I Want To Be Mortgage Free!

Bagz

Hi Jess,

What a fascinating story to read through your journal, and well done for working so hard in such a short space of time.
I've been doing something similar to you myself for a few years, and I have to say, it's certainly paid off. One of the main things was everytime your mortgage has been "re-assessed" and the monthly payments reduce, keep the payments the same as you were paying previously, as you've always managed to previously - this should soon rack up the overpayment amounts after a couple of years! (I know Teacher2 says this above, I don't want to be seen as stealing their thunder!)

Now I'm not an expert at such stringent penny watching, but something I noticed you mention in a few earlier posts that felt all too familiar with me. You said that you've spread the cost of Christmas over a couple of months, which I think is a great idea, and used to do it myself. But then a work colleague suggested to me, why not save up during the whole year (each month) a stock amount, and this spreads the cost even more - so instead of trying to find £150 for two months, instead you could save £25 each month and still end up with a Christmas budget of £300!!

As for your Mortgage OP's - I was staggered as to how intense you seem to be taking this, and how much you're wishing payday to come round in order to pay off some more. By all means, this is only my advice, but I'd worry you're maybe a little too intense about it, and instead of planning to OP before payday, maybe look at excess monies left at the end of a month, and pay off anything left. That way, I think you could look at possibly slicing a little bit off into a "fun" fund, and go out and spoil you and the OH - even if it is just for that extra takeaway once a month!! I think we'd all agree on here, you've worked hard for it!

I wouldn't even begin to consider taking the pain of paying the fee for exceeding your annual OP limit. You're essentially paying for the privilege of being economical! Instead, I'd suggest that once your OP limit for this year has been reached, put all your OP's into a separate bank account (and look for one which will work hard for you) and at the end of your current mortgage term, you could maybe pay off the extra to get an even better rate next time!!
(personally, I'd keep your OP fund and your emergency fund separate too, as it's easy to "forget" how much was in each pot!)

I also spotted your post about being on a water meter. I bought a new house last year, which was on rates, but I switched it to a meter, as the costs of the rates were £110 a month, but with it being just 2 of us in the house, the meter has dropped down to approx £20 per month!
If I remember rightly, you can ask to have a meter installed, and then you have 2 years to decide whether or not this has been worth it. If not, you can request to be switched back to paying rates. I'm with Yorkshire Water too, so I'm sure you must be the same!
As it was a new meter, it also didn't cost anything either - bonus!
I'm not sure about their excuse for not being able to fit it though.......sounds a bit of a fob off to me! A meter doesn't necessarily HAVE to be fitted outside. My gf's previous rented house had a meter under the kitchen sink, and was a new digital meter too, so it had to have been fitted fairly recently!?!

My one other bit of advice would also to be around your energy usage. I see you mentioned about wrapping up in jumpers (and the dogs too!) in Winter, but make sure you take your own readings and submit them to your providers. I do this for Gas, Electric and Water usage. I've never trusted these suppliers, and never will, as you hear all too often of cases where they've taken over-payments form customers. At the end of the day, our pricing is determined by an equation in a computer, and if data has been inputted incorrectly, who knows what we can end up paying!

I think you've done an incredible job so far, and would commend you even more for working hard doing your online surveys too, every penny counts!!

Good luck for the rest of the year, and I'm sure we all can;t wait to hear how progress goes!

Moneyfordreams

Keep up the good work Jessy , your showing great determination

Jessy103

ch4rly2002 wrote: »

Also, does anyone know how I can save this thread so I can come back and see updates later? Also (can you tell I'm new?) what does DH stand for? TIA

Hi ch4rly2002! Thanks for reading my diary! Thank you for that idea, our LTV is 77% at the moment so by the time our deal is up next year I want to be under 75% so we will hopefully get a good deal (as long as the interest rates stay the same as they are now!). I have looked into dog walking and dog sitting which I would love to do but I do have a couple of problems: 1) I don't drive which would mean I couldn't really go to other people's houses to collect dogs easily and 2) My whippet boy Fudge is not always great with other dogs, he takes a particular dislike to golden retrievers and huskies for some reason! I am working on his behaviour though so fingers crossed one day I might be able to do something along those lines.


If you want to be updated on posts there is a subscribe button above the initial post on the left. DH stands for Dear Husband (although if he has done something wrong I can think of a few choice words beginning with D to change the Dear to!:rotfl:).
Will you be starting your own diary? I love reading other people's, it becomes quite addictive! x

Jessy103

Bagz wrote: »

Hi Jess,

What a fascinating story to read through your journal, and well done for working so hard in such a short space of time.
I've been doing something similar to you myself for a few years, and I have to say, it's certainly paid off. One of the main things was everytime your mortgage has been "re-assessed" and the monthly payments reduce, keep the payments the same as you were paying previously, as you've always managed to previously - this should soon rack up the overpayment amounts after a couple of years! (I know Teacher2 says this above, I don't want to be seen as stealing their thunder!)

