Finally Debt Free After 34 Years, But Still Need to Live Frugally

Sun_Addict

It’s great to hear you sounding more positive and making plans for your garden. I love the mortgage chart, what a good idea. Anything you can overpay will all help to reduce the term even if it’s only by a couple of months. Onwards and upwards.

beanielou

Love the mortgage chart.
Lovely idea to buy the bee house & other bits & bobs.

HairyHandofDartmoor

Sun_Addict said:

It’s great to hear you sounding more positive and making plans for your garden. I love the mortgage chart, what a good idea. Anything you can overpay will all help to reduce the term even if it’s only by a couple of months. Onwards and upwards.

beanielou said:

Love the mortgage chart.
Lovely idea to buy the bee house & other bits & bobs.

Thanks Beanie and SA . I quite enjoyed making the chart  🤣. I'm very thankful that DH and I will be mortgage free before we retire.

milann

It good to hear you’ll be mortgage free before you retire. Must be very stressful trying to manage a mortgage on a pension.

IzzyBee

Great idea the mortgage chart I didn’t have a big mortgage but the relief when it was paid was fantastic 

Fidelia

I love your mortgage  chart, HHoD.  It's so neat !  When I was drowning in debt I made a  chart so I could colour in each month until my DMP debt free date.  I needed to show almost 6 years on it and wanted to see it all at a glance so used squared graph paper, fairly big squares so the 'months gone' were obvious..  I  taped several pages together so I could see it all in one long row. I kept it concertinaed in my diary  so it wasn't on show anywhere  It wasn't neat like yours, just purely for my eyes only. I used to carefully infold it at regular intervals to see how far I'd come. It certainly helped my motivation.  I still have it as a reminder of the long hard slog to become debt free, and as a warning never to get into that miserable state again!  Definitely one piece of ephemera that will never be decluttered.

Parkyp

Your mortgage chart is a great idea. I feel you pay your mortgage every month and forget about it. It’ll will be so nice to see when there are more coloured squares than blank ones. 

jwil

I hope things feel a bit better soon.  This lockdown is dragging and the miserable weather doesn't help.  Hopefully things will start to ease off soon.  I love the plans for your garden, and the mortgage free chart.  It's a great idea to squirrel little bits to the mortgage too, it's amazing how those small amounts add up but we don't really miss them.

foxgloves

Agree mortgage chart will be motivating. Honestly, it feels amazing making that last payment. You suddenly find yourself being able to save much more & realise where a big wodge of your income has been going every month. I think this gets overlooked really as it is kind of different to other consumer debt & ot suddenly hits you that finances/budgets will look very different without it.
I bet you will really enjoy seeing those coloured squares mount up. 
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

milann said:

It good to hear you’ll be mortgage free before you retire. Must be very stressful trying to manage a mortgage on a pension.

Thanks Milann . Yes it is a relief to know that as it will be a significant saving and will make it easier to live on our pensions.

IzzyBee said:

Great idea the mortgage chart I didn’t have a big mortgage but the relief when it was paid was fantastic 

Thanks Izzy . I can't wait to be mortgage free.

Fidelia said:

I love your mortgage  chart, HHoD.  It's so neat !  When I was drowning in debt I made a  chart so I could colour in each month until my DMP debt free date.  I needed to show almost 6 years on it and wanted to see it all at a glance so used squared graph paper, fairly big squares so the 'months gone' were obvious..  I  taped several pages together so I could see it all in one long row. I kept it concertinaed in my diary  so it wasn't on show anywhere  It wasn't neat like yours, just purely for my eyes only. I used to carefully infold it at regular intervals to see how far I'd come. It certainly helped my motivation.  I still have it as a reminder of the long hard slog to become debt free, and as a warning never to get into that miserable state again!  Definitely one piece of ephemera that will never be decluttered.

Thanks Fidelia . I used a ruler and measured it all out. I was pleased to get it all on one sheet of A4. I've got lists of all the debts we owed and the monthly amounts we had to repay and I keep it as a reminder of how much money we're saving now we're debt free I agree that it's a warning never to get into debt again.

Parkyp said:

Your mortgage chart is a great idea. I feel you pay your mortgage every month and forget about it. It’ll will be so nice to see when there are more coloured squares than blank ones. 

Thanks Parky . Yes we've been paying the mortgage for years and not really celebrating that it's going down.

jwil said:

I hope things feel a bit better soon.  This lockdown is dragging and the miserable weather doesn't help.  Hopefully things will start to ease off soon.  I love the plans for your garden, and the mortgage free chart.  It's a great idea to squirrel little bits to the mortgage too, it's amazing how those small amounts add up but we don't really miss them.

Thanks Jwil . I'm quite keen on the idea of small overpayments.

foxgloves said:

Agree mortgage chart will be motivating. Honestly, it feels amazing making that last payment. You suddenly find yourself being able to save much more & realise where a big wodge of your income has been going every month. I think this gets overlooked really as it is kind of different to other consumer debt & ot suddenly hits you that finances/budgets will look very different without it.
I bet you will really enjoy seeing those coloured squares mount up. 
F x

Thanks Foxgloves . We don't pay as much as some but our mortgage payments are about £440 a month which is a significant chunk of our income. When we've paid it off I'd like to put that same sum away for our retirement instead.