Mortgage Free by 55

VDOT47

Hi EagerLearner - yes, the risk of property price falls over the next 18 months is a worry (especially if the economy suffers as a result of whatever kind of Brexit finally transpires next March), but I suppose we cannot plan for things that are out of our own control!


Sounds like you have got yourself into a very decent position with £200k of equity. I think we are probably on about £140-150k of equity and it feels like hard work to increase that to the level we would like to before being able to move.


I'll take a look at your diary too!

VDOT47

Signature updated after receiving the letter from the lender confirming the new balance and term after our latest overpayment hit the account last week.


Current stats (after 10 months of overpaying):
Balance down from c£264,000 to £242,217 (would have been c£256,500 without any overpayments)
Daily interest down from £15.84 to £14.53
LTV down from 70.59% to 64.82%
End date brought forward by 20 months


I will update these again at the end of October, which will mark a year since I started overpaying.


My next targets I would like to hit are, in order:
Daily Interest below £14
End date brought forward by 2 years
LTV below 60%

VDOT47

Looking to have a really good MSE month from today onwards, following an expensive end to August and start of September. Money just seems to slip away at the moment, and I need to put my finger on where it is going. We are good at keeping our weekly shop down, and keeping energy bills low, getting the best offers, switching etc, but seem to fall down on what you might call 'frivolous' spending (eating out etc). Need a couple of months where we cut back on these treats.


Must try harder!

Stave_74

Hello VDOT47,
I've been reading through your blog and I must say I'm impressed with your commitment to be mortgage free by 55.
You have given me some inspiration to get my own plans back on track.
I was overpaying for around 4 years but stopped around 10 month's ago.
I will continue to follow this thread in order to maintain my own determination.
Thanks

VDOT47

Hi Stave - thanks for reading and for your kind comments.


An interesting development over the past few days - our next door neighbours are putting their house on the market. Their house doesn't have a conservatory (which ours does), so whatever their valuation is I expect it will be slightly less than ours would be worth, but it will be an interesting indication as to where the local market sits at the moment.


We found about about their plans to move about a week ago, and it has prompted us to talk again about when we might want to move - in particular, the concern that the people who move in next door (it's a semi) turn out to be noisy and force us to move sooner than maybe we had planned!


It seems we have 3 options:


1) If the new neighbours turn out to be bad, then we look to move next spring - in this scenario we would have to stay within our local school's catchment area as we wouldn't have yet made DD's school place application and our budget would probably be around £480-500k.


2) Wait until Spring/Summer 2020 (the original plan) - by then we can look in a wider area and the budget would probably be more like up to £525k.


In both of these scenarios, due to the stupid level of house prices in our part of the country, this probably wouldn't be enough to buy us a 'forever home' as it would probably still limit us to semi-detached houses, or smaller detached ones which need lots of work doing to them. As a result, we'd probably be looking at moving again within 10 years.


3) In light of that comment, delay even longer, until the budget reaches a stage where we could afford a 'forever house'.


Unless things change drastically and all of the neighbouring houses with the annoying kids also move over the next 18 months and are replaced by families with nicer, quieter kids (!), it seems that option 3 will not happen, so we are torn between options 1 and 2.


In either scenario, it will help to have the mortgage balance as low as possible - so onwards with the MSE efforts!!

bubblycrazy

I don't really have any advice for you, just to sympathise. It's awful when the neighbours you have affect you so much that you want to move.
Hopefully your new neighbours will be quiet and friendly.
My mam had some horrid neighbours opposite her. They are still there but have calmed down considerably over the last few years!

VDOT47

Thanks Bubblycrazy - let's hope so!


So, neighbour's property went on the market at the weekend for c£380,000. The house is pretty similar in standard/finish to ours I would say, but we do also have a conservatory which they don't and newer windows in the living room, so I would hope that ours would be valued at about £385,000.


This is a relief, as all of my LTV calculations above were on the assumption that the property had at least maintained it's value in the 18 months since we bought it. It seems that it has (and may even have increased slightly in value).


Fairly productive day off work yesterday - got the back lawn mown, the garden weeded a bit and we also had a gardener friend come around to quote for re-landscaping one of the side borders. He said he couldn't do the work, but has recommended a local landscape gardener to speak to and he thinks the cost will be around £600 for what we want doing. It will not necessarily add value to the property as such, but will make the garden look better and will also be lower maintenance, so we think it is worth going ahead with.


Just need to get the decorator to come round to quote for doing the downstairs, staircase and landing now.


Also emptied a lot of rubbish out of the garage and took to the tip, so there is now a bit more order to the garage and more room to move.


Mortgage DD came out this week, so the balance should now be somewhere around £241,500.

VDOT47

Have run our monthly figures projected for month end and, so long as we can stick to budget over the next two weeks, we might have £300-400 to overpay this month.


Add to this October's usual DD and hopefully some sort of overpayment at the end of October of a similar amount and we may just (with a following wind) dip into the £230k's! If not, then definitely we will after November's DD.


Would be great to get below £238k by the end of the year, but it will be a challenge.

VDOT47

A couple of more frugal weeks recently means that I am now very hopeful that this month's overpayment will be closer to £400 (or possibly more) than £300. This will make October's budgets a bit tighter as I will have raided our main account for as much as possible at the end of September, so next month will probably not see an overpayment of that size.


This week has been good so far - only one completely NSD, but I have brought lunches in every day and have only spent about £1 on bits and pieces (mostly fruit) over the 4 days so far.

VDOT47

PS - decorator came round earlier this week and said he thought it would be a week's work and would send us an estimate. Not received it yet and don't really know the going daily rate for a decorator, but it can't be more than £150 per day can it? Can it??