44 months to 40

starnac

I've been around the DFW boards for 9 years and in that time DH and I have paid off a lot of debt. We have been debt free for about a year now and it's so nice not to worry about paying other people.

We've enjoyed having spare money, not that we have wasted it mind you, but we haven't been as careful as we could have been. You know the sort of thing, takeaways instead of eating out of the stores, buying items without looking around for a best price, that sort of thing. But we've come to a decision that we need to get back on the MSE wagon.

As the title of the thread says, I am 40 in 44 months time. By that point (or there about) we would like to be moving into our forever home. We were only meant to live here for 5 years before buying our forever home and that was 8 years ago!:eek:

We have a 44-month plan. It may not be the best way to do things but we've looked at a lot of ways we can do this and this was our favourite.

We currently live in a 4 bed terrace with a mortgage balance of £59,199.30. The plan is to pay down the mortgage and build up savings in a high interest savings account over the next 44 months. We will remortgage this house to a BTL and rent it out to use as part of our retirement plan. Our forever home will be bought with a mixture of savings, some equity from this house and a small mortgage.

Like I said, it's probably not the best way to do it but it's the best way we have come up with. In the next post I will post some figures.

starnac

Okay so our mortgage currently stands at £59,199.30
Interest rate is 2.04% with a daily interest rate of £3.31


We can overpay 10% of the balance on 31st December 2017 which is a figure of £6,030.51 This is until our fixed rate is up in August 2019.


We are currently saving £200 a month in a 5% savings account. This is for 12 months at which point the interest rate will drop to pretty much nothing so we will move the money into something like a 3year bond, depending on interest rates. We will then open a new high interest monthly savings account and do the same thing again.


We have separate accounts for yearly bills and emergency savings.

starnac

I have just made a £200 overpayment and my first target is to "pay off" the yearly interest amount. Which should be around £1,208.15.


Thank you if you have got this far

gaffel

Welcome back to the boards! I came back after a 3 year absence and have found doing a diary, even if no one but myself reads it, helps me keep on track!

Moneyfordreams

welcome, good luck with your plans... bad habits are much easier to slip into than good ones. I have many

starnac

gaffel wrote: »

Welcome back to the boards! I came back after a 3 year absence and have found doing a diary, even if no one but myself reads it, helps me keep on track!

Hi gaffel, thanks for popping in. Yes, when I was a DFW I found keeping a diary kept me on track. I think that's what happened to be honest. Once I didn't have debt, I felt like I didn't belong on the board so stopped writing my diary on there. Without keeping track we slipped into bad habits. Do you have a diary here?

Moneyfordreams wrote: »

welcome, good luck with your plans... bad habits are much easier to slip into than good ones. I have many

Hmm, yes that's true! I read somewhere that a habit takes 21 times to form but only 3times to break it! That doesn't seem fair somehow

CathT

Sounds like update have a sensible plan in place. Congratulations on working hard to be debt free.

starnac

CathT wrote: »

Sounds like update have a sensible plan in place. Congratulations on working hard to be debt free.

Thank you. It took us a while but we had a lot of life changes in that time too. New jobs, new baby etc. We are now pretty much settled so it's time to look at the next stage. I need a plan to keep me on track.

beanielou

Happy shiney new diary

starnac

Thanks beanie and welcome.

It was my payday on friday and all bills went out today. We get paid twice a month as DH and I have different paydays. I get paid at the end of the month and most of our bills come out on the 1st. Then DH gets paid on the 15th when our mortgage and council tax goes out so the rest then goes for shopping and other things we need.

Last month I moved extra to our savings and made an OP so our joint account is looking rather pathetic at the moment. It doesn't matter as all bills have been paid but I have got into a habit of liking a healthy balance as I'm afraid of going into our overdraft again.
Not that that's likely to happen as there is still £200 in the account but after years of struggling with debt I get a bit twitchy!

starnac

Bank account is looking a bit healthier as some money we were owed has gone in. I also need to put in a claim for my expenses as I bet they add up to a pretty penny by now!

As the extra money went in, I signed DD up for the 5 day course she wants to do over the summer. She normally does *something* over the holidays so I don't mind paying £100 for this course. DS is more of a home bird and is very shy so isn't as keen on doing activity weeks like his sister. He did say yes to a 4hour long Minecr4ft course though! And that's only £8! He's happy, I'm happy