Penny by penny...brick by brick!

PennyJar

Hi everyone,

This is the start of my fledgling MFW diary :T

Little bit about me...I'm 33, happily married and and have a 5 month old daughter.

I seen the light a couple of weeks ago - thanks to the MSE overpayment calculator and have been constantly thinking about how I'm going to put our plan into action ever since.

Whilst the overarching goal is to be MFW - as a family we are also looking to purchase our second home within the next year or so. But I figured still paying off the mortgage to better the LVT is a win win situation :cool:

I have a 3 point plan:

1) Overview finances and set up weekly budget cash envelopes (complete)
2) Save a £3000 emergency fund (with plans to continue adding to the pot whilst OP)
3) Start OP mortgage with as much as possible (to reach 10 year MF goal)

I'll provide a SOA tomorrow...with more details about the nitty gritty and I would greatly appreciate feedback/tips from the MSE community on ways I could potentially better any part of my approach.

This is such a great opportunity and I'm so ready to take on this challenge. So please feel free to join me, in the quest for freedom

freshcotton

Hi Penny,

Good luck with your journey! Nothing more exciting than a play with the overpayment calculator.

It's nice to have an emergency pot put away. What's your position with overpayments? Is it capped or unlimited

User1489

Welcome

PennyJar

Hi Fresh,

Thank you,

It's capped at 10% of total mortgage per annum? Due to remortgage 2018/19, will check.

Penny

PennyJar

Hi everyone,

As promised please find below my SOA, including more details about my mortgage.

I'll then do a separate post to tell you about what I plan to include in my diary and what I've been up to so far to put my plans into place.

So here goes:

Monthly Income:
£1880 (£2780 from Oct 2016)
(currently on maternity leave wages, husband is unemployed)

Monthly Outgoings:
Mortgage - £455.41
Boiler insurance - £6.00 (our boiler is 15yrs old!)
TV licence - £12.12
Broadband/TV/calls - £61.92
Specsavers contact lenses - £30
Council Tax - £131
Car Loan - £111.87 (4 years, interest free as family loan)
Dwr water - £53.59
Car insurance - £26.37
Gas and electricity - £65 (just switched but already in debit!)
Bupa - £62.75

Budget envelopes ( I allocate money to these weekly, but save as much from these as possible):

Baby - £120
Food - £200
Cleaning - £4
Petrol - £100
Car tax - £40
Car maintenance - £20
Hair - £20
Other - £20

Currently have Santander 123 account, a Basic Account (£900), Savings Account (£0)

Mortgage details:

Term - 29 years, 10 months
Rate - 3.49
OP - 10% of total mortgage per annum
Renewal date - June, 2020

Interest per month - £294!!!! Not good :-(

PennyJar

Hi all,

So I'm going to post as a minimum weekly and pick out any key areas/ways I've saved money, or any areas where there was unexpected spend, or where temptation got the better of me - let's hope this doesn't happen too often.

I want this diary to be as much benefit to me to keep me on track and focused on my goals, and if I can help others in any way along the way - great!

This week -

Saved money by:
Cleaning and organising freezer
Planning meals
Buying significantly reduced items which I needed (I just love a yellow sticker)
5 NSDs (no spend days)

I also routed through freebies board and ordered myself a John Lewis membership card (free coffee, cake), Marks and Sparks membership card.

Finally, I signed up to OnePoll to get money for answering surveys - anyone needing a referral let me know as you get 50p extra for sign ups...I think...just check the boards for all the accurate information.

PennyJar

LadyGnome

Good luck and welcome to the MFW board

MissCreative

Hi PennyJar! Just popping by to wish you well on your journey and I'll be following with interest! :T

temperanceb

Good luck and welcome to the MFW board

zcrat41

Hi Penny,
Welcome! Although it feels weird to me to say welcome as I'm a newbie too.


As I'm so new I don't have much to add apart from to say you must have great employers as that's a great Mat leave salary at 5 months!


Good luck!

PennyJar

Hi Z,

Awe thank you for the welcome...be good to continue this journey together

I am really fortunate with my salary, but forgot to detail that the figure is also combined with additional monthly income that we have coming in. My current monthly wage is £1400 which I averaged out over my maternity period, but my normal salary is approx £2350.

Because we've had to live on reduced wages since Feb, I'm going to use this as a platform to OP the mortgage when I go back to full salary. It's funny because it seems that the less we've had, the better we've actually managed the money. I guess that's because we've just had to.

Although over the years we've done a lot of work to our house etc done some nice holidays...in all the years we've been married we never knuckled down to get some savings behind us - a big downfall of ours really

So I was determined to start saving when I went back and then by chance realised that OP would be even better still...I was so shocked to learn we would save £45,000 in interest alone if I OP by £500 PCM...and the term would be reduced 19 years and 4 months :eek:

In fact - that shocked I've not thought about much else in the last week as it brings back the same feelings as post Uni debt - and feel sick to think we nearly borrowed more on the mortgage - double oops!!

I'm now trying to clue up as much as I can now before we remortgage in 2020.

All the best,

PennyJar