Mortgage Free by 55

VDOT47

I've been having a little look at our emergency savings pot and think it can be rounded down a little. That, in addition to the fact that a regular saver has expired thus freeing up £250 this month, should see me make an overpayment of about £900 at payday later this month.


I think that this should mean that by the first anniversary of taking out the mortgage in February, our balance should be below £250,000! (It started at £270,000). I know a lot of that is from the money transfer, but it is still nice to see the balance start with a 24x!

The amount that has previously been going into the regular saver will, from next month, have to be used to pay PCP for a new car so there is no point using this month's £250 for anything other than an overpayment!

Taking the future monthly PCP payments into account, and the minimum repayments to the money transfer CC, from next month I hope to be able to overpay about £200-250 pcm, although this may be a bit higher initially and then drop to this level once my auto-enrolment pension contributions are required to increase in April.

I will keep up the £300 pcm into another regular saver (and will probably renew when it expires later this year, as the rate is good) and decide what to do with the lump sum when it expires.

I am constantly in a state of flux when deciding how much to have in easy access emergency savings! You read about needing 6 months' expenses, but that seems like quite a lot to me.

greent

Six months does seem a lot - but my husband has had 2 periods without work of around 11 months each time (he was in the stupid position of being too well qualified to be offered lower paid jobs - he tried!) - at which point those savings start to come in very handy! The second time around we were mf, so our outgoings are obviously considerably less.

retireASAP_2

If you're looking at balance transfer cards why not look at one that charges no fees and no interest. Is it worth paying a 3% fee when you can get one for nothing?

VDOT47

Its not a balance transfer, it was a money transfer, and there aren't any cards out there that don't charge an upfront fee (at least, not so far as I am aware of).

VDOT47

Signature updated to show the up to date balance! Definitely plan to have this below £250,000 by the end of the month.


Going to investigate 0% purchase cards in order to stooze some of the costs of the porch extension this year (and the balance of the costs from a new bathroom that we had installed last year on 0% from a well known bathroom company and which is due to be paid in May).

retireASAP_2

We used the Halifax card - 0% interest, no fee, 29 months to pay (you have 90 days after opening the account to do free transfers, after which there is a fee). When the deal comes to an end you can find another 0% interest no fee deal - that way your funds can be sat elsewhere earning you a decent amount of interest or used to pay your mortgage down - unfortunately as a new user I'm unable to post the link to the card site - but it's detailed in the MSE weekly email.

VDOT47

Ah ok, didn't spot that one. Too late now though as the money is now in the mortgage account!


Went for the new car, so that will deplete mortgage overpayment capability quite a bit. Will have to find other ways to keep the overpayments up (cashback, surveys etc).

VDOT47

Received the written confirmation from mortgagee that the recent overpayment has been received, and that this now reduces the remaining term to 22 years and 9 months, which I calculate to be October 2040. At the outset, the mortgage would have run to February 2042, so the overpayment so far seem to have brought this forward by 16 months :-)


Target for 2018 is to get the balance below £235,000 (about £8000 of the reduction through overpayments, the rest through the natural capital reduction through the repayment schedule).


First thing, to complete the home insurance renewal in the next 2 weeks and do so using Quidco for some cashback which can then go into the pot once it is received.


Car insurance will need to be changed onto the new car in the next week too, and then renewed in April, so will be doing price comparisons there and claiming cashback if possible too.

VDOT47

NSD yesterday which is a rarity.


Today will be more spendy, as I collect the new car tonight so will need some petrol for that (and, annoyingly will waste about 1/3 tank of petrol in my old car when it is returned as part exchange - bad planning!).

VDOT47

Received reimbursement of my unused car tax on the old car today - £79.16, which will get paid in today and then added to this month's overpayment pot!


On the downside, an additional £26.38 on my car insurance for the remainder of the year (to April) for changing the car on the policy.


Have been approved for a 0% purchase card with a nice £10,000 credit limit, so that will come in handy for the various things we need to buy this year for the porch extension, downstairs toilet etc.