The "Mortgage-free in 2025-30" club!

pinkteapot

Welcome clarew! I've added you to the list. Love your goals - just tell the kids that uni and/or training is over-rated.

turtlemoose

Some unexpected good news chez turtle, OH got a phone call from a compAny who had seen his cv online and asked him to come see them, he did, they offered him a job - the pay is 1k a year more than his current job so nothing massive, but goes up a further 2k after passing probation period at 6 months. So that's pretty exciting but best of all is being given a van, which includes home to work travel - meaning we will be able to sell his car (about 1200?) And also save the £200 a month running costs - so all that extra can go on debt OPs :j:T all brings us a step further along our mf journey!

pinkteapot

Fab news turtle! Congrats to your OH.

katep23

Great news Turtle - for your OH and your OPs

gallygirl

Great news :T, what a lovely boost .

pinkteapot

Argh! We've had the opposite news. OH won't get another company car when the lease on his current one runs out (October 2016), so we'll need to buy a car to replace it.

For the upfront cost, we'll have to use some of next year's OP money. This year we're going for £15k in OPs, but 2016 won't be as good as it'll be that minus the cost of a car.

His current company car costs him about £120 per month in tax on the benefit, so we'll have that towards the running costs. If we get something with low emissions and a low insurance group then that £120 a month should cover the costs. It's only used around town so just needs to be a small, low-powered car. He is going to try and negotiate a pay rise when he loses the company car, on the basis that they're withdrawing a benefit.

turtlemoose

oh no pinkteapot! Would his company consider swapping to giving him a car allowance instead? I get a car allowance, it's taxable BUT every business mile you do means 45p of the allowance is non taxable. So it works out pretty well. By having the allowance and the freedom to choose my own vehicle, the car costs less than the monthly allowance so I'm quids in - could be a good option if work will go for it?

Luckyinlife

Great to see so many guys in here now :]
Congrats turtle on the good new well done :]

I have now got the keys to the house and started work so the mortgage life starts for me next week when they take the first payment ohhhhhh scary times

I ow 67k over 25years but im hoping to pay this off by 2025 so bring it down to 10 years which would be perfect

the house itself once done will be worth around the 100-110k mark so have a good bit of equity from the start in case things go tits up as im self employed i have 10k as a back up which should by me a good year maby more if anything should happen

wish me luck guys

pinkteapot

Good luck, luckyinlife! Paying it off in less than half the original term would be amazing! Give me a shout if you want to go on the member list.

pinkteapot

turtlemoose wrote: »

oh no pinkteapot! Would his company consider swapping to giving him a car allowance instead?

Sadly not. I'm amazed he got a car in the first place. We live 1.5 miles from the office and he only rarely travels around the country in work (a meeting a couple of hours away every few months)!

The old boss gave it to him as more of a status thing than anything else, as he's in a senior role, but it was never really justified from the company's perspective.

Worked out for us as we had a ten year old Vauxhall Astra at the time that was starting to play up, and cost us about £120 a month to run. Effectively swapped it for a brand new Audi that cost us £120 a month in tax instead! Only cost on top of the tax bill has been petrol and we do a really low mileage in it so that's minimal. So it's been good for the four years we'll have had it.

At least we've got 18 months warning. We're really lucky that we're putting a good amount into savings each month, so can save for a car in a short time compared to most. It would screw over some people!