Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow

Thanks ST.

First OP on the new rate! £28.10 off the mortgage today - £15.40 from surveys, £12.70 from T$B cashback.

Saga with the courier continues - have managed to talk to them on the phone at least, and the driver claims that he offered to fix it on the day and that I refused. Interesting interpretation of "you could probably glue that back on". (DH pointed out that even if that had been true, my refusing to have him fix it on the day of delivery doesn't release them from liability forever, I could have realised the damage needed to be taken care of an hour/day/week later.)

Then the courier apparently came out to our house in-person on Thursday to inspect the damage and were very surprised that we weren't home (when they hadn't told us they were coming). Arranged for them to come back yesterday, stayed home all day, and...nothing. Quite unimpressed. Will have to phone - again - on Monday to chase it up further. (One good note is that the damage does appear aesthetic only, but I'm still not sure how it can be fixed properly - glue is not going to cut it!)

Working from home next week (which was a surprise to me - communication at work is lacking at best). Just as well as I left early on Friday because I felt ill, so at least work next week will be a bit quieter. Should also save on commuting costs as well, albeit only the £7.50 bus fare. Better than nothing though.

BookWorm

Congrats on the new mortgage rate - so satisfying isn't it? Hope you can get the issue with the courier sorted

Sundaysgirl

hiddenshadow wrote: »

Yes, thank goodness! Despite living here for almost 6 years this is the first xmas do I've been to, and I can't say I'm impressed. DH had his last week and it sounded much better - only did a half-day of work (if that - he was sending me pics of xmas cookies they were making at about 11am ) and they were done with food by about 5 (we managed to go out to the theatre at 7:30). Packing a party/really late dinner on top of a regular work day just seems mental (especially on a Thursday, running on about 4 hours of sleep today and that's without a hangover).

Going from 4.19% to 2.39% (fixed for 5 years, hoping to wipe it out completely in that time!). Unlimited OPs, which is great. Just for fun I asked the bank what would happen if we paid off all but the last £1k in those 5 years and they seemed surprised that we could but had no problem with the concept - I think technically we could pay all but the last £1 before the fix ends and we'd avoid an ERC...might be a fun challenge!

On that note, DH should get his bonus in January, so that's cool. Not sure how much it'll be, but anything is better than nothing. (Looks like I'll get nothing? Well, we did get Burt's Bees Tips & Toes boxes last night, but I'm not sure that a £10 sample box really counts as a "bonus".) DH should find out what sort of pay rise he'll get in March/April as well.

Not much else to report. Work processed the season loan finally, so I should be able to figure out what OPs (if any) we can make for the rest of the month (though on our new rate it's arguably better to keep money in savings rather than OP it, so might have to work on breaking out of the "that's not exciting" mentality). Looks like it might be as much as £100, but I'll wait until we're off for the break (and know we won't spend much more) before committing it.

Great new rate! And fingers crossed for a decent bonus for your DH next month!

hiddenshadow

£100 more to the mortgage courtesy of MIL. We told her paying for the door installation was (more than) enough, but she sent me £40 for my birthday and a cheque for £100 in our xmas card. She wrote my cheque to my nickname so the bank won't cash it, and I'm hoping she'll have forgotten about it when we see her next.

DH also got overtime included in his pay this month so that'll get OPed on the 1st.

H@lifax switch completed smoothly (so far), hoping Clyde$dale goes well this week.

debtfreeoneday

that's so nice of your MIL, hope you get the courier sorted soon.

Enjoy working at home and hope you are feeling better..

FloppyDisk

hiddenshadow wrote: »

I'm dreaming of getting back into horses once we're MF, so that'll be pricey

Hi Shadow, having a quick read through your diary and as others have commented, it sounds like you are very frugal as it is and well on top of your MF aims! But this line stood out to me, I hope you won't get to MF status and just be 5 years late enjoying the things you love. You certainly have plenty of wiggle room in your budget!

hiddenshadow

FloppyDisk wrote: »

Hi Shadow, having a quick read through your diary and as others have commented, it sounds like you are very frugal as it is and well on top of your MF aims! But this line stood out to me, I hope you won't get to MF status and just be 5 years late enjoying the things you love. You certainly have plenty of wiggle room in your budget!

Hi FD, thanks for posting. :wave:

My main hurdle with horse stuff is transportation. I don't drive, so that makes it tricky to get out to a barn. DH is learning, and we're hoping to buy a car in the next few months, so I'm hoping once that happens he can ferry me to a barn and I can get back into weekly lessons or something along those lines.

Also need to get back in shape as well, right now even if I had unlimited time/money/horses I doubt I'd be able to sit on one for more than 10 minutes without being out of breath! The joys of a desk job...

Thanks for the reminder about the balance, though - it's good to keep in mind (and tricky to do).

hiddenshadow

Couldn't sleep last night so did some spreadsheet fiddling instead. Now mine auto-calculates the amortization schedule and relevant rates (based on our two fix periods), plus all the lovely meta data (like interest saved, ave daily interest, etc).

Looking at the projections, if we can stick with our planned OP for the full 5 years, our balance at the end of that should be ~£7,094.88. Had a nice chat with the bank this morning and they've confirmed that we can fully pay off the balance anytime after the fix rate ends (Dec 20, 2020) even though we pay our interest in arrears.

(Side note - that's totally random - apparently our Jan 1 payment has the interest for Nov 10-Dec 9; Feb 1 payment has Dec 10-Jan 9, etc. Does make a bit more sense why their values never quite match my nice pretty spreadsheet!)

So, given that our rate is so low, I'm thinking we'll stick with the £1,400 (for now, anyway) to keep up the momentum on the mortgage balance going down. Anything over that, though, can go into a S&S ISA. Ideally if we can put £1k/year into it and the markets are reasonable, we should have the 7k by 2020. (Just plugged £100/mo into a calculator assuming 4% return and it's worth £6,617.90, so that's not bad.)

Depending on how things go, I may tweak things and drop the £1,400 OP further to bump up the S&S ISA. We'll see, though - I like the "guarantee" of paying off debt vs the risk of investments (which I'm not opposed to for the long-term, hence putting almost 1/3 of my salary towards a pension, but 5 years is the very tiny end of long-term investing).

Food for thought, anyway - assuming that the thinking done at 2am is sensible!

hiddenshadow

Given the info from the bank on how/when they apply interest, I've gone ahead and made our January OP early. I've updated the mortgage balance in my sig but will officially count it as a January OP.

So, year-end recap for 2015:

                          2014          2015          Change
Starting Balance          £197,100.00   £180,690.91
Overpayments              £12,019.78    £13,526.38    up £1,506.60
Ave Overpayment (/mo)     £1,092.71     £1,127.20     up £34.49
Interest Saved            £17,246.02    £11,214.93    down £6,031.09
Ave Net Reduction (/mo)   £1,491.74     £1,585.17     up £93.44
Ave Daily Interest        £21.84        £19.86        down £1.98
Annual Interest           £7,291.70     £7,247.25     down £44.45
Ending Balance            £180,690.91   £161,668.86   down £19.022.05
Net Reduction             £16,409.09    £19,022.05    up £2,612.96

Total
Overpayments: £25,546.16
Interest Saved: £28,460.95
Net Reduction: £35,431.14

Really pleased with 2015's results - bring on 2016!

edinburgher

That's a great rate - we're paying 3.6% for a 5 year fix - effectively withdrew a lot of equity from our last place to renovate the new house.