Mortgage free by 2021?!

EatingTheElephant

Great news that pay turned up, all sounding very positive at the new job. I have emergency raisins in my bag!

edinburgher

What sort of pension? Because the provider would typically claim the relief on your behalf (I don't think you pay higher rate tax, in which case it would be different).

hiddenshadow

They claim the 20% automatically but yes, I would pay higher rate tax if I didn't contribute to a pension (so this month I've paid higher rate tax as no contribution was made by work). I'd contribute to a pension anyway, but by default I wouldn't contribute nearly as much if there weren't a nice tax break involved.

hiddenshadow

I MADE AN OP! So happy to be back to our regular £1,400. Did make a fair bit of extra income this month between surveys, cashback, and bank income, but couldn't do anything fun with it as we're padding the bank accounts back up.

Now that DH and I have both been paid, though, I was able to pay in to the pension (not that it'll show up for 7-10 working days, annoyingly - they will backdate the value somehow but in the meantime I get to be paranoid that I've paid quite a lot into someone else's account!). Also made June's regular OP early to shave off that tiny bit of interest.

Also, DH got a small pay rise at work, so that's kicked in this month. A whole £36.62 more take-home. That'll go away soon as he's requesting to up his pension contribution accordingly from next month.

On to May summary number-crunching...

hiddenshadow

May OPs: £0.00 :shocked:

Current balance: £145,841.46
Month we’d be in to get to our current balance without OPs: June 2022 (+ 2 months!)

2016 Overpayments: £10,952.18
2016 Interest Saved: £11,250.63

Total Overpayments: £36,154.49
Total Interest Saved: £39,711.58

Daily Interest: £9.62 (down £0.17)
Monthly Interest: £288.02 (down £13.87)
May 2015 Interest: £627.41 (down £308.21)
May 2015 Daily Interest: £20.24 (down £10.62)

House Bricks: +1

Mortgage reduction: £15,827.40/£30,000 (52%) (Average: £3,165.48/mo)

No OP. *sob*

Stocks & shares ISA: £1,000/£1,200 (83%)

No change

Fitness: 50/150 runs (33%)

Still battling vertigo. Missed my 5k run entirely but hope to be able to resume running this week (ran for the bus this morning and almost fell over, so maybe not *quite* yet).

Net worth increase: £34,935.54/£65,559.14 (53%)

Slow and steady progress here.

MFIT-4: £13,658.54/£90,000 (15%)

Still slightly ahead of schedule (time-wise is 11%).

hiddenshadow

Oh yes, in final money news, DH finally got in to N@tionwide to see about the loan. They've approved him on the same terms as FD (somehow 50p cheaper for the loan at the same interest rate??) and should be able to honour the 0.5% interest rate guarantee when he goes back in on Tuesday. Then he can confirm that and open his own 5% account and we'll be all set.

Assuming my math is correct...

Loan of £10k over 2 years at 2.9%: interest approx. £290

3x N@tionwide accounts at 5%: interest approx. £750
3x T$B accounts at 5%: interest approx. £600
1x Ll0yds account at 4%: interest approx. £320 (bit more as we'll have more than the minimum £4k in there)

So we'll make ~£1,380 over the course of two years for having this loan. That's more than our regular mortgage payment. I could get used to this....

(Technically for super correct math we should account for not getting interest on the ~£430/mo that we'll use to pay back the loan each month, but we have that extra in the budget. Even if not, and we assume it comes out of one of the 5% accounts, which it wouldn't, that would lower our total earnings by £43, so still quite a bit ahead. Plus we'll immediately pay back ~£350 on the loan as that's extra after topping up all the >3% interest accounts, so that saves another £20 or so in interest.)

Edited to add: realised as I was falling asleep that my math is slightly optimistic as the loan is over 2 years and N@tionwide 5% only lasts 1 year. That only loses you £150 assuming that you move that money to a 3% account after the year, or pay it back to the loan.

Ali-OK

Incredible figures - still coloured in a house brick

Sorry to hear you're still suffering too.

Good to see N@tionwide loan happening and a nice profit to boot!

hiddenshadow

Ali-OK wrote: »

Incredible figures - still coloured in a house brick

Good point! Our regular payment knocks off 4-digits from the principal, which is both amazing and rather blas! now.

Sorry to hear you're still suffering too.

Good to see N@tionwide loan happening and a nice profit to boot!

Thanks! Hope you're feeling better as well.

Re: the loan I'm surprised it's an option, really, but I suppose not many are the do-the-maths/stoozing types, so they're probably not being overrun by hordes of MSEers milking them out of funds. That said, even if you just had their 5% accounts and their loan you'd still come out ahead by about £500 so I would think some people would be interested.

Never underestimate the lazy, though. I was chatting with my coworker the other day about him wanting to buy a house and save up a deposit (~£15k probably). He buys breakfast and lunch every day (probably £10/day?). He pays £5/mo for a credit monitoring site (told him about clearscore but he didn't seem interested). He pays something like £80 for his tv/internet (!!). And who knows what else...he was also uninterested in shopping around for energy suppliers. I bet if he buckled down he could save £3k/year just bringing lunch to work and changing plans for things, but he's happy with his setup I guess. To each their own, but I can't imagine throwing money away like that for no real reason. I don't know what salary he's on, but if I had to guess based on his role he could give himself a "raise" of 7-10% just by cutting expenses.

...and clearly I [STRIKE]think[/STRIKE] obsess about finances too much. :rotfl:

Ali-OK

It's surprising the number of people who haven't clocked on to the pennies and pounds adding up to big savings. Could be inertia or lack of confidence/know-how in doing some of these things or too big a job to do it all or not having a budget/knowing what's going out on bills etc. Can't believe some people still don't know much about MSE...I evangelically spread the word all the time

Hopefully I'm on a path to getting better - had physio appointment yesterday - she's going to do acupuncture as thinks it's a deep neuro tissue issue (or something!) caused by long term pain. That and pain clinic. Fingers crossed.

Analysing the finances I count as a hobbie now :rotfl:

hiddenshadow

Ali-OK wrote: »

Can't believe some people still don't know much about MSE...I evangelically spread the word all the time

Me too! Funny thing, he knows about MSE and says he's used it, but clearly he hasn't reached the evangelical stage.

Hopefully I'm on a path to getting better - had physio appointment yesterday - she's going to do acupuncture as thinks it's a deep neuro tissue issue (or something!) caused by long term pain. That and pain clinic. Fingers crossed.

Analysing the finances I count as a hobbie now :rotfl:

Hope the acupuncture helps - haven't tried it but sounds promising.

Finances is definitely a hobby of mine. I listen to a few podcasts which are interesting, though sadly US-centric (which I don't mind, per se, but I'm not worrying about my US retirement fund or how to max it out).