Our Mortgage Free Journey

JimLad

Just started the switch to change both our current accounts to First Direct! That's £125 each so £250 for the pot :-)

JimLad

Going wild with the Airbnb bookings this week and next! 10 nights booked netting us £280 for next years overpayment fund :-)

MissWillow

Just signed up for a regular saver account with bank not on the high street.... 4% net/6%gross...after 12 months will net me £117...will do nicely for the overpayment payment coming up to xmas next year.

MissWillow

Hi all,

I haven't been on the forum in a couple of months, it's been a pretty busy start to the year so far! Myself and OH got married a few weeks ago and it was amazing! We had such a lovely day and now that it is all paid for we can focus our attention back to our overpayments. We made an overpayment of £6k at the weekend and it felt so good calling the Spanish bank to confirm it! We are now have a mortgage of £92,500 with about 14 years left on it. We can overpay by 10% each year without incurring a penalty and we have almost £4k left this year that we can overpay. Next year our mortgage is up for renewal and we going to choose one with unlimited overpayments which will give us more flexibility to overpay how much we want when we want.

The dream is to overpay the mortgage asap so that when we have kids in a few years we will be mortgage free. The reality will be that we will have a small mortgage left...i'm hoping around the £40k mark or less. The we both have really good motivation to get on and be thrifty with our pennies and pounds and put the money into the mortgage.

As mentioned in a few earlier posts we rent our our spare bedroom to make some extra cash and January as been a surprisingly good month for this- we are putting all of this surplus cash into our grocery and car fuel bill which is really helping to keep our own credit card bills down each month.

I will check back in again soon.

Thanks:)

MissWillow

Hi Everyone,

So a bit of an update on where we are. We made an overpayment in March which brings us to our 10% overpayment for the year and leaves us with a mortgage of £88k. We can remortgage next October ,2016) and the plan is to save as much as possible between now and then. We can make a 10% overpayment in Jan '16 and then once we remortgage next October we are hoping our mortgage will be down to about £50k with the regular payments and overpayments from our overpayment savings fund. Our new mortgage will allow us to have unlimited overpayments. Well that's the aim at the moment. As I said in the initial posts we both earn decent salaries and my bonus structure at work has changed so for the moment I'm getting a bit more than expected which is all going into our saving for the overpayment fund. We also rent out a spare bedroom on a short term basis and the earnings for that has been pretty good so far this year. The eBay and amazon earnings have sadly dropped to nothing... Need to try and sort this out by listing new items etc...
We have also been pretty good with our grocery spend at keeping it down to about £25 per week for to adults. This time last year we were easily spending £35-£40 per week.

Luckyinlife

well done on the Overpayment :] depending on how much you get charged for over paying over 10% maby its worth it all depends on your current rate ect tho

youv come a massive way since your first post well done came from 155k down to 88k in 4 years wow amazing :]

MissWillow

Thanks LuckyinLife thanks for the suggestion, we've calculated that if we go over the 10% overpayment allowance it's much of a muchness in penalty fees and savings from mortgage payments so we've decided to save and try and get some extra interest even though the rates are pitiful at the moment. We are hoping to move to a 1.99% interest rate next October and we are currently paying 3.99% so that will be a big help to us as well! we are thinking of reducing the term to keep the mortgage payment the same or even slightly higher.

Luckyinlife

Amazing work either way its there for when you want to overpay isnt it :] personally for me its better to put it into the mortgage but we are all different keep us updated with your progress :]

Mrs_Rachel_Trelfa

Hi, I wondered where you had been and thought that I had been missing you. Well done on reaching your 10% and a massive congratulations on how much you have reduced your mortgage. And well done on bringing your food bill down.

MissWillow

Thanks Rachel, yes it's been hard to stay motivated recently as we have hit our 10% overpayment and won't be receiving the confirmation letters of the overpayment with the new mortgage amount and term but I've decided to track savings in the overpayment fund.
Savings account 1: £8,388.93 ( in an isa that I need to move - once moved I will get 1.25%)
Savings account 2: £1500 (earning 6% and 4.6% after tax- limited to £300 per month)

Total so far is £9,888
Will need to remove 2,500 for nest egg which leaves £7,388 in the overpayment fund.

Target. Jan ' 16 to overpay 10% of mortgage which will be £8,400
Target October '16 (move to unlimited overpayment): £20k

I'm almost there with the jan target and myself and oh will be aiming for the £20k in savings over 18 months. This works out at £1111 a month we need to save.

I think this should be manageable at the moment I am targeting myself with saving £1500 per month and oh thinks he can do £750 which gives us a combined overpayment savings of £2250 a month. I've stretched us a bit on what I think we can put into the savings fund but I wreckon if I don't aim high I definitely won't achieve it. Maybe we. Might even double the £20k target.

Will post once again once I've been paid and know how much I can put into savings.

I should say that more of our salary is now going into overpayment savings due to the income we receive from renting out our spare room paying for our fuel and grocery bill. We are also hoping it might pay for a holiday but that might be a bit on the ambitious side.