, don't forget to try out the free cinema tickets thread - they have periods where there are few but on average I pick up tickets each month for nothing which is a big help to the entertainment at no cost

Best wishes Tilly

Tilly is right! Do Orange still do that Film Wednesday thing?

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Good luck Kate. Popcorn is great, my kids felt they had a real treat if we all sat down together and shared a bag, yet so cheap!
Another freebie that always seemed like a treat was a picnic like in the Enid Blyton books, with a check tablecloth even if we just went to the local park.

Squirrel

Cheapskate_Kate

I phoned NRAM last night for the gory details.

So here's the numbers:
150,865.36 owed to mortgage at 4.54% and 9,589.35 at 3.94% on a secure loan which I presume is the last bit of equity release that never got incorporated. And these are the 'loyalty' SVRs.

Bad news is the term left is 14 years....for some reason I thought it was 16. "Don't you have an endowment policy" said the operator....umm well no because a) my mortgage is with nram and b) you've just seen how I've operated my account. Even worse news is that I cannot increase the term to enable me to switch to a repayment mortage as they don't have a lending license they can't do this. I can't re-mortgage because of bad credit rating, affordability ratios and a high ltv. On paper I'm not an attractive prospect at all.

So to switch to repayment today will cost me £1291 a month :eek: :eek:
That unsurprisingly is over double what current interest payments are. However, a quick calculation has shown me that I've paid 7.5k in the last 12 mths to this house and not even paid for 1p of it....that is depressing.

I need to get back to work but am sure I can come up with a plan! Hopefully...............

fothers365

I am no expert in this field at all but hopefully someone may have some useful advice for you.