mortgage free before forty!

MFWB440 · 30 June 2013 at 8:02AM

Hi all, been a long time lurker on is site and inspired by the stories of others have decided to take up the mfw challenge by paying off the mortgage before I am forty, which is just over 10years away!

A little back story: We have recently moved to a bigger house and increased our mortgage debt by about 50%. Our total mortgage is £130, 600 on a house purchase of £180,000.

We have about £2,000 on the credit card at 0% which was used to buy new furniture and stooze a bit for our deposit.

Our repayments are £590 a month at 2.99%

My wife has agreed to tackle the credit card, and I have agreed to tackle the overpayments. Once the credit card is cleared, we'll both tackle the mortgage.

I am planning on overpaying by £500 a month in the first instance, but hope to increase this when my wife can help out after the credit cards paid off. In a couple of years when our son starts getting free child care hours, we hope it will reduce the £400 a month we are currently paying to enable us to increase our overpayments.

I'm also in the look out for good car boot items, and ways of earning extra bits of cash here and there.

Wish me luck!

andrea_louise · 30 June 2013 at 8:44AM

Good luck OP, I started my mortgage free journey last October. If you're anything like me, it will become very addictive!

but it's good to see that overall balance reducing, and calculating how much you are saving in interest!

I have recently opened a nationwide flex direct account which pays 5% interest on balances up to £2,500 (£125 per annum) so that's a profit on my mortgage rate, even after tax. I opened the account through quidco which should pay £70 cashback for opening the account too!
Every little helps!

MFWB440 · 30 June 2013 at 8:54AM

Hi, thanks for your words of support. I imagine it will start getting addictive. Just playing around with the mortgage repayment calculator and how many years you can knock off from even modest overpayments means that I know this will be worthwhile.

For my own amusement/motivation, I've included an expected yearly target for the next 10 years. Of course all subject to change based on interest rates and what I actually manage to overpay etc, but interesting nonetheless.

June 2013 mortgage:£130,600
June 2014 target: £120,738
June 2015 target: £110,621
***increase overpayments to £600 pcm***
June 2016 target:£99,447
June 2017 target: £87,938
June 2018 target: £76,084
June 2019 target: £63,874
June 2020 target: £51,297
June 2021 target: £38,343
June 2022 target: £25,001
June 2023 target: £11,258
June 2024 target: £0

Targets will be revised when overpayments are increased, or one off payments are made, or if interest rates change. Aim to have cleared mortgage by end of June 2024 at the very latest!

MFWB440 · 24 July 2013 at 2:25PM

Made a £500 overpayment this month.

We're not going anywhere fancy on holiday. Just 2 weeks off to visit friends and family, so making a good saving there.

Visited a car boot last Sunday and managed to buy new bedding and toys for our son and a load of old garden tools for a fiver. Probably saved about £60 all together based on what we were prepared to pay for those items new. I'm going to the car boot again on Sunday and hope to pick up some items for resale.

Any profits from this is all going into a spare pot. I may make further over payments on any amount I make over £100. The £100 will remain in order to keep re-investing in items to buy.

I have also just applied for a promotion (interview at the end of August). If I get this, I should be able to increase overpayments to about £700 a month.

tjp70 · 26 July 2013 at 7:10AM

Good luck with the interview.

MFWB440 · 26 August 2013 at 10:15AM

Made another £500 overpayment today, very pleased to have £1000 lobbed off already. Not so pleased when you consider it is less than 1% of the outstanding balance! Not had much luck with the car booting. Just buying stuff to keep rather than sell.

The current overpayments mean we have very little spare cash at the end of the month. Getting about £100 a month extra in my wages from September, which will help. I also have an interview this week for a promotion which would make life a lot easier.

If I got this job, I could increase my overpayments to £600 a month and still have a bit of spare cash at the end of the month. Trying not to think too much about it at the moment though, just concentrate on my interview prep!

MFWB440 · 6 September 2013 at 10:03AM

Interview went well and I was offered the job!

I'm not likely to be starting until November/ December time, so I won't notice the effect on my wages until then.

As December is Christmas, I won't increase my overpayments that month, but will increase my overpayments to £600 a month from January.

I may increase this to £700, perhaps more when my wife has finished paying off the credit card, but we will see, as we would like to go on a 'proper' holiday this year, for the first time in about 3 years so will need to save something for that.