Reduce to Increase...Towards the Forever Home...

jenni_fer

I signed up to the 2018 mfw challenge last night on a whim so now it's time to try and start my own diary and start as I mean to go on.

Once upon a time I had the notion of being mf by 40, then we had kids and that got delayed. Now I've decided that our current house, whilst lovely, is just not my forever home.

Mortgage Balance is c£160k.

Our current mortgage deal is a 5yr fix, which we are 2.5 years into. The timeframe takes us to the point both kids are in full time school and out currently astronomical childcare bill reduces massively.

We can overpay by 10% a year, we did that this year by way of me changing jobs and having to sell a load of shares but want to do it again for the next 2 years without that help to put us in the best place possible when we are able to move.

Current mortgage rate is 2.4% so I'm planning to use a couple of decent rate regular savers to accumulate payments in before paying into the mortgage just in case I'm being too ambitious but also to try and concentrate our minds on hitting that overpayment. target.

Wish me luck!

HOL82

Hey Jen!

Welcome, I'm pretty new to the MFW diary thing too, just wanted to wish you good luck, I'll keep an eye out for your posts.

HOL x

Thriftmaster1973

Good luck Jennifer on your mortgage free journey.

Stay focused on saving the £££'s every day and you will soon reach your 'overpayment target' on a monthly basis.

I try to treat it as a game in many ways, remember your not alone on the journey to mortgage freedom, loads of us are trying our best to balance the books to overpay the mortgage.

jenni_fer

Hi HOL, will seek out your diary and have a read
Thanks Thriftmaster, I'm a spreadsheet queen so hoping to maintain the focus by the way of formulas and what-if scenarios.

Kittenkirst

Hi Jenni_fer
Nice shiny new diary welcome to the mortgage free wannabe board- I warn you that it becomes a little addictive, especially if you’re a spreadsheet lover

My mortgage is a similar amount now (£162.8k) with a rate of 2.99% so it’s nice to find someone with a similar sized mortgage

Best of luck x

newgirly

Welcome and best of luck with the new diary, mse is a great resource to help you along the way with your aims, there are some wonderful helpful people, reading other mf diaries always helps me.

shangaijimmy

Shiny new diary! I'll give you until New Years Eve before your addiction kicks in! I'd advise a daily account tidy as a great took for motivation and momentum, even in the lean times when Oping seems an impossibility.

greent

Spreadsheets are addictive for mfw-ers! - you can pop in an extra £50/mth and see the cumulative effect, see where you are to where you would have been without OPs, see how long it's expected until you get to your next target (whether that be a balance or daily int figure etc) - such fun!
x
ps - hello and welcome

jenni_fer

Thanks for all the well wishes!
Have spent the evening setting up my 2018 budget spreadsheet and working out just how much I can squeeze our spending to reach my goals.
Next step is to convince DH to change his savings account to something with a higher rate (my regular saver which will mature in Jan was a higher rate than the mortgage so made sense to feed that and then pay a chunk when it matures) as every little helps!
Think I'll spend any downtime over the holidays sorting through the cupboards etc and looking at using things up rather than buying more so that we can have a frugal Jan and get off to a good start for the year.

jenni_fer

Ok.
We will end 2017 with a mortgage balance of £158,690.25
Without any over-payments I estimate our mortgage balance at the end of 2018 will be £151,288.29. I've signed myself up to (almost) the maximum I can overpay on the MFW board...£15k so on that basis I'm hoping our mortgage balance at the end of the year will be c£136k

Tasks for this week:
a) finally get my online login for the mortgage company sorted so I can hopefully overpay and check balances online.
b) cancel the 2% regular saver I'd set up as this is a lower rate to the mortgage so it doesn't make sense to do this really.
c) make a decision on reducing term (Which I've always done in the past) vs monthly payment for 2018. If I am expecting to borrow more before the fix runs out in 2020 then I'm wondering if I'm better to reduce the term so that I can 'afford' to borrow more when we do this, as I'm assuming the existing element of the borrowing would remain on the term it is on? Research needed I think.

Off to make a budget for the first few months of the year, to plan in birthdays and holiday spends and see what I think I can save.
Tomorrow the sorting and using up begins!

jenni_fer

jenni_fer wrote: »

Ok.

Tasks for this week:
a) finally get my online login for the mortgage company sorted so I can hopefully overpay and check balances online.
b) cancel the 2% regular saver I'd set up as this is a lower rate to the mortgage so it doesn't make sense to do this really.
c) make a decision on reducing term (Which I've always done in the past) vs monthly payment for 2018. If I am expecting to borrow more before the fix runs out in 2020 then I'm wondering if I'm better to reduce the term so that I can 'afford' to borrow more when we do this, as I'm assuming the existing element of the borrowing would remain on the term it is on? Research needed I think.

Mortgage login is still not working, but today was the fourth working day and it's the start of Jan so I'll give them a day or two before phoning up and whinging. Would be so nice to log in and see the balance as I start overpaying.

Stupidly forgot that the regular saver doesn't ditch the minute the 12th payment goes in so need to sit on my hands until Feb to make the first payment, won't bother restarting though.

Still undecided on c) think that we are going to forget about trying to move before the fix runs out in which case it probably doesn't matter.

Have had to buy a new tumble drier today as ours went bang just before Xmas and trying to cope without was driving me mad. Looking like it will be Feb before I manage to pay anything