Hoggle's looong journey to becoming mortgage free!

laura_hoggle

Hi everyone!

I have been reading through these threads for the last few months, looking forward to the day that I would start my own. After 5 seemingly very long months of waiting to complete on our first home, we finally got there on 5th February and moved in to our lovely new home :j

We are yet to make our first mortgage payment (I think its due next week but should check this!) but I have already set up a savings account purely for mortgage overpayments, which currently has the grand sum of £14.53 in it!

Our household is currently me and DH, and while there are no mini Hoggle's running around I would really like to be able to overpay as much as we possibly can, but still try to enjoy ourselves along the way!

We took out a mortgage for £179,000 which is to be paid back over 30 years. We can overpay by 10% of the value of the loan every year, and need a minimum of £500 to make a capital repayment, so I'm going to top up the savings and OP as soon as it hits £500. *Hopefully* I'll be able to do this every 6-8 weeks.

So far DH and I have switched our individual HSBC Advance accounts to Halifax Reward accounts, got £100 each and will earn £5 each a month. We upgraded our joint account that we use for bills, food etc. to Halifax Ultimate Reward, which will cost us £10 a month, which will be paid for by the money we get from our individual accounts. As we get mobile phone insurance with the Halifax accounts, we both cancelled the policies we had with O2, so by doing all this we have saved ourselves about £25 a month each, which will be paid into the overpayment account!

I have some stuff put aside to eBay which I haven't managed to do yet as we only got internet last week, and the money I make from that will go into the overpayment pot too.

I need to get back on track with the Grocery Challenge, since moving I have spent a ridiculous amount of money on food (I ran stocks down when we moved so had to replenish a lot, plus bought a chest freezer which I feel like I must fill!!) but we now have an Aldi really close by which I am absolutely loving, and will really help to bring costs down.

I am a TopCashBack addict, and anything I earn on there will also be paid into the overpayment account (in fact I put £1.83 in there this morning!)

Well thanks to anyone who has gotten to the end of this, I have a habit of making my posts really long so apologies for that, just typing it all out makes me feel like I'm achieving something!!

Looking forward to posting again soon with more updates!

Hurdler

Welcome - and I love the idea of TCB payments going straight into the overpayment account - I think I'll be adopting that as well!

norfolkdream

Welcome to MFWdom, good luck with it all and congrats on the new house.

Crumpets

Hello and welcome, congratulations on your new home and good luck with your challenge. I look forward to following your journey!

Crumpets x

laura_hoggle

Thanks Hurdler and norfolkdream!

It's very frustrating at the moment, because we haven't had our first bills for our new house, so it's hard to budget and work out how much we can afford to overpay each month. We've been setting up online accounts for our electricity, water and Sky today, so I'll be keeping an eye out on them and waiting for the gas one. At the moment I've tried to overestimate, in the hope that it will be less and I can put more in the OP pot!!

laura_hoggle

Thanks Crumpets, such a great name!

littlegreenpeas

Good luck for your journey and remember the alfie vouchers at the end of the month in the newspapers normally last Thursday I remember. This is a good time to stock the freezer with meat or cupboards with rice and other bits with a long shelf life.
Lgp

laura_hoggle

littlegreenpeas wrote: »

Good luck for your journey and remember the alfie vouchers at the end of the month in the newspapers normally last Thursday I remember. This is a good time to stock the freezer with meat or cupboards with rice and other bits with a long shelf life.
Lgp

Thanks littlegreenpeas, I did read that somewhere else and I think it's this Thursday which happens to be my day off so I'll be getting there then to start off my March Grocery Challenge, will hopefully be able to do some batch cooking this weekend and get stocked up!

laura_hoggle

I had a tidy of my bank accounts today and added £6 to the OP account, it's now a little over £20!

I think we've now set up all the direct debits for utilities for the house, the gas & electric are £15 more than I estimated, but all the more reason to save on energy to try and bring it down!

I'm also debating boiler cover, as DH and I have always lived in rented houses it's never crossed out minds that we might need it! I did an online quote which said £13.50 a month I think, this included an annual service but I think I'll try and look into it a bit more.

I should get paid on Friday, but this is the first time since I've switched my bank account so I'm a little worried it might not go in ok-luckily I've got some money put aside just in case, which would cover me if it doesn't come through. If it does, then I can put that in the OP pot and probably make the first overpayment!!

We are still waiting to hear back from the deposit from our rental place, they had issues with a couple of things which weren't our fault, but haven't told us how much of the deposit they want to keep. Once we eventually get that money back I think that's going towards new furniture-we aren't desperate for it as we were able to fully furnish our house with what we already had and the gift vouchers from our wedding last July, but I'd like to get a few nice things!

laura_hoggle

Got a £15.09 rebate from Sky yesterday from our old property, which has gone into the OP account. Rather than carry it over into our new house, DH took out a new contract in his name, got good new customer deals and *hopefully* about £170 from TopCashBack-it will take a long time to track but will be worth it in the end!

There's now £35.93 in the OP account, hopefully my wages will go in ok tomorrow and I'll be able to add to that to get closer to the £500 mark.

Need to get eBaying this weekend-got lots to put on, just haven't got round to doing it since having Internet installed!

Off to Aldi shortly, going to use one of the £5 off £40 spend to make the most of my Grocery Challenge, going to stock up on tins, frozen veg and meat! Then hopefully will do some batch cooking this weekend and will meal plan properly for the month-something I've been quite bad at lately. Looking forward to getting a bit more organised!

laura_hoggle

Oooh I had some exciting things in the post today... Firstly, 'A Girl Called Jack' cookbook arrived, which I pre-ordered back in August. I love her attitude towards cooking, and have cooked lots of her recipes in the past - have all been a huge hit in our house and looking forward to trying more.

Also, I requested some free water saving things from Thames Water last week, and wasn't expecting them to arrive so quickly, but they came today. Got a couple of things to fit to taps to make them use less water (I think it puts air into the water?), a shower timer (I'll be able to stick to this, it's DH who spends ages in there!!), an attachment for a hose pipe (not exactly needed at the moment...) and a couple of 'save a flush' bags. Looking forward to getting them all fitted this weekend to help save water, we are on a meter so it's something I'm quite conscious of!

My in laws wanted to buy us a gift for the new house, or pay towards something, but we had already ordered the appliances and the stuff we needed (mostly with saved John Lewis vouchers from wedding presents) so we said Ikea vouchers would be greatly appreciated as that's where we plan to buy furniture, but they transferred us some money last night, which is lovely of them! Must remember to transfer the money out of the joint account into savings so it doesn't get spent on bills!

I also returned a shower curtain to Homebase today that we didn't really need, and wasn't quite the right colour, but did buy a garden ornament which was reduced, so I'm taking that as being £3.56 up which is going into the OP account... As one of the supermarket says, every little helps!