£35k to £245k to £0...

pinkteapot

Thanks all. Broken tired and we've only got the main rooms unpacked and sorted (bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, lounge), but I so love this house already. It felt like home five minutes after getting the keys, when I had the kettle on. I can't believe we live here! So glad we busted our original budget. :D:D

Really must phone Santander at some point and find out what date our mortgage repayments go out on, and how much the first (expensive) one will be. Run out of energy for the moment though. Moving is EXHAUSTING! Never doing it again!!

p.s. Discovered the downside of large houses - our router is at one end and the wifi signal is awful at the other end. :rotfl:

pinkteapot

£14k in 2014?

OK, I've just been playing with our monthly budget numbers again. I think we can overpay by £1,400 per month, starting from March. That's still giving us a fairly comfortable amount of monthly spends that will cover all the basics and odd small bits for the new house that will inevitably come up.

In theory that's £14k this year, but in reality I think we'll want some extra large bits (e.g. furniture) for the house and probably decide to OP a bit less in some months.

I was therefore thinking of a £10k target for the year, but having just typed this, £14k in 2014 has such a nice ring to it that we might have to be ambitious and go for it!

Mr Carney has signalled that the Bank of England won't be raising the base rate this year which at least means that our (tracker) mortgage repayments shouldn't change until 2015.

If we overpay by £1,400 per month March-December, we'll have knocked 26 months and £12,987 in interest off our mortgage*. :T

* Calculated on the assumption that the mortgage interest rate will be 2.49% for its life, which is obviously incorrect, so the savings won't actually be that good.

Also, OPs of £1,400 per month equals £63 per working day (assuming 22 working days in a month). Therefore each day at work means we own an extra 0.013% of our house. :rotfl: It's actually more than that as I haven't included the extra we own each day just from our normal repayments, but I haven't worked out how to calculate that yet.

What I want now is a little graphic of a house, that 'fills up' with a colour to show the percentage of the house that we actually own. This forum should have a tool that creates that image, so MFWers can display it.

Lifes_Grand_Plan

pinkteapot wrote: »

* Calculated on the assumption that the mortgage interest rate will be 2.49% for its life, which is obviously incorrect, so the savings won't actually be that good.

On the contrary, wouldn't the savings actually be more if the interest rates go up in future but you already have overpayments under your belt?

Either way, even the potential to overpay £1400 a month makes me very jealous, your overpayment is more than my standard payment and overpayment put together (£1000).... still the main thing is that both of us are overpaying and it makes me happy but also concerned when I think about people who don't overpay and only pay the minimum each month, some on interest only...

pinkteapot

Lifes_Grand_Plan wrote: »

On the contrary, wouldn't the savings actually be more if the interest rates go up in future but you already have overpayments under your belt?

I can't remember which way round it works. I'll have a play in my spreadsheet later. It's one of those that calculates the savings, etc. It has a row for each month which includes the interest rate, so you can adjust when it changes. I'll play with changing the interest rate at a point in the future and see what happens.

Lifes_Grand_Plan wrote: »

Either way, even the potential to overpay £1400 a month makes me very jealous, your overpayment is more than my standard payment and overpayment put together (£1000).... still the main thing is that both of us are overpaying and it makes me happy but also concerned when I think about people who don't overpay and only pay the minimum each month, some on interest only...

We're in a very fortunate position and are hugely grateful for that. We're being sensible and OPing that spare money each month rather than p&&&ing it away on nice cars and holidays! With good reason though (next post to follow in a few mins)...

pinkteapot

Life assurance setback

Bit of a setback. Our application for mortgage life assurance was declined, based on MrTeapot's somewhat complex medical history. This was despite using an insurance broker who specialises in pre-existing conditions. MrTeapot was upset as it suggested that the insurance underwriter doesn't think he'll live to the age of 65!

We didn't bother with mortgage life assurance at our old house as the mortgage was tiny anyway. We had enough in savings to pay it off. In the new house, MrTeapot could just about afford the mortgage by himself (though it'd be very tight), and I certainly couldn't afford it.

We do both have death in service cover through work which would reduce the mortgage by around half. I could probably just about manage by throwing the death in service at the mortgage, but that would also be a bit tight.

Our broker is still working on it and hoping to get us placed with a different insurer, but all the more incentive to OP as heavily as possible, as quickly as possible!

Lois_E

Oh dear.
How annoying. Hope you find some cover soon.

Enjoying your diary, and will carry on reading. Good luck for the journey ahead. OPing £1,400 a month seems huuuge to me.

pinkteapot

Well, we're yet to test the monthly budget I've done so we'll see later this year whether we've actually managed a consistent £1,400 per month.

jjadee

I've just come across this thread after trying to research about paying off my mortgage and I must say that you have inspired me now to really go for this! I'm no where near your level lol but hope to make a good dent by the end of the year! I want a house like yours! I will do this lol, ( il even be happy with half a house like yours lol)

pinkteapot

Good start....

A few months back, I found out that hubby hadn't been claiming tax relief on his pension contributions (he's a higher rate taxpayer and had only been getting the standard 20% relief... for 2.5 years!). He wrote to HMRC and I fully expected them to make him fill in a few tax returns. Instead, a cheque popped through the door for £777 yesterday. :j

Also, I'd allocated £900 from the "new furniture following house move" fund to furnish the conservatory (we didn't have one at the last house). Yesterday I saw two three-seater sofas on a local furniture selling Facebook group. They were brand new but one had some damage on the back, so seller had obviously picked them up cheaply. Got the pair for £380 and they're the perfect size and colour-match for the conservatory. Have also found a half-price coffee table at Argos for £80, so total spend £460. Saving against budget: £440.

I'm pleased we furnished it fairly cheaply, as we've not had a conservatory before and I don't know how much we'll use it. Then again, at the weekend when the sun came out it was lovely and warm so now I have a sofa to flop on I might be out there quite a bit!

So, that's £1,217 into the pot. :money:

In the old days of our HSBC mortgage, overpayments were dead easy as I just did an online transfer from our current account to the mortgage account. Santander make it much more of a faff to make an overpayment, so I've stuck that sum in an instant access savings account, and I'll physically make the OPs every couple of months until we switch the mortgage back to HSBC.

jjadee

Pinkteapot I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing with me ideas about how you manage your budget, I've been trying to go through our finances to work out a budget to come up with a figure we can over pay on our mortgage. I must say just doing this has highlighted how much money we waste each month. For our family of 4 we are spending between £500-600 a month just food shopping. Also our spends seem ihigh each month too and I'm struggling to come up with a realistic spends figure that we can stick too as well. I'm just wondering how tightly you stick to your budget and how frugal you are with it? Any hints or tips would be greatly appreciated.