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Focused on Financials - mortgage free diary
GreatheadShield
Posts: 24 Forumite
Hello! I'm brand new to posting on MSE although I've been lurking for 10 years or so (started out as a Grabbit devotee).
We're a family of 4, there's DH and I and our two young kids. There's also DH's older kids from a previous relationship. We've spent the last few years cleaning up a bit of debt... Nothing massive but it still feels like it's been hanging over us for ages.
I'm excited, as tomorrow morning we will be settling up a loan early which means we will be debt-free. :j Just a mortgage of £195k to go!
Tomorrow's final settlement will leave us with about £1300 spare every four weeks (we get paid four weekly). This is after setting aside money for most annual bills etc, which we have been gradually paring down over the last year or so. We've got a careful budget, using YNAB. We are now pretty frugal! We both worth full time shift work, but we do opposing shifts (one does early, one does late) in order to avoid childcare. It works well for our family but we have booked a holiday for summer 2015 so that we have something to look forward to.
So! Onto my plan of action, please let me know what you think!
Oct 1st payday:
Get couples annual gym membership (previously cancelled while paying off debt) should be no more than £600. Set up YNAB category to save instalments for next year.
£700 to become Xmas fund - sounds a lot but there are step kids to buy for plus DS's birthday.
Oct 29th payday
Pay off half of holiday balance owed
Nov 26th payday
Pay off rest of holiday
Dec/Jan/Feb/Mar payday
£1300 into emergency fund each payday to form emergency fund
Now our mortgage ends it's fixed rate at the end of March and we should be able to get a cheaper deal saving over £200 a month (fingers crossed, can start looking at reserving a deal in a few months). So after March would have £1500 spare, four weekly.
Thinking of making an overpayment of £500 per month to start with which should bring term down to 12 years (currently 19).
Then we want to start investing in S&S ISAs alongside the overpayments, with the intention of hopefully using this to pay chunks off too.
We want to keep a pot of money each month for holidays/home improvements savings but ideally would be quite frugal in this area.
I would really like to get this mortgage gone in 9 years, by the time I'm 40!
We're a family of 4, there's DH and I and our two young kids. There's also DH's older kids from a previous relationship. We've spent the last few years cleaning up a bit of debt... Nothing massive but it still feels like it's been hanging over us for ages.
I'm excited, as tomorrow morning we will be settling up a loan early which means we will be debt-free. :j Just a mortgage of £195k to go!
Tomorrow's final settlement will leave us with about £1300 spare every four weeks (we get paid four weekly). This is after setting aside money for most annual bills etc, which we have been gradually paring down over the last year or so. We've got a careful budget, using YNAB. We are now pretty frugal! We both worth full time shift work, but we do opposing shifts (one does early, one does late) in order to avoid childcare. It works well for our family but we have booked a holiday for summer 2015 so that we have something to look forward to.
So! Onto my plan of action, please let me know what you think!
Oct 1st payday:
Get couples annual gym membership (previously cancelled while paying off debt) should be no more than £600. Set up YNAB category to save instalments for next year.
£700 to become Xmas fund - sounds a lot but there are step kids to buy for plus DS's birthday.
Oct 29th payday
Pay off half of holiday balance owed
Nov 26th payday
Pay off rest of holiday
Dec/Jan/Feb/Mar payday
£1300 into emergency fund each payday to form emergency fund
Now our mortgage ends it's fixed rate at the end of March and we should be able to get a cheaper deal saving over £200 a month (fingers crossed, can start looking at reserving a deal in a few months). So after March would have £1500 spare, four weekly.
Thinking of making an overpayment of £500 per month to start with which should bring term down to 12 years (currently 19).
Then we want to start investing in S&S ISAs alongside the overpayments, with the intention of hopefully using this to pay chunks off too.
We want to keep a pot of money each month for holidays/home improvements savings but ideally would be quite frugal in this area.
I would really like to get this mortgage gone in 9 years, by the time I'm 40!
0
Comments
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Good luck with your plans, I've been using YNAB for a few months now and love it. It's definitely helping me be more aware of how much I spend and helping me cut down on some costs that used to be out of control!Starting Mortgage Balance: £264,800 (8th Aug 2014)
Current Mortgage Balance: £269,750 (18th April 2016)0 -
Thank you! I must say, it has revolutionised our budgeting.
Have just paid off loan. Very satisfying! Also satisfying to delete the debt category on YNAB
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