Getting a mortgage and then becoming mortgage-free!

themadvix

Your cat sounds as needy as one of mine Michelle! Love the walking her to the litter box! (Ours like to stare at you if you're in sight while they're going).

I hope Oscar and Hugo are okay this morning Kitten!

I think £1.60 on a cuppa at the gym is forgivable - if you don't think it is, take a flask next time? I don't like buying from Starbucks (for tax avoidance reasons and their tea is disgusting IMO), but I do like the ability to get credit from survey companies, so it's happening more and more frequently - it feels like a treat when it's from 'free' money (ignoring the fact that surveys are a blinking hard way to earn money!)

Kittenkirst

MadVix- I do often fill up my big thermal coffee mug at home but didn’t really think about taking one for the gym- I will try it though next week if I end up doing gym & yoga in one night as I think the caffeine helps

No gym yesterday but I marched in the living room to still hit my 10000 steps so didn’t feel too lazy! Worked from home so it was a nice NSD, today we are going to do a food shop after the gym so will end up spending. Earned £7.75 on Shopmium this week so budget is £37.75 this week- hoping to be well under that as planning on popping to the market after yoga tomorrow for some fruit & veggies

A small £2.39 OP made yesterday as a tilly tidy bringing us to a shiny £394.27. We are maximizing the OPs now as later in the year money will be tighter with the trip to Italy for the wedding and then the big holiday.

Tomorrow we have planned yoga (gym for gf) then she is meeting me in town to do some fruit & veg shopping. We are then going to make a scrumptuous lunch at home instead of eating out and do some holiday planning! we’re both going to read some forums & blogs and read a few chapters of the guidebooks we got for Christmas so we can start deciding the key places we want to visit/or do

Kittenkirst

Oh and both kittens were absolutely fine, I’m sure they were just rummaging in the rubbish that had blown all over the garden

Groceries came in at £18.69 from Lidl- we still have a few things to get but we’ll be nicely under budget! Dinner was chicken & veggies in black bean garlic sauce with some rice- delicious and fits in with the balanced eating plan.

Gym completed today- 35 minute solo spin, 20 minutes on the stepper and half hour doing an arm/shoulder weights circuit we wrote up before we got there.

I’m feeling all motivated at the moment so I’m trying to harness it and get it to good use!

Call with the mortgage broker went well however I then read the documents they sent through. They charge 1% of the mortgage value :eek::eek::eek:

Will be having a good old look around myself I think!!

A_Frayed_Knot

Doing well with the gym and yoga I hear :T

As for the 1% mortgage value fee :eek: Same thing happened to me for my original mortgage, sat down and said to me - "I already have the papers prepared - if you just want to sign there" :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Do I look that gullible so - asked how much? told me £60 quid more than I could get my mortgage for and told him so, he said that was the insurance, I told him - I don't need any - so skimmed over his next comment by saying, no insurance then my fee is 1%.

Yeah, watch me. Went ahead with mortgage on my own, and felt quite proud with myself when my brother said to me - "I admire you for going it alone - I certainly wouldn't have":D

My lawyer said *only advice I can give, is - be on the phone to them everyday* which I done.

Re-mortgages were a lot, I mean a lot easier. Have you tried the mortgage forum on the main site about re-mortgages - very helpful :j Sorry a bit of a rant there

Kittenkirst

Thanks AFK- I hadn’t but am off shortly now to have a read through.good to hear your experience& that you can do it alone with some perseverance & pestering!!

£1600 when we are really pushing ourselves to overpay £3000 a year seems ludicrous to me! Will definitely do it alone, just need to read up more on the ‘how’

Kittenkirst

As I was already awake early (thanks to a soaking Hugo climbing under the duvet to snuggle down!) I had a good look around at rates.

Dependent on the valuation of the house we will be in 84% LTV (if go for purchase price) or 76% LTV if go by the price the same house on our road sold. We have the complication of the gf having a buy to let property but it’s on interest only (yup!)so not all lenders will lend on that basis.

