Mortgage free by 2021?!

Ali-OK

Amazing figures Hidden - love the 'month we'd be in without OPs' . Mine is March 2017 - feels good to be ahead of the game so to speak.

Hope you manage to get race ready in time

hiddenshadow

Ali-OK wrote: »

Amazing figures Hidden - love the 'month we'd be in without OPs' . Mine is March 2017 - feels good to be ahead of the game so to speak.

Thanks, same for me! It's cheating a bit as it's the most pessimistic view (if we'd never re-mortgaged and just stayed on variable rate) but hey...I'm sure some people do that. Nice to know that we've "bought" ourselves 6 years (!) with OPs.

Hope you manage to get race ready in time

Thanks - was good and went out today. Aimed for 2.75mi and actually did 3.4mi! Quite pleased with that, though may regret it tomorrow/Tuesday if my joints complain.

CathT

Hi hidden, have really enjoyed reading through your diary. Great figures and updates. Congrats on the new job and oh passing driving test. I found it interesting to read your personal spends amount, we earn a fraction of your income and dh thinks he's hard done to by his personal spends so glad to know that even those with higher earnings manage to survive on it!

selloptape

Fab stats HS! I'd not thought of doing net worth, bet that's really motivating?

hiddenshadow

Regular mortgage payment has gone out, current balance is £145,841.46.

Will have to see what sort of OP we can make this month (if any). Last paycheque from old job came in about £400 more than my worst-case assumption, but our 5% accounts are still down about 37%.

Hoping to get the £10k loan sorted this week - DH needs to mail in bank statements to FD to get approval for the loan (at 3.4%), and then we can theoretically apply for the same loan with N@tionwide and get 2.9%. Only worth ~£50, but that's 2/3 of our monthly eating out budget.

Waiting on the interest from T$B tomorrow. N@tionwide interest came in and even without having a full balance for the full month (withdrew 20% to buy the car last week), we still made £2.97 more than previous months. :j

New job went well last week, though I still don't have a signed contract (hoping to nail that down today). Definitely an adjustment working for a company with a dozen (maybe 2?) employees and not much infrastructure, but so far I like it (and hope they like me!).

hiddenshadow

CathT wrote: »

Hi hidden, have really enjoyed reading through your diary. Great figures and updates. Congrats on the new job and oh passing driving test. I found it interesting to read your personal spends amount, we earn a fraction of your income and dh thinks he's hard done to by his personal spends so glad to know that even those with higher earnings manage to survive on it!

Thanks CathT! I think it's down to personality for how one reacts to personal spend limits. DH regularly goes over his (crossing over a month boundary) but over the long-term stays within his limit. I generally save mine up over several months and then end up splurging on something big later on (sewing machine, etc).

We picked £150 each sort of at random, but it seems to work well - enough for us to feel like we can treat ourselves to things, but also small enough that we're not throwing money away mindlessly. I like that it helps keep lifestyle inflation in check a bit as well - our allowances haven't changed since mid-2013 when we were renting (and earning less).

selloptape wrote: »

Fab stats HS! I'd not thought of doing net worth, bet that's really motivating?

Indeed - it helps keep me motivated to save as well as throw everything at debt. Even when I know that the math wins on saving (5% interest vs 2.4% on the mortgage) my first impulse is always to kill the debt. Having the net worth (esp. in graph form) show overall progress really helps keep me focused on the overall big picture.

shangaijimmy

Great stats as ever. Very organised in here and really paying dividends. Think I'm going to pinch your "month were we'd be" stat too!

hiddenshadow

shangaijimmy wrote: »

Great stats as ever. Very organised in here and really paying dividends. Think I'm going to pinch your "month were we'd be" stat too!

Thanks! I can get a bit overboard with the planning/organisation, but at least it does (generally) keep things running smoothly.

Feel free to pinch whatever stats strike your fancy...:)

Got a massive shock this evening coming home to a note from MIL saying

Dear DH and hiddenshaddow,
Here's a little something to treat yourselves.
Love, Mum

And a cheque for £2,000 :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

I frightened DH by phoning him up and demanding to know if MIL had lost her mind. His guess is that it's from his great-uncle's estate (he passed away about a month ago). Even if that's true, unless his estate was worth at least £20k I feel bad taking anything in the realm of 4-digits from MIL. I don't think she struggles financially (much), but she does live quite frugally and probably has far more jobs for that money than we would. (Especially as DH has two brothers so if each got £2k that's a fair bit of the hypothetical money that she's not keeping for herself.) Having said all that, I can't see how probate would have happened this quickly anyway, so I don't think that theory pans out.

DH will phone her up tomorrow and find out the story. We get (lovingly) annoyed when she sends us too much (read: anything above £100) for xmas/birthdays, so this was a bit of a shock to say the least.

In other, less astonishing, financial news...T$B interest came in at £18.74. It's still sitting in the accounts but I'm hoping next month they'll all be full again and the OPing can resume.

shangaijimmy

Lovely present. We had similar a few months ago and decided to add it to holiday funds and spread over next 5-8 years. We probably struggle to afford a holiday every year with school hols prices and having 3 kids. By adding money out the present pot it takes the pressure off and allows us one each year.

edinburgher

Dammit - no T5B interest this month This is what you get for going on holiday and not paying in the £500 on time!

Well done on your windfall