Stephen's Journey to Mortgage freedom

lcfcstephen

Also realised that we we have broken 30% equity! (we were very close before getting the mortgage, but didn't have any bearing as it was a Help to Buy Mortgage)

lcfcstephen

Started buying other family Christmas presents, as well as stuff for crafts to be made for friends and family.
The realisation that we own 30% of the house has made me want to set a target - 40% equity by the end of 2018. At the current plan we will hit 40% in March 2019, so shouldn't need too much to push us over that line.
Been reading a lot of posts and been getting ideas of how to spend extra money that we receive etc. In the new year I will update this with my planned budget and plans for the year

lcfcstephen

Started getting ideas for family for Christmas. My mother came up for the weekend and we tried a new slow cooker recipe (from a book that was her present to LW) and it worked, we hadn't dried it out too much!
Christmas looks like it could some nice useful things for the house which will help us out quite a bit. But we need to see what happens, and see what we are going to plan to buy with whatever money is left over at the middle of the month

lcfcstephen

The deposit from the flat is finally being processed! After ignoring my emails, they have now sorted it and the I have accepted the proposal through the deposit protection scheme so that should be in my account shortly. We'll have to work out how much of that, and the other outstanding money will be used to overpay, buy furniture, or save towards holiday/car

lcfcstephen

Our bikes got stolen from our back garden last night. Not sure how they knew to get in - the fences are 2m high. Need to find out if I can claim it on the insurance. And decide if it's worth claiming it. Feel a bit stupid, but means instead of holding out for a wooden shed we will get a plastic bike shed so we can get bikes again (a friend is giving me his) as it makes out lives a lot easier,

lcfcstephen

Got the promotion yesterday that I should have got a while ago (seems to be the systems fault rather than anyone here. Was surprised to find out that I get a payrise though! Which will give us a nice £75 a month, but only from March. Think I'll keep looking at jobs, but not as hard.
LW is coming in today to change her student account to a 'normal' account so she can switch it and start earning something for it - planning on moving to M&S with it for the switch and the monthly saver is the exact amount we are planning on putting away for the car each month.
Also collecting my new bike today. Trying to get some possible CCTV footage to give to the police - doubt it'll get the bikes back, or catch them but worth a shot. It's such a shame because they've stolen our bikes but it's not like they'll get much money from the bikes anyway. Going to be buying a shed today too, and then we'll start looking for a bike for LW. Will try and claim it on the insurance today. But it's also helped us get the builders to sort some of our snags out because stuff we mentioned months ago hadn't been sorted (including the alleyway gate which could potentially have deterred the robbers)

Darpett

Sorry to hear about the thefts.
If your work do the cyclescheme you can get up to £1000 to spend on a bike and/or equipment. Minimum spend £100 I think. It is salary sacrifice so it works out quite a decent saving and you pay back interest free over a year.

lcfcstephen

Darpett wrote: »

Sorry to hear about the thefts.
If your work do the cyclescheme you can get up to £1000 to spend on a bike and/or equipment. Minimum spend £100 I think. It is salary sacrifice so it works out quite a decent saving and you pay back interest free over a year.

It happens - we should have been more careful, but didn't think anyone would try, live and learn!
My work does, and I would have done this, but fortunately I am getting a friends bike free. Hoping that LW could hold off until January and hope her work has a cycle to work scheme!

Darpett

Free bike, even better!

lcfcstephen

Bought a shed over the weekend. Should have finished buying presents by the end of this week. When that is done I will take stock of how much money is left over and split whats remaining over our minimum savings amount for the mortgage, buying house things, and possibly savings for car/holiday, but don't think that final one will happen with needing to buy a shed.
Will then be reset for the new year (though I will get paid after we calculate this, just to make sure we stay over our savings amount) and mean we can pay off a sizable chunk of the mortgage before it's recalculated - especially as there'll be over £5,000 able to repay this year and there won't be that much next year - because we'll have had the and overpaid mortgage for whole year, rather than just from September)
Hoping to have less than £60,000 on the mortgage by the end of 2017 and have greater than 40% equity by the end of 2018. Both of those targets should be quite achievable as it's only a little more than whats currently projected with current overpayments