Time to be FREE!

Frugalwannabe

Hey guys,

I've been reading through some amazing diaries on here and feel totally inspired! Coincidentally, I only decided the mortgage was a big deal for me this past month.

A bit of background. I'm married with 3 children whom are home with us all day. We almost went bankrupt last year, went from earning a lot of money and completely overspending to finally being hit by the economy and losing the contracts we'd thought were certain.

Luckily managed to pay our mortgage each month and food just about but we bounced every other bill out of our account.

Fast forward to Nov 2015, we've managed to get fully up to date with council tax, cleared £18k of credit card debts and am now looking to clear the mortgage as soon as we can.

Our current mortgage stands at £131,793.39 and there are 17 years to pay. We have 33%LTV and love our home so much that I don't think we'll ever move

I was going to wait until the new year to start our journey but thought why wait! So here it is. Our journey to be MF!

My OH is completely on board with this too which makes it feel a lot easier.

Any advice/anything to read to help me on my journey would be great. I've done the GC for the last 2 months and feel I can save money on our food which I budget £400Pm for. And basically I will be OP everything I can. I'm aiming for a minimum of £400 per month but would rather it was £1000. It's difficult to commit to a figure because our pay is heavily commission based so I think I will live off last months salary if that makes sense rather than waiting to see what comes in.

I see there are a lot of threads with smaller challenges but can't seem to see where they are?

I hope not to bore everyone and thank you all in advance for your inspiration and support.

Have a wonderful afternoon.

It feels so good to be heading in this direction!

Luckyinlife

Great story and welcome

Never wait just pay when you can if you can what you can :]

You have done well to get to this point so well done

Great min OP as well will save you lots

spendinglikemad

hello and good luck!!!

SLM

Frugalwannabe

Thanks so much luckyinlife and SLM. I've just added 20 things to ebay this evening too but will start to have a proper clear out.

I feel claustrophobic with the amount of stuff we have. Definitely time to lighten the load. And like you LIL I'll build up the balance in my PP account and then transfer.

Mortgage goes out next week so will have a new balance then might aim to OP as well to take it down. Monthly payments as standard are £805.46.

selloptape

Hi Frugalwannabe If you're looking for more challenges a lot of these are tucked away on a separate board within the DFW board (if you go in to DFW you'll see it there at the top). Hope this helps.

Best of luck with your MFW journey x

Frugalwannabe

Thanks very much Sellotape I'll take a look :-)

We're about to sign our new mortgage deal so will have a new update on that hopefully tomorrow and I currently have £340 in my OP pot. I read somewhere on here it was better to only make one OP per month? Not sure where it was.

I still feel like I've got no idea the best way to go about it but I'm figuring just save as much money as possible and then pay it off.

We're taking the kids to Longleat CP on Monday and I've saved more than what we need so as soon as I get back on the Friday I'll OP the rest :-)

GC wise I should definitely come in under budget this month so that'll get paid off as well.

Christmas is pretty much sorted as well and I saved for that monthly.

I think as well I just need to not spend any money. If I'm stressed or my OH has had to go away for work I'll quite often buy something. No idea why it's obviously a psychological replacement for him LoL. In future if I feel like that I'll transfer an OP and then I'll feel even better.

Hope everyone's having a great day x

MyBestJumper

Best time to OP depends on how interest is calculated by your provider. With ours for example, interest is calculated daily so any OPs we make are put to use straight away. Other providers recalculate monthly so in those cases it would be better to save OPs in an interest paying account then OP in one go. You need to know your product really.

Best of luck with it - it gets very addictive!

Luckyinlife

Its not better to make only 1 OP per month the sooner you pay the OP in you start saving on interest for the following day

So i personally pay it in as soon as i can if you build it up for say 25-30 days thats 25-30 days of interest you could of saved on :]

Big pot tho 340 is a great amount :]

For me i am in a position to use my EF well 6k of it to Op straight away but i dont because id rather have the safety of cash in the bank and just overpay when i can if however this dont max out the 10% free every year i will use the EF to make up the difference if im in a position to

wow your sorted for x-mas already thats great :] when do the lights and tree go up ?

EndTheSpend

We are in a similar position. £131,800 left with 12 yr 4 months at £1036 per month. Looking at remortgaging and decreasing the term to 10 years and overpaying up to £2K pcm. Probably overambitious but I'd love to pay it off as soon as we can to give us more freedom (not too keen on my day job if I'm honest!). If you haven't already, get yourself an excel spreadsheet to track your progress and look at the interest saved increase with each over-payment - it's highly motivating!

Frugalwannabe

Thanks MBJ that makes sense. I'll check with our provider and see how they calculate the interest. Like I say I was reading the diaries on here and rushed into starting my own:rotfl:

Thanks for taking the time to comment :A

Frugalwannabe

Luckyinlife wrote: »

Its not better to make only 1 OP per month the sooner you pay the OP in you start saving on interest for the following day

So i personally pay it in as soon as i can if you build it up for say 25-30 days thats 25-30 days of interest you could of saved on :]

Big pot tho 340 is a great amount :]

For me i am in a position to use my EF well 6k of it to Op straight away but i dont because id rather have the safety of cash in the bank and just overpay when i can if however this dont max out the 10% free every year i will use the EF to make up the difference if im in a position to

wow your sorted for x-mas already thats great :] when do the lights and tree go up ?

Thanks LIL. I have an operation in 2 weeks and will need a few weeks recovery so needed to get the shopping sorted! The tree goes up end of November. It's all about the kids and their excitement is so infectious. The day after Boxing Day it comes down as I'm sick of it by then,

Thanks for taking the time to post