Mortgage Free please - asap!

Hazz

Good afternoon all,

I am another of those long time lurkers and believe with a new year beginning and no wedding to save for anymore, it is time to make a serious dent in our mortgage!

We bought our house in 2010 and took out a £97,000 mortgage against a 25 year term. It was fixed at 3.49% for the first 2 years and then we went onto a SVR 3.94% which we were on for around a year or so, I am kicking myself over this because I wish we'd sorted out a new deal earlier :mad:

Never mind, anyway we're now on a lifetime tracker 1.79% and 0.5% above base (so 2.29% overall) we currently owe £80,150.

We have overpaid £200 a month since this kicked in a year ago but think we can OP even more now, no wedding to save for as previously mentioned, cars are ok and no upgrades required, no kids yet etc.

We made our first 'extra' OP of £400 this month and while the base rate is low we will attempt to continue this and 'make hay while the sun shines.' An overall overpayment of £600 each month wouldn't stretch us too much either, so we could also carry on living our lives fairly comfortably e.g. eating out occasionally, the odd holiday etc. without too much of a worry but then would save us a good few years of interest overall!!

Hope I haven't rambled too much and I guess the key is a balance between overpayments, saving and not wasting money needlessly. I really enjoy reading other peoples diaries, they're inspirational!

Any advice of course is greatly appreciated Thanks for reading and good luck/wishes to all.

Hazz

A few days into my diary and DH got paid so decided to pay just over £150 into the mortgage to get it under £80,000... It's now £79,999 :rotfl:

I've had a fairly good week on the spend front £5 to upgrade contact lenses, £32 to fill up the car at asd@ for 103.7 per litre and this should do me for the month, a few months ago this would have cost me £45ish so much better :beer:

I have 2 weddings to attend in the next few weeks and although I had a dress I could have worn, I decided a new one would be much more fun, not very MSE I know However I did have a £15 gift card from my birthday and found a 20% off voucher code so instead of the dress costing £33 it was £11.40 so I'm chuffed with that.

I'm going to make the most of my health club membership tomorrow and go for a swim/steam/jacuzzi and I have a hen do tomorrow night, I already know the meal will cost £17 so I'm hoping I will not spend £50+ overall accounting for drinks and possibly a taxi home. (DH is driving me there)

That's about all for now, happy MSE Friday all!

ourcornercottage

Well done on your OPs it feels good doesn't it! It also feels great to get below a certain amount. I'm aiming for under 135,000 now I'm hoping by June so that will be 15k off the capital in 2 years since moving in.

Good luck, I'll be following your diary to get as many handy tips as possible.