Overpaying to change our family life!

CathT

Hi Daisy, that's a fantastic OP to start the year. Good luck on your journey. It's amazing how all the small OP's add up too.

Daisydoop

Oh it's not been a good week! We have eaten out twice and have generally spent more than we needed to!
Having said that I think we are on track to make a better OP than I had thought, making it on Monday so will update then!

bexster1975

Never mind! Hope the meals were lovely and "unneeded" stuff was nice.

Back up on the horse!

Bexster

Daisydoop

After some ebay listings ended over the last couple of days and we worked out a few figures for upcoming events we have managed to reach our target and overpay £1000 today! So pleased, feel like we're on the right track for 2015 and looking forward to hopefully repeating this figure next month!

Daisydoop

Getting impatient waiting for our overpayment to show online, I'm quite excited to see the new figure! Even although I pretty much know what it will be
Interest gets added daily so it seems silly to keep our payments till the end of the month, from next week going to pay what we can, when we can. Also the figure in my signature is pretty rough as it changes every day with interest. I think I will make this more accurate at the end of the month when our payment goes in.
Have a few more things to 3bay so that's my next mission.

Daisydoop

So plan for the week coming is to plan meals based on what we have already, hopefully meaning our week shop is relatively small compared to our usual. Then whatever we are left with from our weekly shopping budget we will overpay. Here's to a few NSD's!

jp1964

Hi Daisy and all,

Hoping to join you in this, my aim is to save money each month for overpaying our mortgage too, we already have some credit cards paid off, some overpaying on 0% deals with plenty of room for swapping over at the end of the deals, and the aim is to be completely credit card debt free within two to three years.

Now I turn my attention to the mortgage, and what we can do to increase our payments, save interest, reduce the balance more quickly, and shorten the term.

I have just signed up to the February grocery challenge, as I need to reduce our whopping £892 monthly spend on groceries to achieve surplus funds to go to the mortgage overpayment, which I shall set up with the lender next month. £300 is the target amount to save and overpay, which will save us thousands in interest and end our mortgage almost 5 years early, the longer term plan is to overpay further once the credit card debt is gone, so this should ensure that a further 3 - 4 years is lopped off as well.

The reason for not simply overpaying the credit cards further now with the money saved is because we want to remortgage later this year or early next, so the more equity we have the better deal we will get, also we hope to move in around 4 years time, so it should be easier to move the mortgage over with a far smaller loan to value, and the credit cards will be gone by that point anyway.

This will improve our family life no end, as we are not very happy living where we are, but are stuck with it until the last child finishes his A levels in just under three years time (currently doing GCSEs!) and will then be off to university, all being well.

We are lucky that we are not tied to the area, as our businesses can operate from anywhere.

Anyway, that is the aim, and hence my joining in with you in the quest for mortgage freedom for the long term.

Daisydoop

Good luck JP!

jp1964

Thanks Daisy, we are determined to do this, and it's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it!

Just a matter of focus and sticking with it. Now our 5 kids are all adults and late teens, we finally have time to focus on this!

Good luck to you, too.