The Mortgage Free Roll Of Honour

ewarts

I'm happy to say that we became Mortgage Free last week - hooray! We finally decided that it was better to use a chunk of savings to pay off the last £10K of the mortgage than have it sitting in a bank account that's not paying much interest at the moment.

a. The date you decided to become a MFW
From the beginning, March 1997. We weren't allowed to overpay for the first five years of the mortgage so we set up two TESSAs (old ISAs) and saved a little every month. It was such a great feeling to pay off a large lump of the mortgage after 5 years. Since then we've still been saving a bit extra every month and paying off a chunk every year.

b. Mortgage Debt at its highest
£82500

c. Mortgage-Free Date
13-01-2011
(I'd been estimating that we'd be able to pay the mortgage before the 2012 Olympics, and I'm so pleased we've managed to beat that)

d. Your one perl of wisdom.
Squirrel a little bit away every month. We set up automatic transfers so we didn't notice the missing money.

We now plan to transfer the money we were paying each month to the mortgage to a savings account, and pretend that we've not got it. Hopefully there will be a nice lump available by the time our two girls need help with things like cars, university, weddings, house deposits... (But I'm sure we might be able to dip into these savings for a nice holiday at some point!)

cautious-with-money

My wife and I will be Mortgage Free for the second time in September 2011.

My wife and I were house hunting for our first place in 1998 and bought a band new 3 bedroom house in May that year for what I thought was a massive amount of money to owe £63,000. Now I don't mind saying that I am totally averse to debt of any kind, so we have never had any other debt than our mortgage. Yet even then, with a £52k mortgate and an £11k deposit I never slept in the house for the first 6 weeks due to worrying. (crazy now when i think about it).

My aversion to debt made me highly focused on paying it off early through a number of ways:
1. Overpaying as much as we could afford without preventing us from enjoying our lives
2. Having an offset mortgage and using funds from multiple super balance transfers from Credit Cards to offset the debt to 0% interest

So the and after just 8 years in 2006 we had become Mortgage Free for the first time.

However, along came son number 1 and the wife was planning for baby number 2. So in 2007 we had to buy a bigger place, this time it was £285,000 but really large with many bedroom and lots of space - so we never need to move again.

Now once the other house was sold and deeds transfered, taxes and fees paid we had a mortgage again, this time for £165,000.

And history repeated itself once more, as I reached for the Imodeum and chill pills while I worked out how to pay the £165k off as fast as
I possibly could.

With much due diligence though I got us a really great mortgage deal that was fixed at 1.5% below the BoE rate for 2 years and then after that 0.45% above the BoE rate for life, with no penalties or early redemption fees and then luckily due to the global credit crunch I have had over two years of <1% interest rates. (apologies - not intending to gloat as the crunch has really hurt a lot of people).

But now after 4 years of ploughing any bonuses. payrises, spare cash into the mortgage to overpay it, on the 25th of September this year we will be Mortgage Free once more.

However, (not a but) that will leave us with some spare cash so the wife and I are thinking of using that to invest in properties through buy-to-let mortgages. I'm comfortable with this as I don't see it as real debt, as we'll have minimum of 30-35% deposit as equity in all properties with the money being raised through saving while our own house is owned and safe.

We see this as a method of investing for our retirement through increased price-remortgaging and at the same time investing for our children so they don't need to worry about where they will live and whether they will ever be able to buy their own house.

Interested in other peoples' opinions on what and how we've done it, and what we are planning.

Thank you and good luck to all the other Mortgage Free Wanna Be's.

golfiematt

i think what you are doing is going to be a fantastic achievement considering the numbers involved and regarding the btl properties, i would love to do that one day too. Make sure you enjoy being mf as that is our intentions when we reach our goal, gl for the future.

Mister_aaa

a. The date you decided to become a MFW

Pretty much as soon as I realised the risk of losing job and not being able to pay mortgage, after i was made redundant and ended up within a month of everything going horribly wrong. See post here.

b. Mortgage Debt at its highest

Think at most it was 17k approx (right to buy)

c. Mortgage-Free Date

15th July 2009

d. Your one pearl of wisdom.