Now I'm not an expert at such stringent penny watching, but something I noticed you mention in a few earlier posts that felt all too familiar with me. You said that you've spread the cost of Christmas over a couple of months, which I think is a great idea, and used to do it myself. But then a work colleague suggested to me, why not save up during the whole year (each month) a stock amount, and this spreads the cost even more - so instead of trying to find £150 for two months, instead you could save £25 each month and still end up with a Christmas budget of £300!!

As for your Mortgage OP's - I was staggered as to how intense you seem to be taking this, and how much you're wishing payday to come round in order to pay off some more. By all means, this is only my advice, but I'd worry you're maybe a little too intense about it, and instead of planning to OP before payday, maybe look at excess monies left at the end of a month, and pay off anything left. That way, I think you could look at possibly slicing a little bit off into a "fun" fund, and go out and spoil you and the OH - even if it is just for that extra takeaway once a month!! I think we'd all agree on here, you've worked hard for it!

I wouldn't even begin to consider taking the pain of paying the fee for exceeding your annual OP limit. You're essentially paying for the privilege of being economical! Instead, I'd suggest that once your OP limit for this year has been reached, put all your OP's into a separate bank account (and look for one which will work hard for you) and at the end of your current mortgage term, you could maybe pay off the extra to get an even better rate next time!!
(personally, I'd keep your OP fund and your emergency fund separate too, as it's easy to "forget" how much was in each pot!)

I also spotted your post about being on a water meter. I bought a new house last year, which was on rates, but I switched it to a meter, as the costs of the rates were £110 a month, but with it being just 2 of us in the house, the meter has dropped down to approx £20 per month!
If I remember rightly, you can ask to have a meter installed, and then you have 2 years to decide whether or not this has been worth it. If not, you can request to be switched back to paying rates. I'm with Yorkshire Water too, so I'm sure you must be the same!
As it was a new meter, it also didn't cost anything either - bonus!
I'm not sure about their excuse for not being able to fit it though.......sounds a bit of a fob off to me! A meter doesn't necessarily HAVE to be fitted outside. My gf's previous rented house had a meter under the kitchen sink, and was a new digital meter too, so it had to have been fitted fairly recently!?!

My one other bit of advice would also to be around your energy usage. I see you mentioned about wrapping up in jumpers (and the dogs too!) in Winter, but make sure you take your own readings and submit them to your providers. I do this for Gas, Electric and Water usage. I've never trusted these suppliers, and never will, as you hear all too often of cases where they've taken over-payments form customers. At the end of the day, our pricing is determined by an equation in a computer, and if data has been inputted incorrectly, who knows what we can end up paying!

I think you've done an incredible job so far, and would commend you even more for working hard doing your online surveys too, every penny counts!!

Good luck for the rest of the year, and I'm sure we all can;t wait to hear how progress goes!

Hi Bagz! Thank you for reading through my diary and for your kind words and advice! I love the Christmas fund idea and think I will be starting that from now on!
I have tried to calm myself down with the intensity of the overpayments and think about doing more things, like going to the cinema or out for a meal because we should still have a life! I think my problem is that we are wanting to move and sooner rather than later, we have no drive for our car and live on a busy road. The council have now put parking restrictions on our road due to the amount of traffic at rush hour times so OH has to make sure he moves the car by 8:00am and that it doesn't come back until 6:00pm! We have nice neighbours but as we're in a terrace things can get loud at times especially our neighbours that like to have a party every weekend! I just keep thinking that the more we pay off the mortgage the easier it will be to move!
I do take regular meter readings which I submit to our energy company and keep a spreadsheet so I can keep an eye on our usage! I do keep thinking about the water meter but DH is putting me off as he feels the need to keep the tap running whilst he's brushing his teeth and having a shave, which quite honestly drives me insane!! :mad:


Do you have your own diary? Would love to have a read through! x

Jessy103

Moneyfordreams wrote: »

Keep up the good work Jessy , your showing great determination

Thanks Moneyfordreams that means a lot to me!

Bagz

Jess,

I take back all my previous comments about spending so much time in getting your mortgage down - if you're trying to move, and sooner rather than later, then working as hard as you are is clearly paying off! Well Done!!

I still stand by my opinion on paying ERC's though - it's just not worth it, as it's dead money in my eyes! Once you've reached your ERC limit, then just keep saving into a different pot, and when it comes time to re-mortgage (or port your mortgage if you do move), then you have a tidy lump sum to pay off the capital, and fingers crossed you're in the next LTV bracket!!

