MFi3: Mortgage-free by Christmas 2010 - diary of a MFW Martian

[Deleted User]

Well, the evil deed is done...

As of 1 February, we'll be on a two-year tracker mortgage @ 6.13% (with no reservation fee, yah!) with a total term of three years. So if we make no overpayments at all, the mortgage will be paid off in January 2011 - only a month away from our target.

So the new goal is - by how many months can we beat the target!

[Deleted User]

I have absolutely no idea how Nationwide calculates its Tracker mortgage monthly repayments.

In the first month we paid around £1602. Then the BOE reduced interest rates, and we received a letter saying our repayments had gone up (???) to £1627 a month. Now interest rates have been reduced again, and our repayments have gone down - to somewhere in the region of £1570 a month.

I swear they're making this stuff up. I'm not entirely sure that a half-point drop in interest rates on a three-year £54k mortgage would make a difference of £30 or more a month (it should be about £10, according to any mortgage calculator I can find), and there's certainly no way a quarter-point drop should result in a rise in repayments. I think some guy at Nationwide is determining our repayments based on dice rolls...

But... as of today, we owe the bank less than £50k - happy days! :beer:

mdhughes03

Hello
hope you changed your monthly payment date-you were spot on about the daily rate of interest.

good luck!

[Deleted User]

(Reposted due to major edit.)

mdhughes03 wrote: »

Hello
hope you changed your monthly payment date-you were spot on about the daily rate of interest.

good luck!

Thanks! We haven't managed to do that yet, as it means making two mortgage payments out of one month's pay - which is challenging to say the least. It's still on our to-do list, though.

In other news, I'm in the process of transferring my ISA to a new provider. A&L's Direct ISA Issue 4 currently offers 6.25% interest, though that includes a 1% bonus if I stick with them until May 2009 (if I get out earlier, it only gets me 5.25%, so essentially I'm committing to staying with them for thirteen months).

We've also decided to take the opportunity offered by ScottishPower to get out of our current contract, sign up with npower and (hopefully) get some wine out of Virgin Wines for our trouble. (Thanks, uswitch.) Now waiting to hear back from the companies concerned. Happy days... :cool:

We've abandoned this idea, owing in part to this lengthy thread concerning npower's business practices, and also owing to my rechecking what our actual savings would be, based on more accurate figures and given that the full discounts would be contingent upon our staying with the same supplier for a twelve-month period. Now I need to cancel the, er, cancellation of the contract with ScottishPower and inform npower that we won't be requiring their services after all... funfunfun...!

In other other news, I figured out what's going on with Nationwide - it looks like they've reduced the monthly payments to "realign" them with the remaining 2y 9m term. As we're now in the situation that it takes about £1200 in overpayments to reduce the term by a single month, if interest rates keep changing on a regular basis then this is likely to become a regular occurrence. Which kind of defeats the point of setting our overpayments to reduce the term, rather than reducing our monthly payments...

mike1967

Hi, Marvin i'd like to see your maths... as I'd like to pay off my mortgage as soon as possible.

I'll throw some figures at you...

97K left to pay - Woolwich tracker - no redemtion fee, can pay off as much as I like without penalties.

rate is £ 770.00 (ish) a month, and i'm paying £ 1000.00.

I have 18K just sitting in my savings, and this is being added to at a conservative £ 1000.00 a month. So 12k a year.

I did have lots more in savings but used this to part buy a commercial property for my pension.

I have an endowment thats worth 20K, not associated to the mortgage as i change to repayment but kept this 'saving' going - it's never going to reach the 60K it's supposed to!!

I've enough cash in my wallet after the above, for the usual 'life' requirements i.e. car, holidays, food, heat, entertainment:)

I'm on target for a 24K bonus at the end of this financial year. So this could be another big chunk off the mortgage next march.

saying all that, when the property market realigns itself. I'd like to purchase a larger place.

Your views, comments ?

[Deleted User]

Forgive me if I'm being dim, but I'm not sure what you're asking me for(!)

mike1967

you suggested you had some scripted calculator for calculating savings ?

[Deleted User]

mike1967 wrote: »

you suggested you had some scripted calculator for calculating savings ?

Ah! Yes, I wrote a Perl script some time ago to calculate the effect of my overpayments. It's not really for public consumption, though - it's not exactly well-written (it was hacked together in the small hours in a bout of insomnia), and it's only any good to people who have a machine with Perl installed on it and confident enough with scripting languages to edit the script manually to put their own figures in. I also make no guarantees that the calculations I've used are even correct!

If that hasn't put you off, though, you can download it at http://lomjar.myby.co.uk/mortgage_calc.pl

[Deleted User]

Mortgage overpayments have temporarily been suspended - not only did the car have to go in for its service and MOT (and the inevitable repairs), but also the washing machine decided to die spectacularly on us (requiring the replacement of the wall socket to which it had been connected, not to mention an as-yet-unordered new washing machine). What with this and taking the cats on numerous trips to the vet earlier this year, this has been a significantly more expensive year than normal so far, and our reserves are drastically depleted.

clarew

Never mind, keep the faith and the mindset you have, and it will soon be a smaller mortgage than it should have been originally! Maybe just head for easter instead of christmas! If you make the original target then its a bonus.