FreedomChaser on the up! 21 April 2015 at 11:02AM in Mortgage-free wannabe 3 replies 491 views

FreedomChaser

Hello Everyone :wave:
Im not new to MSE, however I have decided on a new username to mark a new chapter in my life, I'm not ashamed by anything I wrote under my old username but there was a lot of negativity which I don't particularly wish to be reminded of and I now feel things are turning a corner in my families life, I thought I would start a new diary to chart our progress & help motivate me.
So intro's first - I'm 41 and DH is 46 - three children, two of which live at home aged 9 & 17.
The balance of our mortgage is in the sig, we've had our house 10 years and paid off zero, infact due to an uncertain period in our life a year or two ago, arrears increased it from £207,500 to £212,500 - so I suppose we have overpaid approx 3k but are still not back to where we started.
There are 24 years left to run on the mortgage taking DH to 70 and its an interest only on Halifax's SVR of 3.99%. The house I guess is worth somewhere between £220 & £235k.
So not a great start, but now for the first time in our married life, we actually have savings in the bank, our credit reports are about a year from full recovery & we have just paid off a £1.5k overdraft, meaning that we don't have to pay the £30 per month overdraft fee - things are definitely looking up!

Luckyinlife

Good luck on your new start :]
Any plans to get the mortage down to a sooner date ?

FreedomChaser

Thank you Luckyinlife - seeing as we have wasted 10 years already, in an ideal world we would like to have it repaid in 15 years which would be the 'normal' end date if we had taken out a standard 25 year repayment mortgage when we bought the house 10 years ago, that would take a £800 overpayment each month on top of the £703 interest - ouch!
......however, OH is not sure he wants to stay in the house, we may wish to downsize in a couple of years, once our son is at Uni so the rough idea is to overpay what we can to increase our equity/improve ltv/take advantage while rates are low

Luckyinlife

Defiantly i think if u can and are willing to move down the ladder a bit to a cheaper place to run mortgage ect to be MF sooner i thik it would be an idea hopefully then have a few grand back from the sale as a deposit but if your payments are less monthly and you can pay more would be great idea :]

Interest is sickening isnt it :[ mine is around 70-75% of my monthly payment booooooo