MFW by 50?

gaffel

Yep I understand where you are coming from, and that has been my mentality for the last few years in building up the business. But now, my mindset is clear this mortgage and ensure the house is safe from business ventures. Perhaps its an age thing, hit 40's.. stop taking risks.

Plenty of assets in business, stock worth £400k with creditors (except ourselves) of c. £50k and probably same in cash.

There is no real problem, just a mindset of clearing debt attached to a family home. Yep diversification. I think clear mortgage, then invest in buy to let(s). I suspect first will be a commercial building for our business as we currently pay rent of £4k a month. Bank told us no issues at all with commercial mortgage with 40% deposit. I am continually looking for ideal buildings/land to do this. But then that could have issues with not really being diversified!

My eldest works in the business now, and not sure what exit strategy is. It could survive without mrgaffel but not without me, right now which I know is wrong and needs working on. We hopefully will hand over to mini gaffels, well those that want them!

And as I am currently on just about the cheapest mortgage in Ireland, even though sub prime.. my main reason for doing this was to sort it before rates shot up. Yes 2.75% is cheap, for now.

I have no idea on any pension rules or regulations, homework for the summer.

And as for the holiday.. well just logging off to pack now! First holiday in years and cannot wait. Very MSE though... hotel was free due to booking all work hotels through h&tel.c&m and getting their free night for every 10 nights, so had 14 free nights to claim for last year business travel. :money: Off course I booked them first through tcb, so that cashback paid for flights. :money: Only thing I 'paid' for was car hire. And one of the few advantages of living in ROI financially is our euro current account so no forex fees! :money: How mse will we be whilst on holiday... well mrgaffel is there so not at all!

In other news.... made another OP of €1500 which has saved me.. €946 interest.

gaffel

Just updated my interest saved s/s/ Latest OP brings us up to:
OP's :€18125.63
Interest saved: €16818
Months shaved off mortgage: 36

ourcornercottage

Your description in post #44 could be my life!

gaffel

Back from holidays and decided time to strike converting stg to euros. Took some money (owed) from company and a little savings and just did a €45k overpayment which brings me below 100k. :beer::j:beer::j:beer: just! Current debt is 99,987! With interest this month I will be back over it but will sort that when we get to it. I still have £40k savings so could do another chunk soon enough, but I am quite conservative and like to keep a good cash float. I'm weaning myself of it!

I was doing some research on who has purchased our mortgage. Vulture capitalists from USA who have no regulation in ROI as they are not doing new loans, so I have no consumer protection on anything they do right now. Scary thoughts. ROI govt thinking about bringing some in, but won't be retrospective so may never apply to me. Reading newspaper reports on them, they are harsh when it comes to repossessions. My mortgage was sold with about 5000 others and over 50% were in arrears. Whilst my mortgage rate is low at 2.75% atm, given the company I am dealing with and their aggressive tactics I fully suspect it won't stay that low for long.

Been following the Greek debate with interest. With debt in euros but money/assets mainly in sterling, knowing when to transfer money can make a huge difference on the overall debt. Did I do the right thing jumping now or should I have held out until Monday to see the result of the Greek referendum? Will they remain and weaken euro? or leave? is it factored in? So much extra to think about. :huh:

The overpayment today led to a whopping 22,784 in interest saved and chopped 75 months off the length of the mortgage :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

To date I have now saved 39,602 in interest and knocked off 111 months.

Trying to get mr.gaffel on board. He wants a new car (not needed his current one is under 2 years), but told him yep, no problem. Once we clear the mortgage... his ears pricked up. Not saying I will actually get him a new car, but hopefully the thought of one will help him see the value of clearing it.

gaffel

Hmm so the Greeks said No. I kind of agree with them, the terms offered were too harsh and Germany was just trying to dictate. But leaves things very.. up in the air for me!

But where does this leave the euro? OK odd discussion for a mortgage board but as I am in debt in euros but income in sterling it is highly relevant. If the euro dives my mortgage will be super easy to pay off from my stg assets. If the euro strengthens then my mortgage becomes a much bigger debt. Should I have paid off more with a 1.41 rate against stg? Who knows... ACK! Far too much too consider.

