FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

ShelleyC_2

4 out of 6 is fab. I also think £10,000+ off your mortgage should be counted as a success. Its so motivating seeing people doing so brilliantly. Keep on inspiring me please.

shopgirl2512

I think you're doing fabulously! Well done!

gallygirl

The question is how much progress would have been made if you hadn't been focusing on these things? Well done FB :T

financialbliss

financialbliss wrote: »

However I've recently decided on an actual target for 31/12/2008 and that's 59,500. It's a little over the 57,xxx, but I'm nearly 100% sure that I'll achieve the revised target.

...and just to make sure I do make that target, I made a 5 pound overpayment yesterday, bringing the November total payment to 1,055. With a total December payment also of 1,055, I should be within a pound or two of 59,500 come 31st December.

Actually considering attempting to guess / project the interest come the last few days of December and making an overpayment of a pound or so try try and hit 59,500 exactly come 31st December. Nice round figure to start 2009 with.

Many thanks everyone for your continued support and well wishes.

FB.

StuartGMC

FB
I think you can err on the positive side here; initial aspirations and targets are fine but should be open to review and appropriate modification over the elapsed time afterwards (just wish that were true of the P&L at work!), otherwise you are not actively working at them but rather have then put aside like New Year resolutions.

You have done very well against tough targets and you are far above the baseline position necessary to repay on lenders mortgage term. Perhaps that's another angle to take in our assessments of progress; targets have to be a stretch but don't forget the position you started from?

Well done

aliwali

Hi FinancialBliss

I've just spent 4 hours reading your diary!!! So thought I'd better pop in and say hi. Makes very interesting reading, as we are hoping to start overpaying next year. I think the single most important thing I can take away is to have a date in mind to work towards. Going to have to number crunch to come up with one.

I too am looking foward to getting the 2.45% pay increase in November. I work part time and I hope to get about £500 before tax backdated pay so will be great.

I'll be following your diary with interest. Thanks for making my evening so interesting.

financialbliss

aliwali wrote: »

Hi FinancialBliss

I've just spent 4 hours reading your diary!!! So thought I'd better pop in and say hi. Makes very interesting reading, as we are hoping to start overpaying next year. I think the single most important thing I can take away is to have a date in mind to work towards. Going to have to number crunch to come up with one.

I too am looking foward to getting the 2.45% pay increase in November. I work part time and I hope to get about £500 before tax backdated pay so will be great.

I'll be following your diary with interest. Thanks for making my evening so interesting.

Hey aliwali,

Just popping in for a quick check of MSE before I turn in. One browser refresh later and I see I've had a reply. Many thanks for taking the time to post / say hi.

I'd certainly agree with you on a date to work towards. In fact I'd give 3 general mortgage pointers and perhaps in this order too:

1 - Budget properly. Our original mortgage free goal should not have been too much of a stretch, except I'd got too excited about seeing the light at the end of the mortgage free tunnel. As my budget was a bit out, we're playing catch up, which is that much harder.

2. Have a goal to work towards. Once you've got a realistic idea of what spare extra cash you can afford to put towards the mortgage, throw the figures into an on-line calculator or a spreadsheet, to see where it gets you.

I think placing a mark on the ground in terms of my mortgage free date was, and still is a good driving force which keeps me focused. Still determined to attain 12/12/12, in fact perhaps more so now.

3 - Understand your mortgage product. I'd recommend getting to know what you can and can't do with your mortgage product. I know I'm on daily interest, I know my rate is 4.79% until 2011 and by logging the interest once a month, I can determine monthly and daily interest rates, thus I can see the effects of the overpayments.


As for the diary, I started off a bit timidly, but I find that I'm enjoying the time I put aside to MSE and this diary. I try to make for interesting reading, mainly concentrating on the mortgage, as that is the grand plan, but sometime straying onto other topic areas. I also ask questions, and get excellent answers - sometimes I wonder - why didn't I think of that. There's also quite a few "regulars" that help give a balanced view.

Look forward to some postings from you, either here or elsewhere, especially as you start your overpayments in 2009.

Best of luck towards your goal,

Financial Bliss.

aliwali

Hi again

Just worked out my daily interest is about £14.81, that's a real shocker. We are on a base rate tracker at +0.48% so it should go down from next month but it still makes me think how much money the bank is making out of me and loads of other people.

MrsNut

Hi FB, Fantastic thread!

I've browsed my way through it over the last week or so, and as a result
1) I set up a second standing order to overpay on my Nationwide mortgage - we took out an extra £25000 loan just under three years ago, to buy property (not a buy-to-let) so can overpay by two lots of £500 a month - I'd been making regular overpayments, but your thread inspired me to do more
2) I've spent some time today number-crunching to see when we can realistically aim to be debt-free (having three endowments earmarked to pay off the mortgage) and I rcekon, even on worst case scenarios, we will clear the lot when the third matures in August 2013 - so the overpayments are being upped to achieve that!

Thank's for the inspiration - keep posting

financialbliss

aliwali wrote: »

Just worked out my daily interest is about £14.81, that's a real shocker.

Hi again aliwali,

Ouch! quite a big number. A while ago someone replied and mentioned spreadsheets, so I was going to draft up a feature post giving some background into spreadsheets I use. Still haven't got around to this - one for another day.

I have a "balances" spreadsheet. Here I log a number of accounts manually every Sunday to a sheet. Just in case anyone wonders why, I've got child trust fund and child savings accounts set up in MS Money. You can determine your net worth, but this is going to be skewed by money I don't really consider mine, ie child accounts.

From this balances sheet, I log each Sunday the mortgage balance and you can do things like min, max and average on the mortgage, average out over a month - this is where I get the figures from for the mortgage balance summary sheet on page1 by the way.

To get to my point, I've taken the first two weeks from 2004 when I logged the current mortgage, ie 95,074.80 and 95,162.07, taken one from another to get 87.27 interest per week. Divide by 7 and that was 12.47 interest per day at my mortgage outset. This compares to 7.89 at present.

Over 4.50 a day different in interest or 1,671 per year less in interest charged.

Financial Bliss.