The first hurdle - Nichelette v the huge mortgage

Nichelette

Thanks Bach . It's a target rather than a done deal, but it's always best to have something to aim for as motivation.

I haven't heard of that site, I will definitely have a look. I used to do loads of different ones when I was a student but now I'm only really doing consumer pulse, pinecone and yougov.

I'm continuing with my flood of small overpayments . I've made several this weekend from my matched betting profits. It could have been a lot more because of grand national offers this weekend but I can't bring myself to bet on horses because I'm a massive animal lover and I feel a bit uneasy about it.

Anyway, I'll have a look at my figures this evening and see what my overpayments for the weekend amount to as I'm likely to make some more today.

Nichelette

Okay, so since my last update on the 2nd I've overpaid £505.39. £384.56 was from clearing one of our current accounts as I know we won't need that money before we're paid again, and the rest is matched betting profit from the weekend. I made a bit more but some is in my 'bank' for the matched betting.

I'm hoping to have a bit more left in the other current account which will be overpaid on the 14th.

I got my car tax renewal so I'll pay that on the 15th, but we should also (fingers and toes crossed) be getting 2 weeks rent overpayment back from Clarion soon, though they did ignore us for 3 months before I wrote to our MP so I'm not holding my breath.

My spreadsheet says I've overpaid £2332.39 since I started on the 27th March which I'm really happy with.

I haven't looked at what the outstanding balance is yet as Halifax still hasn't updated, but I'll work it out and update my signature.

Nichelette

Bit more progress today. I've reached the threshold for £20 on shoppix (receipt scanning app), and I've had £19 something cashback become payable today. Once I get the cash in my account they will be overpayments. Have also made about £25 from matched betting, so that will also be overpaid.

I do feel like overpaying is a bit addictive. I can't wait to see how quickly i can get rid of this mortgage .

Nichelette

Oh, and we're in the 284's now :beer:

Nichelette

I was reading another diary and saw onepoll mentioned. I remembered i had an account with them and it turns out there is £31.90 in there! Payout is at £40 so I will push myself to get to the £40. Must look at my other old survey accounts! Will sweep all leftover money into overpayment before we're paid on Monday.

Nichelette

Payday tomorrow :j. This is our first month with slight pay increase, then next month we'll get a small lump sum each.

Sadly nothing left to sweep over as we got a couple of lights for outside the house which were very much needed. There are no streetlights here, and trying to open the door in the dark isn't fun.

Made another £10 from one of my matched betting things this morning which will be lumped in with the overpayment.

Today were going to pay for our new kitchen. Well, minus the sink and dishwasher which I'm get to from elsewhere. We hadn't originally planned to replace it because it doesn't look terrible, but it's so impractical it drives me mad. It is costing £3300 (12% off on gift card through work, paid for on card that is 0% for 28 months to spread the cost and avoid using emergency fund). It's not a big kitchen and nothing is moving appliance wise so we're fitting it ourselves. My dad did his so I figure it can't be that hard :rotfl:. We will have help, so only thing we will need to pay for is a tiler so it doesn't look terrible!

Brindlebabe

Hello,
I've just posted my first post in my mortgage free 'adventure'.
I'm the same age as you and also have a >£200000 mortgage, so feel as though you could be an ally in this, seems like we're in it for the long haul.
Have been following your thread for a little bit before getting it together to start mine.
So just wanted to say hello really and give a bit of encouragement/comraderie. Aiming for £15000 this year is fab. I'm currently aiming for £200 per month but will have to see whether that turns out to be a realistic target. Hopefully I'll smash that and can be more ambitious, but feels unlikely just now - moving in hasn't been cheap!

Anyway,
BW
BB

Nichelette

Hi Brindle, I'm definitely going to be here for many years to come, so it would be nice to follow your journey too . It's nice to see people who are in a similar situation to us. Sometimes I see people with bigger houses and far smaller mortgages and wish it was me. I think the hardest thing is that this is only a small 2 bed so eventually we'll probably be starting again with a similar sized mortgage .

Moving hasn't been cheap for us either, but I think we are on a more even keel now things have settled. Any overpayment is a good thing, just need to keep plugging away! I love seeing the difference it makes on the overpayment calculator .

Anyway, in better news we got our payslips the other day but I hadn't paid too much attention as we seldom get overtime or anything so our pay is generally the same from month to month. I thought the pay rise might have resulted in an extra £20 or so each, but it's actually an extra £130 a month between us which I'm really happy with. In my glee I've jumped on the PC to update forecast 2026 which is now showing a potential total overpayment of 154.5k. Sadly I noticed my formula didn't account for costs in two of my rows, so it was a bit win some, lose some!

I've decided I'm going to open a regular saver tomorrow with 1st direct like I had when we were saving our deposit. I'll stick £200 a month in that which will then be used to pay off anything still owing on the card we've paid for the kitchen on. I've set up a DD for the minimum which I think is about £70 or so if I recall correctly. I'll end up with £3600 in the regular saver plus about £100 in interest, so in 12 months whatever extra I have saved will be an overpayment too.

The limit on the card is 8k. I'm in two minds about putting some of our day to day expenses on it for stoozing as it has such a long 0% period. Either way We'll look to remortgage to a better rate (hopefully) in Jan 2019 when we'd go on to SVR so it will all be paid back by then anyway.

April overpayments so far have been £529.72.

BachSoon

Congratulations on the April overpayments! That's an excellent amount given your other obligations at the moment :T

Nichelette

Thanks Bach .

Today was payday, so I've shunted over another £1000 overpayment. Have also opened my regular saver which will have £300 deposited each month (did you spot the £200 in my last post was a typo ).

I'm hoping I can move some more over during the month, but I'm not sure how much.

Car tax has been paid, and most of the bills have gone now too.

Have watched a video on tileing and now think I'm an expert . I wasn't going to attempt it, but I'm a perfectionist and think I might actually do a decent job, so I'm going to throw caution to the wind and give it a go. Worst case I'll have to pay someone to fix my mess!

Kitchen arrives on the 27th when my husband is in Scotland visiting his family. I have the following week off work, so think that will become kitchen fitting week.

My birthday is the 7th so if I'm lucky I might have a functioning kitchen by then.

Am now in the 283's :j. Hopefully we'll be in the 27's before we know it. I'd like to set myself some targets for the shorter term so I'm going to think about my aims.