First plunge into debt with a mortgage!

michelle09

Hello everyone! Been lurking around these boards for a little while now and it looks like the perfect environment for support. My OH and I exchanged on our first house today with completion lined up for tomorrow, so it seems like a good time to get going.

We are both 27, and unusually for my generation, I have never been in debt. At all. I paid rent in advance, got my degrees either fully funded by my employer or saved up the fees in advance, I didn't even have a credit card until I was 25 and realised I had an abysmal credit rating. So this house is the first time I have paid for something without saving up for it in advance.

As someone who never does anything by halves - my first debt is £264,000. :rotfl:To be quite honest, it's too big to truly wrap my head around so I find it almost entertaining. We have an LTV of 60% (mostly down to my saving habits) and have started on a tracker rate which is currently sat at 1.99%. There are no limits of OPs on this mortgage so if interest rates start to rise we have the flexibility to remortgage immediately if we want to.

We are on a 30 year term but our agreed target is to pay off before we are 40 - which gives us until June 2028. Fiddling with our finances and the switch from renting, I think we can OP on average £1000/month without giving up anything from our current lifestle.

Anyway, fingers crossed it goes well. Let's do this! :T

try_harder

Welcome michelle09 this is a great board so you will get lots of help and encouragement .I am aiming to overpay my mortgage by a thousand pounds a month i do it weekly at 242.30 at least that is my aim and over 10 years i started 3 weeks ago.Good luck with your journey.

Moneyfordreams

Welcome and good luck,

michelle09

Thanks try harder and moneyfordreams! It looks like a good place full of like minded people. That's an impressive goal, try harder. I hope we can match it. Though will probably OP at the end of each month after we have been paid etc.

michelle09

Week 1.

And what an eventful week it was. We got the keys last Thursday to find that the house hadn't exactly been loved for the last few months (if ever). My OH, who has been truly amazing during the stress of actually buying the house, couldn't deal quite as well with the state of it.

To save him the breakdown, I did the not particularly MSE thing of paying for a disposal van (£230) to remove everything they'd left and professional cleaners (£100) to tackle the kitchen. We are going to have to replace all the windows fairly sharpish too. Thankfully, for various reasons we got £3.5k back from the sale which will go someway to funding that.

We needed to completely redecorate but had lots of lovely friends who gave up their BH weekend to help us in return for drinks and food. And we managed to get some good deals on paint thanks to a sale at B&Q.

Finally moving in this weekend - we don't have enough stuff to hire removal guys so got a van ourselves from Budget. £40 all day.

Other good news: my DBS certificate came through! Both OH and I work in the emergency services but I also tutor in my spare time for some extra cash. The DBS means I can take on students under 18 which massively increases the work I can do.

try_harder

How exciting i hope you will be very happy in your new home im sure you will soon have it looking beautiful.Yes looks like we have similar targets i am paying £242 a week overpayment plus nearly £700 mortgage payment on an interest only mortgage so arond £1700 a month and hoping this will pay it off in 10 years i only started a few weeks ago so early days yet and anything can happen but fingers crossed for us all.