I have also been thinking over the savings amount and payments amount. I have now a clear plan. If the businesses continue as they are (and this is debatable as one is export into... europe!) I plan to make the following payments. Each month reduce my savings by £5k and pay against the mortgage. Also increase our net wages to £6k, living off £1k and using other £5k against the mortgage. Also reducing company debt by £5k a month. So in theory paying off £15k a month on a €100k mortgage. At current rates that is £71k so we could pay if off by the end of this year. However this relies a lot on a lot of unknowns, business/euro/no shocks. Also on me not opening up some new projects/businesses.. which I have been known to do at the drop of a hat!

If we do manage to do the above plan, 2016 will be all about diversification of our risks and planning for retirement (we are currently forecast £182 a year pension!). My thoughts are open up pension plans and btl's. Looking at the moment and some value where we live and local towns. I'm going to keep an eye on auctions coming up and be prepared to jump on a property should it offer value for money. I am lucky in that I know a wide range of fantastic, good value builders and have no issues about buying some projects. In fact, I would quite enjoy the project management of it. I bought my first house aged 18 at auction, total wreck but did it up and sold it a few years later for a nice profit, so well used to mucking in.

Well that was quite a lot of blurb!

gaffel

After reading a tip on here about searching for online bank accounts, I filled in the online form. Had vague suspicions I had not closed down a halifax account years ago and hoped there might be a tenner or something in it.

Well low and behold I have 3 dormant halifax accounts, one with £7, one with £5 and one with..... £565!!! :j:j:j Thank you very much to whomever had that tip. Need to go into a local branch with ID (none in ROI so presuming Belfast or somewhere..) and move these but yay... thats another chunk of the mortgage. I fully recommend everyone else to do this! Still waiting to hear about premium bonds as I know I bought some years ago, no idea where they are but I know I never cashed them in. Is there a way to search online for these?

Also got a loan back from a relative I had kind of written off, another 1k of mortgage. Once these all clear will pay them directly off.

Chip, chip chipping away.

audrey_cheadle

That is so good to hear, I have some old premium bods somewhere. I must look for them and cash them in.

gaffel

Annoyingly the OP still has not credited on the mortgage, just rang up and they said up to 14 days so ring back at end of week. Grrr.

Seems the Greek tragedy is still rambling on. Looks like I managed (albeit slightly accidentally) to get the best euro rate it has been all year when I did the large conversion. If I had done the same now, I would have got 600eur less, which is nothing to be sniffed at.

Nothing much to report. Trying to get mrgaffel to commit to food plans as he does all the cooking. No interest as yet, but he did hang out some washing for the first time ever rather than throw into the dryer. He's OK with that as long as they are not his clothes. Small steps and all that.

ourcornercottage

gaffel wrote: »

After reading a tip on here about searching for online bank accounts, I filled in the online form. Had vague suspicions I had not closed down a halifax account years ago and hoped there might be a tenner or something in it.

Well low and behold I have 3 dormant halifax accounts, one with £7, one with £5 and one with..... £565!!! :j:j:j Thank you very much to whomever had that tip. Need to go into a local branch with ID (none in ROI so presuming Belfast or somewhere..) and move these but yay... thats another chunk of the mortgage. I fully recommend everyone else to do this! Still waiting to hear about premium bonds as I know I bought some years ago, no idea where they are but I know I never cashed them in. Is there a way to search online for these?

Also got a loan back from a relative I had kind of written off, another 1k of mortgage. Once these all clear will pay them directly off.

Chip, chip chipping away.

I did it a while back and got a little money back too (not as much as you tho lucky devil!) I totally agree, even if you are sure you don't have anything just have a little check as it takes 2 minutes and costs nothing to do it.

gaffel

Thanks for stopping in ourcorner cottage. It may well have been on your diary I read it :money:

Just worked out on overpayments, we have saved 111 months. Done a quick reckoner on the overpayment calculator and another 5k payment will take us to the magic 10 years knocked off so that is a little mini target for me to aim for. I have realised I a target based person, give me a target I will aim for it. No target and I meander along with no real drive.

So next target : 120 months knocked off mortgage (£5k ish)
Target after that : £50k interest saved (depending on when paid this would be another £10k on top of above 5k, we have currently saved 39.5k)
I will think of a % based target for after that, just to keep it fun and have different types of targets. :rotfl: