Mortgage free in 10 years

NorthernMonkey1

Today I've managed to change my mortgage rate online. Who knew that was even a thing! I was paying 3.54%, but now thanks to a better LTV, I'm now on 2.64%. I could get a better rate, but I wanted a mortgage with unlimited overpayments, so this one is a tracker.

The bank also recalculated my payment, which is now £84.47 per month. I've no intention of paying that much, but it's useful to know I can if the rumoured redundancy comes through.

It's 16 months until my 39th birthday. I'm going to get this cleared before then!

NorthernMonkey1

So it turned out that the big announcement was a bit of a damp squib. No redundancies ether voluntary or compulsory, however a few new positions have been made available.

I'm going to try applying for one of them, if only because there is a car allowance, and I'd like to drive something better than an 11 year old fiat panda.

The last few bills for the flat have been finalised for today, so a little bit of cash that I was holding back just in case is spare. That, plus 2 Ebay sales last night, mean I have £230 from ebay and £1200 from spare to transfer.

The downside is I now only have £400 to last until payday on the 25th, but that doesn't seem like a huge challenge

£12096 + £14950 credit card = £27046
Wall fund £3800 / £3800 (builders booked for April)
Emergency Fund £15240
Mortgage Neutral in £11806

SuperSecretSquirrel

Good luck with the application

michelle09

Good luck with the application! That is wonderful news about the flat too. Guessing the 2025 date has been revised, huh?

NorthernMonkey1

I've applied, but I'll not hear anything back for a while. My company works at a glacial speed

The flat going is a huge relief. The bills on the flat were about £200 a month, and the interest on the mortgage is now £150 a month less, so overall, I'm about £350 a month better off.

I'm trying to decide where I should focus my money for the next year. If anything, the uncertainty at work has shown that I need a little more money available just in case. I've maxed my ISA allowance until April, but in the new FY, I think I'll continue to save more into there. Until then I'll just pay as much as I can off the mortgage.

The creditcard of doom, is at 0%, so I'm happy for that just to sit there until at least mid 2018, when I start to work out what I'll do with that, although just transfer it to another 0%CC is right near the top of the list of options

I think my spending now sits around £1600 a month, so I've got 9 months money in case anything happens. (75/25 split into Vanguard Lifestrategy 80 and a US S&P500 tracker fund if anyone is interested)

I could pay more into my pension, but I'm already paying 32% a month into there, plus 10% from my employer. It's great to see so so much going in, but I can't have any of it until I'm 55 though, which is no good if I'm made redundant in 12 months time.

And a last piece of good news for the month, you don't pay water rates on an empty property! So a chunky £500 refund from the water people, which went straight off the mortgage.

£11596 + £14950 credit card = £26546
Wall fund £3800 / £3800 (builders booked for April)
Emergency Fund £15240
Mortgage Neutral in £11306

gallygirl

Well done on what you're achieving :j, and good news on flat. Here's hoping on the job front.

42% going into your pension - wowser :T. Though as you say, you can't access till you're 55, and that is likely to rise to be linked to state retirement age minus 10 years. What is pension invested in?

Are you planning to retire at least 10 years below state retirement age? How's the pension projections looking and what about funding retirement before it kicks in?

NorthernMonkey1

gallygirl wrote: »

Well done on what you're achieving :j, and good news on flat. Here's hoping on the job front.

42% going into your pension - wowser :T. Though as you say, you can't access till you're 55, and that is likely to rise to be linked to state retirement age minus 10 years. What is pension invested in?

Are you planning to retire at least 10 years below state retirement age? How's the pension projections looking and what about funding retirement before it kicks in?

Projections always assume that you're going to keep paying the same amount in, so I never find them particularly useful, and they all assume I'll want 60% of my income in retirement.

It's all invested in low cost global tracker funds, which seem to be doing really well at the moment. I'm in the process of transferring an old badly performing pension into my main work pension, which has a low 0.32% fee, so I'm not sure of the exact value right now. It's somewhere around the £130k mark.

NorthernMonkey1

The refund from my council tax came through today, £175, so I overpaid this amount.

As my mortgage was re-calculated when I changed the interest rate to £84 a month over 16 1/2 years, it's now quite good fun to calculate how many months I've cut off the mortgage with relatively small overpayments. This OP is a 3 month reduction in mortgage term

£11421 + £14950 credit card = £26371
Wall fund £3800 / £3800 (builders booked for April)
Emergency Fund £15240
Mortgage Neutral in £11306

NorthernMonkey1

Its Payday and OP day today!

Unfortunately, due to a !!!! up at work, my OT hasn't been paid. I also got a monster CC bill of £500 from my holiday in Poland in January which was all paid off today.

Made a £600 OP, and £150 off the CC of Doom.

My car isn't very well. Oil is falling out the bottom at an alarming rate. I've ordered a few bits and bobs on ebay to try and sort it. Hopefully its less than £50 to fix, but it could be much much more. Annoying, as its only a few weeks since it passed its MOT.

ISA seems to be doing OK, a little growth which has helped my mortgage neutral number, to just a teeny smidge over £10000. 4 figures in March is looking likely

£10821 + £14800 credit card = £25621
Wall fund £3800 / £3800 (builders booked for April)
Emergency Fund £15533
Mortgage Neutral in £10088

ch4rly2002

Just started reading your diary and caught up.

Wowsers, you're doing well, and it looks like you're going to smash the 10 year target! Seems like you have a good head for investment too.

I'm sorry to hear about the wall ties / re-pointing work that you need to do, and it sounds exactly like the issues we have at the moment so I'm expecting the same kind of work (cracks round the replacement UPVC windows and cracks in the brick work - the house across the road was told their wall ties needed to be replaced, hence why I think we have the same issues). I've got to book a surveyor to confirm. Can I ask, what size house do you have? Trying to get an idea of how much it might cost us to get it sorted so I'm prepared in advance.

"CC of Doom", love it! I really like the idea of using a 0% balance transfer card to save on some of the interest, but how did you manage it? I thought they were for transferring the balance from one CC to another.

Sorry to bombard you with questions, I'm just curious as you have raised some very interesting points.