Sorry, I never kept a diary, but all I can tell you is that I'm currently due to re-mortgage again after the last 2-year deal, and when it goes through (starting Mar '17) the mortgage amount is £403 and I continue to pay £550. I've worked it out that instead of the current 19 yrs I have left, I will have paid off the debt within 13 years!! (Assuming everything stays constant, but I'm hoping in reality this reduces even further as I OP more each year!)

I appreciate you're trying to OP as much as possible now in order to give you a better standing when buying your next house, and that's great. But I would certainly advocate that maintaining this sort of attitude will only work in your favour in your new house too!
Even just small OP's to start with can often knock just £5 or £10/mnth from your monthly payments each year, and before you know it, in a house that you want to stay in for a number of years, you've soon reduced the monthly costs by £100 or more!!

Good for you (and the OH) for splashing a bit of "fun" cash too - I really do think it's worth it, as it can often be too easy to get too caught up with your finances!)

Jessy103

Bagz wrote: »

Jess,

I take back all my previous comments about spending so much time in getting your mortgage down - if you're trying to move, and sooner rather than later, then working as hard as you are is clearly paying off! Well Done!!

I still stand by my opinion on paying ERC's though - it's just not worth it, as it's dead money in my eyes! Once you've reached your ERC limit, then just keep saving into a different pot, and when it comes time to re-mortgage (or port your mortgage if you do move), then you have a tidy lump sum to pay off the capital, and fingers crossed you're in the next LTV bracket!!

Sorry, I never kept a diary, but all I can tell you is that I'm currently due to re-mortgage again after the last 2-year deal, and when it goes through (starting Mar '17) the mortgage amount is £403 and I continue to pay £550. I've worked it out that instead of the current 19 yrs I have left, I will have paid off the debt within 13 years!! (Assuming everything stays constant, but I'm hoping in reality this reduces even further as I OP more each year!)

I appreciate you're trying to OP as much as possible now in order to give you a better standing when buying your next house, and that's great. But I would certainly advocate that maintaining this sort of attitude will only work in your favour in your new house too!
Even just small OP's to start with can often knock just £5 or £10/mnth from your monthly payments each year, and before you know it, in a house that you want to stay in for a number of years, you've soon reduced the monthly costs by £100 or more!!

Good for you (and the OH) for splashing a bit of "fun" cash too - I really do think it's worth it, as it can often be too easy to get too caught up with your finances!)

Thanks Bagz! When we reach our 10% limit this year I want to get our emergency fund up and then I will put what's left over into the overpayment pot. When we move I will definitely carry on with the overpayments and the place we move to next is hopefully the house we will stay in until we're old biddies!!


Wow good for you, paying off your mortgage six years early would be fantastic! I wish you all the luck with it and I'm sure from the advice you've given me you are more than capable of doing it! x

ch4rly2002

Thank you for clearing that up, I had wondered what DH and DW meant so that will make it easier for me to understand going forwards Found the subscribe button, thank you!

I hadn't really thought about writing a diary of my own, but I think you might be onto something. From reading yours it looks like it helps to focus you and also get encouragement / ideas so I think I'll start one myself.

I just had another thought too which may help as you said you don't want to work so that you are flexible with your time.. when I was at university I registered with an agency in Huddersfield called Slivers of Time (slivers.c0m - had to change the o to a 0 as it wouldn't let me post the address but you should be able to find it from that) but I believe they are a Nationwide agency and that was just a local branch. They offer temping work to suit your schedule so it could be as little as an hour or two here and there. I found it interesting as I ended up doing loads of different work and if I didn't like something there was no obligation to do it again. I had some recurring jobs like taking calls for the local council's waste department (arranging extra bin collections, ordering new bins for people etc.) and had loads of one offs like cleaning in a local school for an hour. If you don't drive you can specify you only want local assignments.

There's also a website called Fiverr that lets you do small things for a fiver, e.g. if you spoke another language someone might pay you a fiver to translate a letter. Might be worth a look if you have a skill or some time to offer.

Good luck on your journey, I'll be following with interest

Jessy103

Hi ch4rly2002! Yeah I was and still am occasionally confused by the abbreviations! Lol! Thank you for subscribing and I think you should have a go at your own diary, like you said it's great for helping you reach targets and everyone's in the same boat so it's nice to help and encourage each other!

Thank you for the suggestion about temping. My problem is I just don't know what I want to do! I've worked in an office since I left school at 16 and have had some great experiences but also a lot of bad, office politics is the worst and the thought of going back to work in one fills me with dread! I have been looking at dog grooming courses and as I love gardening horticultural courses in my area which I would love but unfortunately are quite expensive so at the moment the mortgage is the top priority for our money and i never know when my mum might need me. I will have a look at the ones you've suggested though because I'd be quite happy cleaning for a couple of hours a day!

Thanks very much and good luck in your journey! X

ch4rly2002

I have written my own...now to see if anyone reads it! lol :rotfl: