Mortgage day one - Diary to MF

NelliePie

That coloured square great idea! I might have to start that! When we've finished unpacking and found my pens and paper I'll get that going!

Koldweather1

The coloured squares are a great idea. I'm in a very similar position to you NP, will be a FTB (exchanged but won't complete till August) so hopefully your insights will help here as well.

Kittenkirst

I also have he coloured in method on a spreadsheet: I geekily made a house of 100 bricks in excel on my laptop and calculated what 1% of capital would be. Now every time we pay off 1% I colour it in with 'ours' in text over the square....very motivating!

Well done on your first OP- it's a nice chunky amount so will have a great impact already

NelliePie

I might have to do that too! The delightful OH is on board with overpaying etc but I'll try any motivation tools in order to keep this going.

And with the OP my thoughts were we didn't have it to start with so we won't miss it!

shangaijimmy

I also use daily interest as a big motivator. We've seen our tumble from £15.93 in May 2010, to £4.88 in May 2017! Daily interest seems to work with Mrs SJ, and to quote her "I feel physically sick", when she realised how much it was at one stage!

I then have the theory that no matter how small the OP its money that i'll never pay interest on again.

MF is definitely a long game, and the hard work in the opening years when it seems to go at a snails pace, really does pay off as everything starts to snowball, which really accelerates our efforts after a few years.

NelliePie

shangaijimmy wrote: »

I also use daily interest as a big motivator. We've seen our tumble from £15.93 in May 2010, to £4.88 in May 2017! Daily interest seems to work with Mrs SJ, and to quote her "I feel physically sick", when she realised how much it was at one stage!

I then have the theory that no matter how small the OP its money that i'll never pay interest on again.

MF is definitely a long game, and the hard work in the opening years when it seems to go at a snails pace, really does pay off as everything starts to snowball, which really accelerates our efforts after a few years.

SJ how did you calculate your daily interest? Or was it provided by your lender / available to track online?

shangaijimmy

I have a spreadsheet that calculates it each month. But a simple way is look at the months interest and divide it by the number of days, e.g. Interest £145.06, divided by 30 days = £4.84.

NelliePie

So just over two months in and I've just checked my credit reports to check everything has updated properly. It's nice to see the new house address on there Its also both scary and satisfying to see the mortgage balance on there too! Scary because it's such a big amount but satisfying too because it's already coming down!

The OP's have had to go on hold for the time being (we only got one in!), as we've had to pay out some unexpected car bills (new brake disks and tyres) and are really focusing on trying to get the wedding (and all the associated gubbins) paid off. The house is livable but needs some updating so these past two months we've been unpacking (what did start rather enthusiastically died off slowly - there's still the odd box in the garage) and also figuring out what we want to do to the house. My partner and I are both young FTB so it's quite exciting to know that we could do pretty much whatever we like to the house (within reason) but with that comes the question of 'well what do we actually want to do? It'll be a slow process getting it the way we want it but we're making a start.

I'm writing this fully expecting not many people to read it, but it's quite therapeutic getting it all out. My best friend/maid of honor is coming to stay with us this weekend and we're going wedding/bridesmaid dress shopping - I've found a local discount warehouse that have a huge selection of 'off the shelf' dresses and according to their website they start from £50! I'm not expecting to find one that suit's and fits for that cheap but we'll see what happens.

Shangijimmy and KittenKirst My partner and I have taken both of your squares ideas and put them on the fridge! Out monthly payment one is a bit larger though 300 squares as it's a 25 year mortgage - they're both a bit bare at the moment as we'rte at the start of our journey but it is nice to have colored a couple of payment squares in!

TL;DR
Credit report not showing mortgage (and it coming down slowly). Over payments on hold due to wedding, car repairs and trying to figure out how we're going to renovate our house.