Looking at options and ones who will accept us we could just remortgage with Clydesdale which means there’s is no conveyancing or arrangement fees and can switch on 30th Jan (3 months early) as the rate would be 0.6% lower. Alternatively we could go with Nationwide but it would mean the whole process of remortgaging- providing all the bank statements etc.

On paper moving suppliers would mean that we would save £1200 across the five years, however we would need to pay conveyancing fees (£4-500) but we would get that in cashback on the Mortgage.

Gf and I have chatted lots about the ‘hassle’ of going through paperwork’s etc but I think £1200 for a bit of leg work isn’t a bad return.

So, we’ve agreed to try with Nationwide now and if for whatever reason it fails, we can just remortgage with Clydesdale at the lower rate. So we have a back up plan

Good news is that we can reduce the term of the mortgage already and still pay the same amount each month. We have had the Mortgage for 16 months and it was a 25 year Mortgage. We can renew our mortgage at 21 years knocking 2years and 8 months already fingers crossed we can get the deal we want!

Nationwide have done the arrangement in principle- now we need to collate all the documentation and start the process.

Yoga didn’t happen today as I thought it was at 10.30am but it was actually at 10am, so I went with the gf to the gym and worked on my chest & back and spent some time on the stepper machine (after a good old sulk!)

We’re now home and catching up with Kiri from this week and then going to crack on with the holiday planning :heartpuls:

A_Frayed_Knot

Fantastic - 2 years 8 months off the mortgage - that's what it's all about. A great saving £1200 - I would just look at it as free spending money and what I had put aside for spending money would go towards a lovely o/p.

Just a quick mention - do you know when you would hit the 60% LTV rate, as more often than nought you are offered a lower rate. Just saying as I see you have mentioned a 5 year deal, and if you hit the 60% before 3 yrs, might be worth thinking about. The usual gamble of course as rates might shoot up before then.

ch4rly2002

We used London and Country (free mortgage advisors) and they found us some great deals. I would highly recommend them

Well done on the gym workout!

Kittenkirst

Spent a lovely afternoon together yesterday just chilling out and doing some holiday planning and ideas gathering. I put some stydney-cairns YouTube vids on the living room tv for ideas/inspiration/ excitement and starting trying to firm up our itinerary of where we want to go.

Initially we had thought Singapore for F1, Sydney 4 days then 1 day drive to blue mountains, then a few days driving through Newcastle up to Byron bay and Brisbane. A few days in Brisbane then fly to the whitsundays for a few days (see the Great Barrier Reef) then fly up to cairns for a few days to include the Daintree Rainforest.

However I am pretty set on visiting Fraser Island as would love love to see those dramatic shipwrecks on the sand in real life. So we are now thinking of flying sydney- brisbane, driving an hour south to see Byron bay, then driving back up north a bit seeing Fraser Island, then fly to the whitsundays from there. Then more driving a little before hitting Cairns.

Lots more logistics/Reading/planning needed, but I adore this part of holidaying and adventuring.

That excitement has lessened the annoyance of my matched betting. For my last free bet I managed to place my backing stake & my lay stake in the same side therefore lost on both :P which makes my overall profit for the trial £14!!!!

Not going to get far in Oz or clear the Mortgage much with that. BUT I know what I did wrong now, and used free bets to make the mistake.

With that in mind I’m going to have a go at more of the free deals this week and see how I get on. I’ll keep on ensuring my initial stake £120 remains in tact and see where it goes. To me, I’m thinking if the next bet doesn’t work (e.g not enough for my lay stake at the exchange which was my first hiccup, or backing the same team twice which was my second) then at least I’ve given it a go and decided it’s not for me, rather than constantly wondering!

Yoga this morning- I’ve triple checked the time. Then some time at home cleaning and chilling before the gym this evening. Off north at 5am tomorrow with Work so an early night tonight for me

Kittenkirst

ch4rly2002 wrote: »

We used London and Country (free mortgage advisors) and they found us some great deals. I would highly recommend them

Well done on the gym workout!

I will check London & County out, thank you Charley for the recommendation.
I think I was surprised as we went through this broker for our initial purchase and it was free, but £1600 broker fee is pretty mammoth amount if I can just do it myself!