My mortgage-free journey

LannieDuck

MummyEm wrote: »

Just to add, don't forget to make sure you have some emergency savings that you can access (though I believe that some mortgages will also allow for OP's to be requested back so this can work as an alternative) before you start OPing.

Good luck

Do you have a link to your diary? It would be nice to link up with some other people with large mortgages

And yes, thank you - savings are my first job! I've downloaded YNAB and entered all our monthly bills. I'm going to spend a month or two checking receipts against planned spending because I'm sure we 'leak' money without realising. And with a new house, all the bills are different - e.g. I've just switched gas and electricity to a cheaper plan.

Once I know for sure how much we have spare at the end of the month, I can allocate a bit of that for savings and a bit for overpayment each month. I used to have a £10k easy access 'emergency fund' that I'd very much like to build up again.

I'm sure there's loads of opinions on how much of your cash you should put into savings vs overpayments. Is there a general consensus?

katep23

Another with a large mortgage here - £346,000 when I started in December last year :eek:

LannieDuck

katep23 wrote: »

Another with a large mortgage here - £346,000 when I started in December last year :eek:

Hi *waves*

Do you have a diary I could follow?

katep23

Indeed, it is:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4982644

LannieDuck

We've had quite a busy day today. OH and I are both a bit ill, although luckily the kids seem to have avoided it, so we had intended to take the weekend relatively slowly. However, with so many jobs lying around waiting for us it was inevitable that we'd get sucked in!

We've:

* Fitted the new car seats in our second car (one of us will be dropping at nursery and going off to work, the other will be going to work then picking up from nursery - hence the need for two sets of seats)
* Emptied my car boot of old paint / mops / spare batteries etc that may have been guzzling more petrol on my commute than needed
* Put the children's posters from Granny up in their bedrooms
* Found the box of left-over stickers from DD1's old bedroom and used them to decorate DD2's new bedroom. It looks lovely now
* Cooked a lovely roast dinner (I can smell it now and it's making my tummy rumble...!)

And best of all, we haven't spent any money

NorthernMonkey1

1.84% is a very good rate of interest.


It may be worth investigation options other than repaying the mortgage, which pay more than 1.84%, such as ISAs

MummyEm

Sounds like a productive day.

I certainly do have a diary.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4406983

See you over there sometime

LannieDuck

NorthernMonkey1 wrote: »

1.84% is a very good rate of interest.


It may be worth investigation options other than repaying the mortgage, which pay more than 1.84%, such as ISAs

Thanks for this. I think at the moment I prefer to keep things simple, esp if I'm only managing small overpayments each month... however there's a chance I may be receiving part of an inheritance in the near future, which I'm planning to throw at the mortgage. In that case, I'll definitely consider whether interest rates mean it might be more sensible to invest it somewhere else with higher rates for a while.

LannieDuck

Had a bit of an up-and-down week this week.

I think I'm going to need a new car sooner than expected (we knew it was coming, but had been hoping for a few months to build up a little pot of money for it). However, the transmission has started to play up and now that I have a difficult 1 hour commute each way, I really need a reliable car. It's having a diagnostic on Tuesday, so we'll see...

I also might need a few more private medical expenses. I don't normally 'do' private medicine, but i've had a problem that 7-years of NHS investigations has completely failed me on. In comparison I paid for two private appointments and may have found a diagnosis! But I need a blood test, which my GP surgery is being difficult about (because the request hasn't come from within the NHS) so I might have to pay for that too. It'll be worth it if I can finally get this issue sorted out.

On the plus side, my annual pay has just gone up more than I expected (I almost didn't notice the pay increase I received last year because I was on mat leave and my pay was all over the place, so I've started to receive that again *plus* this year's increase!). It's over £1k/yr more than I was expecting Aaaaand, I *might* be in-line for another pay increase in August! That one would be due to a shift in T+Cs, but because of the way the pay bands line up, they might shift me upwards... I only realised all this yesterday, so I need to check with HR before I mentally spend that money :P

This weekend I need to start getting YNAB going. I want to make sure we're living within our monthly income, including a regular overpayment. Our food bills are likely to be a sticking point - we have pretty high outgoings for that. Instead of estimating it, I want to see exactly what we're spending.

Also hoping to do a bit more unpacking if the kids let us!

MummyEm

Great news on the pay rise :T

I hope you manage to get some unpacking done.