Finally have a mortgage now to try and get rid of it asap

egoode

Hi LannieDuck, I hope you don't find my diary too boring I think I ramble a bit! I'm quite lucky I have a well paying job so can afford to take on a large mortgage on my own, although I wish it was smaller but that's almost impossible in London.

egoode

So LannieDuck has just reminded me I haven't tracked my daily interest for a while so for April it was £18.70/day and in May it was £16.8/day. This is going to go up and down a lot each month as I'm constantly moving money in and out of my offset account. As I get the bulk of my money quarterly I'm trying to put as much in the offset account each quarter and then slowly draw down what I need for living costs each month. Overall I have saved myself £912 in interest and have reduced my term by 47 days I think that's not too bad as I've only had the mortgage for 10 months.

I had a really good money saving weekend. I had vouchers from Christmas and my birthday to visit The Shard and Vinopolis. I enjoyed The Shard but not sure I would recommend people go given how much it costs, if it was half the price I'd probably recommend it I'm just glad I didn't have to pay for it Vinopolis was really fun and I ended up a bit tipsy after all the wine tasting. Then the friend I was with had her birthday in May so got some freebies at Jamie's Italian so had 3 courses and a bottle of Prosecco for £25 each.

Heading out tonight to see Bend It Like Beckham The Musical. I loved that movie and hoping it will be lots of Bollywood style songs. We got the tickets half price as I think it's still in previews. Going to try and resist having any snacks but am going out for a quick dinner with my friends before the show so hopefully that won't be too expensive. Tomorrow I've got a work dinner which work is paying for so looking forward to that I think the rest of the week I'll be taking it easy at home.

Petal88

Hello! Just wanted to say well done so far and that I will be following this thread with interest as I've also recently bought a flat in London, in a similar price bracket to yours. Although I'm sharing the mortgage with my partner, any overpayments will be on me so I'm happy to get inspired by you and your diary!

egoode

Thanks for reading Petal88 do you have a diary as well?

LannieDuck

How do you track all those interesting figures - daily interest / reduction in length of term due to overpayments / interest saved etc? Did you set up a spreadsheet or is it an online facility your mortgage provides?

egoode

For the interest saved and reduction in length that's provided via the online facility for my mortgage. For the daily interest I work out how much interest has been charged each month and then divide it by the number of days in the month.

LannieDuck

I'm still getting my head around all the figures. I'm normally good with this sort of thing, but the house-buying process has completely wiped out that part of my brain: utilities, changes of address, mortgage rates, life assurance, removals companies, solicitors, and on and on....!

Maybe when I've had a month or two of not having to think about anything, I might be able to figure it all out for my mortgage too

egoode

Luckily I didn't have to worry about any of that when I bought the place as I had been renting it for 11 months before the sale went through. So all the moving and change of address had already happen.

Although the whole flat buying process was very stressful as it took 17 months from offer to completion and at many points I thought it was never going to happen. I'm slowly starting to forget how stressful it was though.

shala_moo

Hi egoode, just caught your diary, it's great to find someone else who has an offset mortgage it's the best thing I ever did! I love to work out how much I've saved each month, however I have to do this in excel as my bank doesn't tell me the info like yours!

We only got our offset late last year so I haven't built up that many savings but I think we still save roughly #60 a month :T

How is your stocks and shares ISA going? I looked into this a bit as my sister does it and is very lucky with her picks but i'm pretty risk adverse and i'm struggling to justify doing it..

Off to subscribe.

egoode

Hi shala_moo, thanks for reading. I must admit I really love my offset mortgage they are quite common in Australia which is where I grew up and I specifically asked the mortgage broker to find me one.

My stocks and shares ISA isn't going too well as I'm so far down by about £350, however I haven't had the shares that long yet and more going for long term growth which I think these companies will deliver over 5-10 years.

I haven't put any money in there yet for this year so I think I'll transfer some in once I get my next dividend from my limited company. I'm fairly happy to take the risk with these shares as I'm still contributing to a pension and this if it does well will just add more to my pension when I finally retire which will be at least 20 years away. However if I lose it all it will be annoying but just mean I need to work a bit longer and won't completely ruin me. I'm trying to have a few different investments to help fund a retirement.