There isn't anything that comes easy. The road less travelled is the most rewarding, ultimately.

IanJohnston

a. The date you decided to become a MFW.
Got my first mortgage in 1994 and extended it in 2004 (house move)......which was when I yearned to be mortgage free as my payments doubled. Yeah I moved up to a nice house, but the bigger debt just grinded on me.

b. Mortgage Debt at its highest.
75k.

c. Mortgage-Free Date.
2nd Feb. 2011.

d. Your one perl of wisdom.
Offset mortgage was the key for me......it let me see the debt reduce faster than it would have naturally. It inspired me.

Ian.
(age 46)

jeddy56

a. The date you decided to become a MFW
Sept 2004



b. Mortgage Debt at its highest
£48,000



c. Mortgage-Free Date
29th Sept 2009 6 days before my 46th Birthday


d. Your one perl of wisdom.
Went mortgage free by accident!

Got home from holiday to find a letter from bank saying my old fixed rate mortgage deal was up and reducing my payments

Spoke to lender and just asked out of interest what if I kept paying the same amount and was told my mortgage would be paid off 3 years early

Rather stupidly had just been paying it without much thought but it suddenly became crystal clear a mortgage is exactly the same as any other loan doh!!

I went home sat down and worked out a very strict budget and set a budget that would pay off the mortgage in 5 years

It was too strict really and felt like I had put my life on hold but being a stubborn person I stuck with it and finally got there

No real elation just relief that I could get my life back on track

Would say dont be too hard on yourself live modestly but still Live otherwise you could look back and regret the wasted years

Dont get me wrong its great having paid it off and I have now gone part time so it was worth it but I was too hard on myself

I did work out the amount I saved by early repayment and it came to over £56,000

money in my pocket not the banks:)

I am now totally debt free and it feels great

And i you had a mortgage freedom diary on MFW, a link to it.
Sorry didnt keep one

alex_p

I have been looking forward to posting on this thread for a long time now and I am finally very excited to join the MF roll of honour!

a. The date you decided to become a MFW

Pretty much as soon as I took out the mortgage, realised that it is actually a debt, put the numbers in a spreadsheet and estimated how much interest I would pay over the full term.

b. Mortgage Debt at its highest

£170,499

c. Mortgage-Free Date

15/02/2011.

d. Your one perl of wisdom.

Although it felt fantastic on the day, I feel back to normal now. I must say that the actual journey to pay off my mortgage was more fun than actually paying it off! So enjoy the process as nothing will actually change that much when that last day comes!

e. And if you had a mortgage freedom diary on MFW, a link to it.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2960776

:beer:

I,_Brian

Ah, well - was doing so well with the overpayments.

Having decided to stop them from last month as money is getting tighter, and I'm nicely ahead of my original target.

Would be nice to save for a holiday and just relax.

mrred66

a. The date you decided to become a MFW

in 2001, as soon as i realised that paying £440 each month to HSBC reduced my motgage by a whopping £400 a year! the rest went on interest.

b. Mortgage Debt at its highest

70k, paid off from jan 2001 to may 2005 then took another loan/mortgage of £67k to buy a city centre apartment=paid the £67k off in march 09.

c. Mortgage-Free Date

march 2009.

d. Your one pearl of wisdom.

get an offset mortgage, i used the one account which allows you to pay interest only on the amount you owe, your savings/salary automatically reduce your loan/mortgage.
only buy things you need, dont be extravagant.
hate paying interest to greedy bankers!

hope this helps.

p.s.
since march 09 i have been saving my 'mortgage' payments.
i now have 23k ready to spend on what i like.

i was also out of work for 18 weeks last year and fulfilled one of my ambitions=to walk the coast 2 coast from st bees head to robin hoods bay.
this year i aim to walk the hadrians wall path.
i now go to work for excercise, i am 45.

setmefree2

Well done on getting MF- oh my, that coastal walking sounds lovely. I would love to do that one day.