success stories only

Mistermeaner

I want to hear from some people have done the mortgage free thing at a relatively young age, particularly what difference it made to your life once you got there.

For my part I'm 35 single dad, DD set up to be mf on a property worth maybe 125k by age 38. 1500quid a month at the moment.

No material desires, just want to be free of debt and give myself options.

tootallulah

Hello

I paid off my first mortgage at 40 and was then mortgage free for about five years whilst saving up to buy a house and keeping my flat. Now I have two btl flats, as part of my pension planning, plus my house and rather a lot of mortgages! Being mortgage free gave me choices whilst I am not sure that I have made the right ones I do enjoy the freedom of knowing that if I sell my original flat it would pay off all my mortgages.

Mistermeaner

Thanks; options is exactly what I'm looking for.

As well as overpaying the mortgage I am saving quite a bit in ISA's and maintaining decent pension contributions.

My goal is economic freedom ASAP, certainly won't achieve that at 38 but see clearing the mortgage as being a key first step. This will allow even more savings, investments and pensions with security of knowing noone can take my roof away. As I feel now I don't think I would ever want to leverage against my 'live in' home to fund a BTL or similar, but who knows if this will change when I get there.

Credit is so easy to come buy and I imagine even more so once you wholly own a house, have a good wage and lots of savings + disposable income! Guess its one of those 'why not because I can' type decisions that as you allude to you can always reverse by selling if it all goes wrong.

spidystrider

We managed to buy a one bedroom flat in 1996 for the princely sum of £11,500 in cash. It was a mess, had been squatted in for a while and was in a pretty rough area. The area has improved greatly and even though it's still only worth about £50,000, it has been rented out month in month out since buying it. This extra income helped to pay off our last mortgage back in 2007.

We bought that house for £104,000 in 1999 and when we sold it in 2009 it went for £225,000. With no mortgage since 2007, we saved a lot of money, but had to also take on a £151,000 mortgage to buy the house we are in now.

This house cost £400,000 in November 2009 and thankfully after keeping a tight grip on the purse strings (something I am very good at), we now have a mortgage of just over £27,000. I am hoping that this will be paid off in early 2016, maybe even as early as next December. After that I'm not sure what we'll do, but I fancy selling this and buying a couple of properties, one to stay in and one to do up and sell. I'd like to be able to help our 3 kids get on the property ladder, but not sure that my hubby likes the thought of so much work.

The other idea I have is to move to the countryside and run a business, maybe growing plants, vegetables, selling eggs and handmade produce, but not sure how well that would do.

I do like the fact that we have choices though.

teeboy123

We managed to pay off our Mortgage in April 2013. We were both 41.


We achieved this by using a combination of Offset mortgages, credit card stoozing and good old fashioned overpayments.


We managed to stay mortgage free for about 1 month, before we decided to gets our dream VW camper van, which we have since used to tour Europe several times.


Ironically the cheapest way to finance the van was to get another Mortgage - luckily the depreciation on VW campers is so low, we will pay off the van mortgage in 5 years, and the van should be worth about 30k at the end. Not as good as bricks and mortar but still good for a van.


It is just nice having the spare money to do with what you like. By the end we were paying nearly 2000 per month to clear the mortgage, now we apportion that money as follows:


£600 - pays for the camper - which is roughly equal to our old mortgage before the over payments.


The rest is saved for holidays, kids house deposits, pension and car fund.


Tony

enjoyyourshoes

Hi
similar to 'others', get mortgage free, then trade up to bigger house, more land etc.


We again are 2 years to being MF again.


This time I have put my thoughts to my children and getting them to be more 'savvy' re finances. So we are proposing setting up Junior SIPPs stock and shares, so as they can think long term in investing and get feel for managing their own investments.


You could also look at your own objectives in Life and consider how these could be made a reality with prudent financial planning?


Unfortunately finances are one of the critical make ups to making your aspirations (whatever they may be) come true.


By the way there is not a lot of money in Eggs !