Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow

edinburgher wrote: »

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.

Thanks! Rates look to have dropped even further recently, as I just looked and our rate could be 2.19%. Shame I didn't check before our fix started (though I'll just pretend this rate went into effect today so it's irrelevant ).

edinburgher

Haha - we all do what's best at the time - I'm trying not to compare what we have with what's available now

hiddenshadow

edinburgher wrote: »

Haha - we all do what's best at the time - I'm trying not to compare what we have with what's available now

Indeed. I just re-ran the numbers and 2.19% would save us £944.63 total, but we would have had to re-pay the £450 booking fee for a new rate, so really only £494.63. Not really worth sweating over.

hiddenshadow

1. Mortgage balance: £132,000 (bit of a stretch as our planned OPs have us at £132,220)
2. Stocks & shares ISA: £1,000 (would like £1,200 but this will be from extra budget money rather than a dedicated monthly amount)
3. Fitness: Commit to this running thing, and aim for 150 runs in 2016 (3x/week, something I've managed for about 3 weeks in a row once )
4. Net worth: £200,000 (bit of a stretch, if we duplicated this year's growth we'd be at £193k, and this year included PPI claims and other "found" money. Note: does not include increase in house value.)

Otherwise nothing too exciting planned for next year. We're debating a holiday in Rome as friends are going in March (would like to take MIL but she's undecided). Would like to buy a car by summer (ideally this winter if prices look good). Need to finish DIY projects (especially the garden). Other than that, continue with our jobs (which thankfully we both enjoy) and hope all the pets stay well (esp older dog).

hiddenshadow

DH just cashed a cheque that we got last week (and I'd forgotten about until now). Despite all the faff about how we didn't qualify for it, we got the N@tionwide switch incentive after all! Maybe my semi-snarky e-mail did the trick.

So that's another £100 in the pot, which means we'll have the £500 available to start a S&S ISA. :T

Enough posting, off for a run (or, in my case, a mostly-shuffle).

edinburgher

Nothing wrong with a good shuffle... enjoy :T

Watty1

impressed with the running....shuffling ...whatever...at least you are going :J

hiddenshadow

Thanks, ed and watty! Run was rather pleasant, except the last 3-min run felt a bit on-the-verge-of-death-y. Still, I made it.

Should leave the dog home more often, as I went 0.14mi further without him along! So much for being a racing beastie he did 6(!) poos in a 20 min run (plus the required territory marking, sniffing all the things, and so on).

Both dogs were quite happy to be left home with kongs while I went out.

shangaijimmy

Must be the day for banks paying switching bonus! Really nice christmas present to mortgage account.

hiddenshadow

Thanks SJ! Glad yours came through as well.

£500 for ISA spent about 12 hours in the ether somewhere, but did show up in my account eventually. Somehow the "apply next working day" rule means that our funds will be purchased January 5 (?) but better late than never I suppose.

Debating whether to count the ISA money as "offset" for the mortgage balance. Think I will not for now to try and keep motivation up on getting the mortgage balance to a certain level - suppose until you're truly mortgage neutral the offset doesn't mean much.

Low key weekend planned - I'm still under the weather so having quiet days (bit of a waste of PTO, but can't be helped). DH wants to do another roast style dinner on New Year's so we should have leftovers again over the weekend.