MFW - All About the Future

Gazza1990

Hi All,
I've been reading this forum on and off now since my partner and I moved into a newbuild property as first time buyers on 28th October '16. I feel now is the right time to begin a diary so i can keep track of overpayments and help to keep me focused.


My partner and I are both 27yrs old and we bought our house for £129,995 using the Help to Buy Scheme which means we currently only owe 80% of our home. The other 20% if house prices remain the same will be £26k to purchase, this is something we aim to do asap alongside making small overpayments to the mortgage. The mortgage is £97,730 with Leeds Building Society fixed for 5yrs at 2.55%. It's bugging me that LBS have no way to manage the mortgage online but hey ho.


After moving in, we didn't make any payments for the remainder of the year due to not knowing exactly what our new bills would level out at and of course christmas being just 2 months away so from January 21st i made the first £100 overpayment and continue to do so each month via SO. I managed to overpay £300 in May though woohoo. I rang LBS to get an updated balance and they can't even provide an exact figure, so the rounded figure they gave me is £95,800.


So alongside making these overpayments we've been saving large amounts into an ISA that will eventually be used to buy back the remaining 20%, we have made great progress on this and we already have £15k in savings, £11k more to go!


My job is quite lucrative at the moment but not stable at all and redundancies are announced each quarter which is why i'm trying to make a dent in the mortgage and get the HTB money sorted as soon as possible, heres hoping the compulsory redundancies hold off for a little while longer!


I'd love to be mortgage free by 40 but my initial target is going to be 45 so MF by 2035 (mortgage current end date is 2046)

Kittenkirst

New shiny diary!

You sound very determined already in your mortgage free wannabe quest

I'll be cheering you on from the sidelines

Gazza1990

Well would you look at that, blinked and a year has passed. Had every intention of keeping this diary active and for one reason or another just never updated it - still been keeping up with other diaries and everyone seems to be doing well!

I've managed to stick to a target of overpaying a minimum £100 per month whilst saving whatever we have left over into our Help to Buy pot ready to pay off that 20%. We've now made it to £26k which is the rough figure required to pay it off! Currently going through solicitors at the mo and arranging for a valuation report off a surveyor to proceed but i can't wait for this to be gone!


The mortgage itself was £95,800 in May '17 and is now down to £91,600 after £2,435 worth of OPs since Oct '16 - remaining total almost in the 8s which will be a lot better to look at psychologically! I'm currently on target with the goal of being MF by 45 but once the help to buy loan is all paid off we will have a lot more extra funds to OP with once we build up a rainy day fund.

I'll update the signature and hopefully update this thread more often!

SuperSecretSquirrel

In the past year you have been making the standard repayments, overpaying by over £100pm, and saving around £1000pm to pay off the help to buy loan... Forget about MF by 45, keep this pace up and you'll be done by 34!

Seriously.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/mortgage-overpayment-calculator#results - balance 91.6k, term 24yrs, rate 2.55%, repayment, 1.1k monthly op... Paid off 18.5 years early and saving 25k in interest.

Incidentally, we paid ours off in January, at 34 years old, and I can heartily recommend it

beanielou

Sounding good

Gazza1990

SuperSecretSquirrel wrote: »

In the past year you have been making the standard repayments, overpaying by over £100pm, and saving around £1000pm to pay off the help to buy loan... Forget about MF by 45, keep this pace up and you'll be done by 34!

Seriously.

- balance 91.6k, term 24yrs, rate 2.55%, repayment, 1.1k monthly op... Paid off 18.5 years early and saving 25k in interest.

Incidentally, we paid ours off in January, at 34 years old, and I can heartily recommend it

Thanks! It's certainly something to think about, we're stuck with 10% max overpayments and still have 3.5yrs left of the fixed deal so won't be able to throw the same amount of money at it each month that we have been doing on the HTB, but looking to continue saving anyway, so maybe mortgage neutral rather than free within our late 30s :beer:

Had Valuation Report done and it was valued at £125k which is a £5k loss from purchase price, which i think is pretty good as newbuilds tend to drop a bit more than that in first couple of years after losing the "new" factor. What it also means is that assuming Target HCA (The HTB Loan Team) approve that valuation, we will only have to repay £25k (20%) instead of £26k, nice little bonus for us! It's all in theirs and our solicitors hands now so hopefully in the next 3 - 4 weeks that will be paid off and we'll feel a huge weight off our shoulders.


I mentioned instability job wise in my OP and whilst i'm still at the same company 1 year on, it's still very precarious and WFM rounds are frequent - i must be doing something right to still be here though!