Our quest for mortgage neutrality

The_frugal_fairy

I wanted to start a monthly diary to focus and push us on our quest to be mortgage free.

I have been reading lots of diaries and looking at our paperwork.
• Our fixed rates end next year (on main mortgage and further advance) so I am planning to fix for another two years as the rate is so much better than the standard variable.
• As we have already overpaid the mortgage the repayments should decrease substantially, we can overpay 10% of each original balance which we are able to do at present, so the extra saved on the monthly payments will be put in a savings account. I think a regular saver looks a good option.
• So for us I will look at the mortgage balance when we re-fix next year and the amount saved to give us the outstanding balance, like an informal offset.

Ways to focus on the mission are listed below, happy to have more suggestions
• Colour in the cell in the spreadsheet every time we drop to the next thousand.
• Spreadsheet set up to monitor daily interest and each month end balance.
• Sell things we no longer need.
• Declutter, makes you realise what you have and buy less.
• Set budgets for monthly spending.
• Start MSE diary.
• When we pay off each £10k have a treat !!!128522;

So as of the 1st of May 2018 the balance of both mortgages is £56,443.85

louloubelle79

Good luck on your MF journey :money:

The_frugal_fairy

Thank you. It felt good to get my thoughts organised and I am looking forward to updating in June.

shangaijimmy

Welcome onboard. You'll be obsessed in no time!

The_frugal_fairy

Hello, I'm already obsessed on seeing the balance and daily interest go down. I have really enjoyed other people's diaries and ideas. I thought this was the place to find like minded people

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary

The_frugal_fairy

Thank you beanielou. It has renewed my enthusiasm.


It will be interesting to see the daily interest reduction at the end of the month, how much we can overpay and if we get some more 'bricks' to colour in. I going to get listing over the weekend to try and increase the overpayment.

beanielou

Happy listing!

gallygirl

The_frugal_fairy wrote: »

Ways to focus on the mission are listed below, happy to have more suggestions
• Colour in the cell in the spreadsheet every time we drop to the next thousand.
• Spreadsheet set up to monitor daily interest and each month end balance.
• Sell things we no longer need.
• Declutter, makes you realise what you have and buy less.
• Set budgets for monthly spending.
• Start MSE diary.
• When we pay off each £10k have a treat !!!128522;

You could try adding some of these to your spreadsheets:
- Initial pay off date and revised pay off date - days saved
- As above - days remaining to revised pay off date
- Interest saved
- % paid off (based on whatever you want - % of house price/current value/starting mortgage/start of MSE journey - all or some of them!)
- In addition to the current situation spreadsheet have one where you build in future assumptions. How much is needed to knock another month off the mortgage end date? This works even better if you have a daily calculations spreadsheet and make overpayments during the month on fixed days - e.g. if you are committing to £100 from your wages then pay that on a different day to your mortgage payment, maybe another £10 when x happens, another £100 when there are council tax free months, £150 when z loan is paid off etc. Multiple projected payments means you will need less to knock a period of time off - it's much more inspiring to know you only need to find £18.62 to knock a day off rather than £597 to knock a month off!
- Total overpaid
- Total overpaid vs total of normal payments
- Monthly figures showing the % of capital repaid against interest charged - it's gratifying to see the capital % rise!
- Actual mortgage figure and unofficial offset figure.

Basically, there are loads of different things you can do. All take time to set up on a spreadsheet but once set up you'll have lots of different things to [STRIKE]waste time obsessing over[/STRIKE] monitor and there is always progress on one of them to keep you interested. Personally I loved seeing how much I needed to knock off another day, then trying to find it from somewhere!

The_frugal_fairy

gallygirl wrote: »

You could try adding some of these to your spreadsheets:
- Initial pay off date and revised pay off date - days saved
- As above - days remaining to revised pay off date
- Interest saved
- % paid off (based on whatever you want - % of house price/current value/starting mortgage/start of MSE journey - all or some of them!)
- In addition to the current situation spreadsheet have one where you build in future assumptions. How much is needed to knock another month off the mortgage end date? This works even better if you have a daily calculations spreadsheet and make overpayments during the month on fixed days - e.g. if you are committing to £100 from your wages then pay that on a different day to your mortgage payment, maybe another £10 when x happens, another £100 when there are council tax free months, £150 when z loan is paid off etc. Multiple projected payments means you will need less to knock a period of time off - it's much more inspiring to know you only need to find £18.62 to knock a day off rather than £597 to knock a month off!
- Total overpaid
- Total overpaid vs total of normal payments
- Monthly figures showing the % of capital repaid against interest charged - it's gratifying to see the capital % rise!
- Actual mortgage figure and unofficial offset figure.

Basically, there are loads of different things you can do. All take time to set up on a spreadsheet but once set up you'll have lots of different things to [STRIKE]waste time obsessing over[/STRIKE] monitor and there is always progress on one of them to keep you interested. Personally I loved seeing how much I needed to knock off another day, then trying to find it from somewhere!

That is fantastic advice, I thought I would see which of these I can answer and which need working on

1 Pay off day is 2031, hoping to get to mortgage neutrality 2020, so roughly 11 years
2 So to mortgage freedom hoping to be 24 months
3 Percentage remaining as of today 36.29
4 I have a monthly and yearly plan. I have the carry forward, add interest less repayments, overpayments that we have ringfenced and bonus repayments. I try to get to the next £1,000 below if we can.
5. Total overpaid I see this as security if we needed to take a break on the mortgage. At the moment we are over 3.5 years on both.
6.Offset will start next year when we fix again.

The other things I am doing at the moment is tracking the two year fix rate it is 1.94% at the moment . I think I last got 1.49% last time. So trying to get the maximum 10% of original balance repayments on both mortgages before we refix.

Also keep doing lovely graphs and percentage reduction in the interest rate.

The_frugal_fairy

So as of the 1st of June the balance of both mortgages is £55,800.31.

!!!8226; A capital reduction of £643.54, less than normal due to some unexpected expenses, result is emergency fund now started.:eek:
!!!8226; One brick coloured in.
Money saving activities
!!!8226; 3 bay sales, more things found to list too.
!!!8226; Decluttering for a local charity collection.
!!!8226; Checked if we can save with a water meter and I think the answer is not.
!!!8226; Food budget followed.
!!!8226; Current account switch started.
!!!8226; Forward projections done to try and achieve the balance starting with 4 in August. Very excited about this target.:j:j:j:j:j
!!!8226; Checked the mortgage rate for when we remortgage next year. Done some sums regarding the early repayment charges.