Mortgage Free by 55

greent

If you log in to your z1ffit account you can see where they are up to with your transaction. They can sometimes take a week to actually check your items once received if they have a back log - I think they work through the parcels in date-received order. If you only posted it on 13/11 though it usually takes 2-3 days to get to them - and then has to be processed at their end and then the payment processed, so a week is fine. I find it's usually 7-10 days, have had up to 14 I think.

VDOT47

I've actually now had an email from them saying our payment is 'on its way'. So hopefully should arrive soon!

greent

They're pretty good at keeping you updated

VDOT47

Through a combination of a very frugal month, a current account switch bonus, a small Ziffit payment and some additional savings that could be redirected towards the mortgage I have just managed an overpayment of £825.61 for this month.


Changes the stats to:

Balance down from c£264,000 to £238,305
Daily interest down from £15.84 to £14.30
LTV down from 70.59% to 63.72%


December will, of course, be a more spendy month so I don't expect to make very much of an overpayment at all next month. Will do my best though.

VDOT47

Latest statement through from lender shows balance actually at £238,300, so marginally better than expected! End date also brought forward another month to March 2040. Signature updated accordingly.


A quiet weekend, under budget for the week too, so happy with that. Need this week to be under budget too, before the Christmas expenses start to kick in!


Car needs a service early January too, but it is only 18 months old so I'm hoping not much will need doing!

VDOT47

Also got through my car tax renewal which needs doing by year end. Only £30 though, as it is a relatively new car!


Just about muddling through on budget so far for this month. Have a potentially expensive weekend lined up though, so it may be tough to stick to budget right to the end of the month. Luckily payday is earlier this month, which effectively brings our month end forwards by a few days!

VDOT47

Month end done - £409 overpaid.


Annual overpayments equalled £16,484.68. Of this £10,800 was the credit card money transfer and £5684.68 was from the monthly overpayments from budget savings etc


Mortgage balance at year end should be about £237,135.


I probably won't log on again until its 2019 - have a great Christmas and New Year!

VDOT47

Morning all - Happy New Year!


Very much enjoyed the break and we even stayed more or less within budget I think!


Got our invoice through from DD's nursery at the end of December and the effect of getting the 'free' 30 hours a week has been to reduce our monthly bill by about £130, which all helps.


I have a couple of regular savers maturing this month, so the capital from them will go into the larger savings pot (earmarked for future moving costs) and the interest payments on them will be put towards this month's overpayment. I will then find 2 new regular saver accounts to use for the next 12 months.


Target this year is to overpay £5000, so basically £400 pcm on average.

VDOT47

I've just been having a read back over my posts from this time last year and saw that our home insurance was renewed last January, which means that is another cost that needs to be accounted for this month on renewal!


Together with £44 for an oven clean next week (not very MSE I know, but it is a horrible job), £30 car tax paid last week, car being serviced next week and having just paid £424 for a week at Center Parcs in March and our projected finances for the rest of this month look a bit stretched!


Balance is currently just over £237k, so DD and overpayment in January should get this below £236k and then the normal DD in February might just squeeze us below £235k by the 2nd anniversary of moving into the house! This would mean our balance had dropped by £35k in 2 years.

VDOT47

Service came in at £168. Not too bad I suppose.


Finances are looking very stretched now. Luckily I have the interest from 2 maturing regular savers this month to help prop up the mortgage overpayment a little bit, and actually our 'normal' budget ie. week by week shopping and bills etc (not one off expenses like holidays and car things) is pretty good this month, so hopefully we'll have some spare in that pot too. If I can do £300 overpayment this month I'll be happy. It is less than the hoped for £400 pcm, but most months won't have this many additional expenses in them (I hope) so there is plenty of scope to play catch up!


We have got a decorator coming around before the end of the month though, to redecorate the whole of our downstairs, stairs and landing. He is only charging £600 including materials, but we will also then need to buy light fittings, carpets and some curtains for the window on the landing, so I expect the whole job will costs over £1000 once all taken into account. Luckily, this is why we have an emergency savings pot - not that re-decorating is an 'emergency' but it is still a real one-off item that we will pay for from the savings pot.