OK lets do this.....24 payments to go

spendinglikemad

Been lurking on here for a while getting lots of hints and decided now is the time to get posting to keep me motivated so I hope to get on here regularly and update and read all about your journeys.

Background to posting is we recently found our dream house and really started to look at mortgages in detail with our bank and although we haven't been overpaying for the last year (something always got in the way!!) our bank manager could see we had overpaid around 31k since we took out our current mortgage. Anyway we are still undecided about moving house and if we did we would have a much bigger mortgage so I said to hubs that we should start paying that amount off our mortgage now to see how we would cope!!

So I have worked out the payments we need to pay to get this paid off in 2 years and it should be more than doable.....should be anyway....! Trouble is my hubs thinks we should hedge our bets and save half and pay off half - so that we have some savings as well as overpayments - I disagree and think its better to pay off debts first - then save..... his thinking is if we do want to move house we have more savings in the pot. Even if we don't move house we may want to help kids through uni.....

So the plan is to spend as little as possible on luxuries and so I have already swapped to Aldi shopping and tracking every little bit of spending we can. There are some unavoidable costs though for schools (trips, uniform, lunches, music lessons) but will be doing our best!

The only thing I need to work out is how to make sure the right mortgage payments get paid to the right sub accounts but thats easily sorted and will be good to see it being paid down.

Look forward to getting to know you all

selloptape

Wow two years to go, that's brilliant! Good luck spendinglikemad!

spendinglikemad

Thanks - I should have added that if we don't overpay it will be 84 payments left!

Luckyinlife

Ohh this is very exciting after always waiting 2 years for the fixed term to be up awesome to be the mortgage up after 2 years :]

Good luck

spendinglikemad

So now getting everything in order with finances and really starting to get a handle on our spending (well more than we used to) did a bit of necessary shopping with dd yesterday using our 'coupons'
- pair of school trousers for ds with £10 voucher (next messed up last order and gave us a gift card)
- sports direct £20 till receipt voucher - got dd and dd new swimwear (saved £20)
- boots got shower gel and shampoo with boots points £9 saved
So pretty pleased with self!

My first test is to set up payments onto the mortgage using online banking - in the past when I have made overpayments it has been done over the phone as a regular OP same each month, but I wanted to set up my own payment so I can just pay as and when. Worked out how to do it and just set up £40 OP (its split into 4 sub accounts) so I am looking forward to seeing that visible on the account next week - so sad but it makes me happy!! When I know that those payments are working i.e going to the right place and being credited then I can start with the big overpayments!! Not this month as we had our holiday credit card bill to pay off and it was a biggie but so worth it (3 weeks in southern california) now thats all paid off and we have no intention of another holiday in the near future there should be nothing stopping us getting the OPs made (famous last words!)

SLM

spendinglikemad

OK so tested out making overpayments using my online banking and it worked fine, initially just made a £40 overpayment to check and now just paid £400 so thats £440 overpayment this month. Wasn't intending to O/P this month but I got paid some work expenses so thought it better to pay off a bit.

Trying to keep the spend minimal but hubs keeps going on eBay and buying bits n pieces and car tax is due at the end of this month and MOT so we will just have to pay off as and when we can

Sam

spendinglikemad

Money saving plans going OK apart from we weakened last night and had a takeaway! It had been a long day at work for both us us and it was piano lesson night - I must be more organised in future - if I haven't had time to prep a meal then a takeaway is too easy....

Anyway feeling a bit low today, I don't know why, so I thought it would cheer me up to round mortgage off to a whole number.

Yesterday I got phoned from the bank as there were some fraudulent attempted payments from my husbands credit card (he is the additional card holder and only uses it for petrol) anyway it had been declined but a few big payments had been attempted and the bank sensed unusual activity!! So thats his credit card cancelled!!

OK off to do some work and make a shopping list and meal plan for next week to keep us on budget!!

SLM

Sundaysgirl

Wow, knocking 60 months off the mortgage - amazing target! That will save you so much interest.

Annoying about the CC but maybe not such a bad thing if your DH is a bit of a spender Have you tried showing him the OP calculators to demonstrate just how much you can save by OP'ing - mine was always onboard, but even more so now that I've shown him how much interest we could save on our potential new mortgage just by reducing the term slightly and making regular OPs (we too are planning a move to our forever home, and the mortgage will be a whopper!).

Good luck, and I look forward to following your progress

Luckyinlife

Great overpayment this month
ebay is my downfall as well but i guess i buy stuff for work/ and that i need but still must spend ££££ every year

Mortgage wont last long if you keep these OP up :]

spendinglikemad

Thanks both

Huns is on board with making overpayments - he just leaves it up to me to manage all the finances so I have been sharing the spreadsheet with him

He has been annoyed that we haven't been overpaying for the last year but then we have had a couple of really good holidays which have taken the place of overpayments. So now we have decided that its time to concentrate on paying off the mortgage, part of the reason being that we feel we have outgrown the house we live in, we have done so much to it over the years with extensions and renovations so thats increased the mortgage but its time to pay off. We have got used to spending a high disposable income on luxuries we don't need. As we keep looking for our next house (I don't think we will ever find it!!) its made us realise we need to pay more on our mortgage.

We have 4 years till our eldest could potentially go to uni if he works hard enough so I would like to be able to support him through that as both hubs and I had grants back in the day for uni and finances were not a concern.

I often wonder how my house would function without me to sort everything out.

Off to eat some chocolate and get on with a bit of work!!

SLM

hiddenshadow

spendinglikemad wrote: »

Anyway we are still undecided about moving house and if we did we would have a much bigger mortgage so I said to hubs that we should start paying that amount off our mortgage now to see how we would cope!!

I love this idea. We did something similar when we bought our house - mortgage would have been less than the rent we'd been paying so we knew we could pay at least that. Then we tacked on an extra £250 to see if we could stretch, and it turns out it was easy. I don't want to know what we would've spent that money on otherwise - accumulating more stuff, probably!