Irish cottage journey to (4!!) mortgage freedom

hildosaver

Ok update time - hard to believe it is finally December and we can all hopefully put this awful year behind us and look forward to a better year ahead.

December has actually been a pretty big month for my mortgage overpayment journey as it is the month we finally maxed out our possible overpayments.

We finally got a tenant in the one house we had a vacancy and ended up getting more rent than I thought possible which is good news - turns out I was underselling big time (by around £200 a month!).

Overall we get £1320 rent per month and with that we put all of it towards our overpayments which now in total have hit £1650 per month with an overall reduction of our mortgages of around £2400 per month. We have also upped our monthly savings to £300 per month.

We still are paying down our home improvement loan which is £450 per month for the next 2 years - once that is cleared we will add that to our savings each month and hope to hit £800 per month savings if possible.

We live on around £300 a month in total which can be a bit tight but should be worth it in the end.

On the adoption front I'm pleased to report our assessment is going well and we hope to be approved within the next 2-3 months so who knows this time next year we might have a bigger family! 

Happy Christmas to you all.

hildosaver

Hope you all are coping ok with the ongoing COVID shut-down - I've found it very tough over the last few months and am very much looking forward to better days ahead.
On the plus side I have been able to meet my targets so far this year with regular overpayments as follows:
Our home - £400
Let 1 - £450
Let 2 - £300
Let 3 - £500
So that's a monthly overpayment of £1650 which is pushing us really hard but this along with the normal repayment's means we are decreasing our overall mortgage debt (currently £246k) by around £2350 per month so it's dropping rapidly which only gives me more motivation to keep going. I estimate that we could have all mortgages paid off within 9 years which is an amazing feeling - I'd be 53/54 then and would be in a fantastic position to consider early/partial retirement at 55 which has been a long time ambition.
I'm saving £300 per month also however since the start of the year several unexpected payments (car hit a pot hole, damp proofing in Let 2, etc.) have been required so it doesnt feel like I'm actually saving anything at the moment.

hildosaver

Hello again - I'm a very lazy updater and I have no clue if anybody reads this but if nothing else it is a nice diary for myself to look at every so often to give myself some motivation to keep going.

So this year has been a good one for many reasons however also very challenging (COVID, work stress). The good news on the overpayment front is that although I haven't been able to keep up the £1650 per month, I have managed to pay on average around £1500 per month overpayments. As a result of this we are aiming to have paid down around £26,500 in total this year which is fantastic. We started this year with just over a quarter of a million quid total mortgage debt and we will be ending this year under £230,000 - we should be less than £200k within a year and a half, this will be a huge milestone.

We continue to be frugal and live on a relatively modest budget.

In other news - we have fostered an absolutely adorable little baby girl - we literally got her from the hospital and we hope that we might get the chance to adopt her although it's a long process (likely 2-3 years) and she could go back to her birth parents at anytime depending on how it goes (they are fighting for it but there are very good reasons why she needs to be away from them right now). It's been overwhelming to say the least but it is something me and my wife have dreamed off for years so it's been amazing. She will be 12 weeks old on Friday!

AgathaSquirrel

Amazing news about fostering. Wishing you all the best.

Good plan re:mortgages. 

powerspowers

Aww congratulations on your little one!! Hope she gets the best outcome for her, it’s not an easy road but I hope it’s as smooth as it can be.  

And well done on the OPs 

LadyWithAPlan

How lovely to have your little one in the house after all  the IVF and everything, hope it works out for the best for all.
Your OPS are fabulous, well done.

hildosaver

Hi guys - been another huge gap in me updating this thread but it's been a very busy time. Our little foster baby is now 1 years old which is just insane! She is a total joy.

In the world of mortgages we continue to aggresively overpay about as much as we can push it (which is to the MAX).

On average we are overpaying £1700 per month in total which brings our overall mortgage debt (over 4 properties) down by around £2400 per month which works out close to £29k in overall reductions over the year. 

By the end of 2022 we will have broken the overall £200k mark for our overall mortgage debt which feels like a huge achievement for us especially since we are doing this over a period when my wife has had to give up work due to the contact commitments we have with our beautiful foster child (3 contacts per week with their birth parents).

If we can keep up this level of overpayments we could potentially pay off all 4 mortgages within 7/8 years. That is our goal. Doesnt leave much room for luxuries, holidays, etc. but we have laser guided focus to continue.

savingholmes

Congratulations on your foster daughter and your mortgage progress. Inspiring.

hildosaver

Hello again - time for another of my very infrequent updates. 

As of today we owe £189k in total over 4 properties. Getting under the £200k mark felt like a big milestone and on average we are reducing the total by around £2300 per month using the income from our 3 rental properties and as much as I can afford to spare.  It does mean we continue to live on a pretty small budget however I hope that we can clear all of our mortgages within the next 6 years at which point I'll be 52. 

As for everything else in our lives, not much change - foster daughter will be 2 in June which is CRAZY - still a long way to go till we can legally adopt however hopefully we will see some progress in the next 3 or 4 months.

hildosaver

Another extremely infrequent update from myself! Almost a year since my last one lol

So in the past year (almost) we have reduced our overall mortgage total from £189k to £160k. We are on plan to go past £150k later this year which will feel like another milestone reached - was only October 2022 when we managed to break £200k so we are making good progress.

We had a bit of a legal breakthrough in our adoption hopes and we hope to finally adopt our beautiful foster daughter before she turns 3 later this year.

I am very grateful that we have worked so hard to overpay because two of our (4) houses came off their fixed mortgages and their interest rates doubled overnight and had we not overpayed at the level we had we would be in a really difficult financial situation. As it is, even with interest rates increasing our monthly payments have generally been reducing. 

Even with this progress it's a tough road to do this to this level. We are really stretching ourselves to achieve this level of overpaying each month. We havent had a foreign holiday for over 4 years and our only holiday last year was a 3 night air bnb about 25 miles from where we live. Not knocking it but we are having to forgo a lot of things other people take for granted. So... no take aways, no nights out, no big holidays. I know it will be worth it but it's a challenge.