Our Mortgage Free Journey

MissWillow

Hi everyone,

We did some xmas shopping on Saturday and had a nice lunch out so it wasn't NSD but we had a really nice day. We also went to our neighbours for sunday lunch which also did us for our dinner too!

We made an overpayment of £1200 yesterday and our mortgage will now be 118,100 - 1200 = 116,900. I can't wait for the letters we receive through from the Spanish bank giving us our new balance!

Just one more overpayment in December to go and we are hoping we can do another £1200 which would bring us up to our overpayment limit of 10% for the year:)

EchoDelta

That's fantastic Miss Willow!

JimLad

Reported our overpayment to Santander last night.

Its such a pain having to phone them every month to tell them to take it off the capital and not reduce the monthly payments which they would do by default.

Mrs_Rachel_Trelfa

JimLad wrote: »

Reported our overpayment to Santander last night.

Its such a pain having to phone them every month to tell them to take it off the capital and not reduce the monthly payments which they would do by default.

Oohh that's interesting to know. Our mortgage on our first house that we move into next week (eeek so excited) is with Santander. We plan to overpay from the start while we don't have children yet and have the spare cash. So do you have to phone them up every month and tell them to reduce the term? What is the impact if you don't?

JimLad

Mrs_Rachel_Trelfa wrote: »

Oohh that's interesting to know. Our mortgage on our first house that we move into next week (eeek so excited) is with Santander. We plan to overpay from the start while we don't have children yet and have the spare cash. So do you have to phone them up every month and tell them to reduce the term? What is the impact if you don't?

Ooo thats very exciting!! You are in exactly the same position as us. Overpaying whilst the financial going is good!


Apparently if you dont phone them up and tell them to take it as a capital payment (reduce the term), they will take it off your repayments. So each following repayment would be a little bit lower but the term would still be the same.


We have never actually tried making an overpayment and not phoning though...Maybe we should do a Tiny one to test what they do by default.

MissWillow

I bought a pair of jeans in August and the belt loop ripped a couple of weeks ago, I was going to just buy another pair until I read reviews online where other people had a similar issue...so i returned to the shop with the receipt where i was told to email the head office who in turn told me to go to the shop. Long story short I got a credit note for the jeans! Very pleased as this has saved me £40! Putting your foot down and being polite but persistent doesn't always pay off but today it did!

Very pleased

JimLad

Mrs_Rachel_Trelfa wrote: »

What is the impact if you don't?

Seems we have found out!!

Looks like Santander have ballsed up our last overpayment.

Just had a look at our account and this months mortgage payment has not been taken. I bet they have taken our overpayment as the monthly payment.


Grrr!!

JimLad

So apparently because we made the overpayment close to the direct debit date, the system took it as the standard payment before they had a chance to mark it as a capital payment.

They are now doing a forced payment of our usual monthly amount to compensate!


So from now on we need to do overpayments after our standard payment date.

LauraJo

Ah the joys of making an overpayment and the bank getting it wrong!! We have been through that several times in our journey!
Anyway - hello! I was just having a read of your ole diary. Looks like you are going great guns so far!
We started OP'ing about the same amount as you and then we realised if we made some drastic lifestyle changes we could actually get it all cleared in just over 3 years.
That did include having lodgers, spending very little on shopping (and mostly eating veggie meals!), putting every pay rise into the budget and not having holidays. Ok so its not for everyone but we thought we would struggle to keep the momentum for 6/7 years but could probably manage for 3. We are nearly at the end. Also, we've realised its nice having lodgers and we are much healthier now!!
Best of luck

JimLad

LauraJo wrote: »

Ah the joys of making an overpayment and the bank getting it wrong!! We have been through that several times in our journey!
Anyway - hello! I was just having a read of your ole diary. Looks like you are going great guns so far!
We started OP'ing about the same amount as you and then we realised if we made some drastic lifestyle changes we could actually get it all cleared in just over 3 years.
That did include having lodgers, spending very little on shopping (and mostly eating veggie meals!), putting every pay rise into the budget and not having holidays. Ok so its not for everyone but we thought we would struggle to keep the momentum for 6/7 years but could probably manage for 3. We are nearly at the end. Also, we've realised its nice having lodgers and we are much healthier now!!
Best of luck

Some of your monthly overpayments in your sig are amazing! I dont think we could do that even if we had £0.00 outgoings!


We try to do one veggie meal a week at the moment but really struggle for good recipes. Do you have any favorites?