The next £10k - Part One

Chateau_D'Argent

Well hello there!

Here's to a shiny new diary! I've been lurking on these boards for a long time, and felt it was time to start my own diary. There has been so much inspiration on here, along with lovely, like minded people. Although my OH is on board with my MFW [STRIKE]obsession[/STRIKE] goal, I do see their eyes glaze over if I talk about it too much. :rotfl:

The mortgage now stands at the delightfully round figure of £150,000. We have been overpaying ever since we got the mortgage, but as we live in the South East, it's been a journey just to get to this figure. It's also going to be a further journey to get this figure down to zero, hence the title: I'm focussing on the next £10k.

I'd like to get to this within the next year (so, just squeezing into July 2019), but ideally sooner. We have a standard overpayment set up, so this might be a very boring diary of updates on Mortgage Payment Day (MPD) - my favourite financial day of the month

In the meantime, to help give me motivation, I may post successes: NSDs, the odd TT and any other welcome news that will positively impact that figure!

Chateau

VDOT47

Welcome, and good luck!


Do you mean £10,000 of overpayments in the year, or reducing the balance by £10,000 (ie. regular capital payments and overpayments)?

Chateau_D'Argent

Thanks, VDOT47.

Good point! I think I'd prefer to get down to £140k (so capital and overpayments) and as soon as possible! I like my nice round numbers. I know we will do this easily within the year, but I should sort out a stretch target. Who doesn't like a challenge?

erin_transport

Great goal

Chateau_D'Argent

Thanks, Erin_Transport! It's lovely to have support around getting the mortgage down.

And today is the best financial day of the month: Mortgage Payment Day. Yay! Well, actually it was yesterday but the transfers didn't clear until today.

So our total now stands at £148,853.52. Frankly, that £3.52 is bugging me. Soooooo, with a little bit of money magic, !!!!!!! A TT to the mortgage and it's now £148,850.00. That's better!

Right. Goals.

I've done a very rough and ready calculation and we have two options: either push to reduce the mortgage to the next £10k in seven months rather than eight OR aiming for £135k outstanding after 12 months. I'm leaning towards the second option - it gives us more time and I like the stretch with that additional £5k. :-)

We've also just booked a very expensive holiday for the end of the calendar year. It will be worth it (it will!) but golly, the cost is the only thing that's floating around in my mind at the moment. So, my mini goal is to save £500 towards spending money for this holiday. This is any extra money we are able to glean from our lives: using the Bay to sell items we don't need, any extra income, cashback (I used to do this religiously, but it's slipped of late).

Additionally, we have become a bit... lax around our spending of late. It's meant that we haven't actually saved this month, which makes me a bit jumpy. I'm going to let us spend as we are now for the next month and then sit and review our decisions. I think we have become a bit complacent. So the next mini-goal is to tighten up and any extra savings that could be made moved to that 'holiday fund' goal.

So, there is definitely areas we can work on. I'll be back to post on our progress - the accountability is very motivating!

Chateau

NorthernPeach

You just inspired me to send across a mini overpayment, thankyou!

Good luck on your mortgage free journey, I like your idea of breaking it down in to more manageable chunks :T

julicorn

A very belated happy new diary!

I think stretch targets can be really motivating, and so can be more short-term targets. But then, I'm setting myself lots of long-, mid- and short-term targets because I'm one of those people who gets way too much satisfaction from being able to cross things off a list :rotfl: