£306,000 in 12 years? Am I Crazy?! 21 April 2017 at 7:52PM in Mortgage-free wannabe 8 replies 1.2K views

Louise1234

OK so I would love to be mortgage free by the time I'm 40 in just under 12 years. We have just started (first payment next month) and owe £306,000.

I'm quite frugal when it comes to bills and we are lucky to have quite a lot spare. How much do you leave yourself for treat money after overpaying? I'm not sure if what we intend to leave ourselves is realistic.

Thank you

allmannerofthings

Hi Louise!

We've just taken out a mortgage too - much smaller than yours at £115000, and we're much older than you, at 49 and 53. We have similar aims though, in wanting to pay it off as soon as possible! We used the mse overpayment calculator to work out how much we need to pay to reduce the term to 10 years, so we're doing that. I have an idea in my head of getting it down to 8 or so or even less, so we'll overpay more as and when we can.

Regarding how much to leave yourselves, we don't really know either yet. We've done a budget that we think will work, and we're just going to see how it goes and adjust as necessary. We also have saving 'pots' for every eventuality we can think of - car costs, holidays, gifts, optician and dentist, clothes, yearly subscriptions etc etc. We're leaving ourselves 80 a month for entertainment, which would cover cinema, meals out etc and a further £60 each personal spending money per month. No idea whether this will work yet! How much are you thinking of? It depends how much you want to go out socially etc really, you might do that more than us as we're old lol

Number75

I started my diary today too, so thought I'd wish you good luck!

I would say that it's far easier to save before you're used to having the money in your pocket - so aim big and then reduce if it's too tight, rather than you leave yourself more to begin with.

Louise1234

Thank you both!

Allmannerofthings you sound just like me!

I have a spreadsheet with all costs. I have included our sons swimming lessons, Netflix, Spotify, my fianc!s gym, having my nails done, £100 for date nights etc as I think it's important to have nice things too. Wouldn't want to save every penny and not be able to enjoy life a bit! We have a yearly pass to our local zoo too so that is also on there.

Savings account for car/insurance/TV licence which £120 a month goes in. £25 for the zoo pass and £75 for presents over the year.

I've managed to get our monthly food / cleaning stuff down to £250 for a family of four too. Which I don't think is too bad!

I have left us £450 for other stuff. I think that is plenty (on top of everything already listed) I feel if I didn't put aside a big chunk then we would just waste it.

I'm aiming to overpay by £1000 a month, this will probably go up every year as I get a slight pay increase every year but will see how we go and if we need more spare money.

If we can stick to it we would be mortgage free by the time the oldest is 18 and off to university..... where more costs come in ��

Fingers crossed!

Tropically

We also have around £300,000 in mortgage, around the same age and would love to be mortgage free by 40, too!

michelle09

Hi Louise - we are aiming for £264,000 in ten years, so about the same level of optimism as you. Also trying to be mortgage free by 40.

£100 for date nights sounds quite high - but you have kids, how often do you have a date night?

Miss_Money_Magnet

Hi Louise
We too have recently taken on a large mortgage to buy our dream home and Im hoping to start overpaying soon when the costs of initial work has settled down.
Your food budget is great for 4 of you. I budget 320 a month for 4, and I always go a bit over. Any tips gratefully received!

Louise1234

Well I say date nights.... could be takeaway at home etc. We very rarely go out. Maybe once every 3 / 4 months!

Glad to see there are others wanting to do similar I would love to have the freedom and money to help the boys like my mum helped me.

The best advice I can say is meal plan. We have lots of Stews, chilli, bolognaise etc things I can bulk out with other things. Stews I put lots of veg / potato rather than meat. Or I use sausages as they are cheaper. Chili I bulk out with kidney and baked beans. and Bolognaise lots of tomato.

I do not buy fresh veg as they go off so quickly.

Tesco Value baked beans, tinned tomato and spaghetti hoops taste just like branded ones. I always have Hellmanns mayo, Heinz Ketchup, and PG tips Tea! For us I swapped everything we buy for Tesco value and swapped the things we liked. the tinned tomatoes for example. We use 2 in a meal and might have 3 meals a week using them. We did have the Napolina ones which are £3.50 for 4. Tesco value is 31p a tin. So that is almost £4 a week saved just on tomato! Give value a go. Things like pasta, tinned veg etc all taste the same. I buy the tinned new potatoes too that are 20p a tin so if we are running late that is a quick cheap side. One tin feeds all 4 of us.

Try to have one or two meat free meals a week. We usually only manage one (We like meat!) but even a tomato pasta is under £1 for 4 people. Pasta is so cheap. When we were really tight for money a couple of years ago we did a something on toast night too.

I buy meat in bulk from the butcher. He does a good deal and we get a massive bag of chicken breasts for £12 and a huge 5kg bag of mince for about £7. So I batch cook and freeze a lot of meals so I only have to prepare the carb side of a meal. Also means you can make from scratch cheaply too Good luck!!

phillw

I went on a healthy eating kick, so no meat, no processed sugar, no wheat, no potatoes.

Mostly vegetables, fruit, tuna, salmon, rice etc. Butter instead of margarine. Frying pan that doesn't need oil. I only drink water.

Convenience food comes at a cost. I would love to be self sufficient.