Stephen's Journey to Mortgage freedom

lcfcstephen

Yesterday I finally completed on a house! It's a nice two bed in Manchester and cost me £133,995 and I'm so glad to be moving in shortly.
I now have a mortgage of £67,195 as well as a Help to Buy Equity loan of 20% (currently 26,799).
I am recently married (18th June) and currently work at an Investment bank on a salary that has just increased to £20,000. My lovely wife is currently looking for a job and so it is just my name on the mortgage. Between us we have slightly over £10,000 in cash left over spread across a few high interest savings accounts.
My plans are: To overpay to at least £500 a month (£324 is the normal payment) and I think that this means that we can still save into LW's Help to Buy ISA (for next house) and save for furniture (we currently have the bare essentials - some of that being camping stuff!), whilst also hopefully saving for a car too.
If/When LW gets a job (depending on salary) I am hoping that we can overpay to at least £600 and save into those other targets too.
My long term plan is that I will remortgage in a couple of years and consolidate the Help to Buy Loan into the mortgage as I should be able to borrow enough to be able to do that. And we will move when it makes sense to (it's not a forever home.

Obviously as I am moving into a new house there are several things I need to do especially to sort out with addresses with various official bodies, and I hope to do that by the end of the weekend, as well as being fully moved in!
Hopefully I keep this updated and stick with it!

bexster1975

Congratulations. Very good luck with your bid for mortgage freedom :beer:

Bexster

dark^knight

Hello and welcome...congrats on marriage and new house...good luck with the mortgage free quest...we're all kindred spirits here

lcfcstephen

So this weekend has been a bit manic. But we have moved in and spent our first night in our new house! We have managed to move everything over minus a bookcase and our bikes, and are hoping to get them done this week. LW's family came on the Sunday to help (friends have been helping too) but they helped move some more heavy stuff, but up some curtains and other things, as well as bringing a table. So we now can use a solid table rather than a camping one! Still on camping chairs, and a blow up bed (bed will arrive on the 19th)
I'm in the process of changing my address, council won't let me do it online for some reason, water is done, Energy don't want to put be back on an old (MSE collective) tariff, so arguing my case and hoping I can, if not not soon till the new tariff! Our Wifi provider has been useless (they were for our previous house move too) I requested that they didn't turn off Wifi at our old property till we had wifi at the new one, and was told that we should have wifi in the new one by the end of this week. Since then Wifi has been turned off at the old property (will take a week to come back on) and I've been told that an update will come at the end of this week, not wifi. It's ridiculous.
Apart from that it's been a great, though exhausting weekend and I also managed to set up my overpayments with my mortgage provider, so thats all sorted

lcfcstephen

It's difficult being back in work today after taking a long weekend to move stuff into the house. It's crazy how much stuff there is and just boxes everywhere! Hoping to finally getting some of these unpacked and sorted soon, It's so tiring!
Washing Machine comes today!
Also forgot to mention that we still are on the lease for renting the flat that we had until November. Fortunately I've budgeted that in my spending so leaving some of it, plus the emergency fund, means we should be able to get some more furniture shortly!
It's so difficult changing addresses because no one can find it because it's a new build! Oh well, getting there, despite all the stress and tiredness!

lcfcstephen

The washing machine arrived yesterday after half an hour of trying to get the delivery people to be able to find the house! (Apparently I can request that royal mail update their systems and that might help - but don't think it will as it won't update sat nav type things) Hoping that the builders will fit it today - they said they would, but no idea when. Still waiting for a water butt which we mentioned at our home demonstration two weeks ago.
The Energy company have decided that I was right and I can have my tariff, but put me on the standard tariff and will change it, council is almost sorted, and we should hopefully get some outside bins from them in the next week!
The house is still a bomb site and we have barely tidied anything away. Hoping to do a food shop today and we're alsoaway to a couple of home shops to get some storage for the bathrooms after work. This moving home thing costs a lot!

evansc1

Hi Stephen! Congrats on the marriage and completion - sounds like you are beginning to settle in

Completed a couple weeks before you so very much on the same track here! Will be following to see how your'e getting on

lcfcstephen

Hi Evan,
Yeah, starting to. Feels like home - it's just that stuff is everywhere! Hoping that we find good cheap furniture solutions when we get to it. It's a starter home, but because we've been renting we don't have anything of our own! Will nbe nice to fill it. Enjoyed looking at your diary, interested in the matched betting, might look into that further

lcfcstephen

Yesterday LW and I went to a few home places and picked up a few things, but unfortunately it turned into a bit of an ideas shop rather than an actual shop. It has given us several ideas of what we might want to do, but next time we go we need to have measurements of every bit of the house that could be used for furniture! The other issue was that we are prioritising a sofa over anything else, which we will probably end up buying soon. We also bought a drill - over the last week we've greatly increased our DIY potential!
Some bad news on the flat that we still have tenancy at, we have slightly over two months left at £450 (but just two payments) and they want us to pay £350 to advertise the property and theres still the chance that it might not be let out - they've said it often takes a while and when we moved in it seemed like it hadn't been lived in for a while. I don't think it's worth paying that money when there's the risk that we won't get any money back, and especially as I don't think we'd end up getting any more than a month back in rent.
We have some friends that might be interested, so hoping that i can convince them to move as well as convincing the letting agents that I could do that as long as they were vetted, without them advertising the property. Fortunately it's all budgeted so the extra £900 isn't going to hurt, but I would have much preferred to use it on something else

lcfcstephen

Last night we struggled to do anything productive, until we sat down to watch bake off with friends!
The application form for feed in tariff for my solar panels has been sent off - already been thrown into difficulties with it though, they couldn't read some attachments.
The post office now recognises my address and so it can be found in post code checker!
Tonight we're having proper home made toad in the hold - hoping that it turns out well, its our first time!
T-4 days till my first ever mortgage payment (and overpayment)

lcfcstephen

Yesterday we spent a lot of money, I've said we're not going to look at how much we spend (as long as we stay sensible and above a certain threshold - until we don't pay for the flat) because we need the stuff we're buying. But its hard and goes completely against how I usually am! I'll get a lid on it soon ��
Was told during the day that WiFi had come on! Only go find it that it hasn't and they'd made a mistake, was very sad about that!
Today I've had a call to say they think there's a leak in the flat. Not looking forward to finding out what's happened.
T-3 days till first mortgage payment