The Mortgage Free in Three - Take 5 challenge (MFiT-T5)

julicorn

Just logged my latest update Our mortgage us just under £159k now, so slightly ahead of schedule.

Greenglockenspiel

Hello everyone, I have just taken out my first mortgage and already looking forward to getting rid of it! I will be joining the challenge belatedly or joining the new one if there is a new one starting in January next year. We are on a fixed rate until September 2022 so three years is a good target time period to get it down as much as possible before remortgaging.

I was just wondering which number you all use for your calculations - is it the amount you borrowed (principal) or the amount you owe (principal + interest)?
For example we borrowed £220,000 (yes we live in the south!) but if we stayed with this mortgage for the whole 25 years we would pay back £353,322.15 so I don't know whether to base it on that figure instead. The idea of paying back £1.61 for every £1 borrowed appals me!

pavlovs_dog

we use our current mortgage balance Greenglockenspiel

trix-a-belle

Longway2go: yes all good this time around, you'd done yourself out of a lot of progress

Blooming amazing updates all!!

Greenglockenspiel wrote: »

Hello everyone, I have just taken out my first mortgage and already looking forward to getting rid of it! I will be joining the challenge belatedly or joining the new one if there is a new one starting in January next year. We are on a fixed rate until September 2022 so three years is a good target time period to get it down as much as possible before remortgaging.

Welcome GG this challenge only starts once every 3 years (1 MFiT challenge running at a time) so this challenge is in session from 2019 to 2022, T6 will run from 2022 to 2025.
We are only on chart 3 so still accepting joiners if you would like to join this one, just follow the form link at the start of the thread and submit a joining form with your starting value at joining and where you want to get to by the end in Jan 2022.

Greenglockenspiel wrote: »

I was just wondering which number you all use for your calculations - is it the amount you borrowed (principal) or the amount you owe (principal + interest)?
For example we borrowed £220,000 (yes we live in the south!) but if we stayed with this mortgage for the whole 25 years we would pay back £353,322.15 so I don't know whether to base it on that figure instead. The idea of paying back £1.61 for every £1 borrowed appals me!

For the challenge figures? I can't speak for every one but I use an overpayment spreadsheet so can see the impact of the interest being added each day and overpayments knocking the balance down. For my target I looked at what my regular payments would take my balance down to over the course of the challenge and then what overpayments I felt able to make for my situation plus a bit to make it a challenge but taking any annual overpayment limits into account.
The total to be paid if the mortgage is kept over the whole term didn't even factor into my head as I wanted to keep the amount paid to the bank as small as possible & the whole point is for it to not be hanging around that long
Also as the challenge is over just a small snapshot of the mortgage term everyone is at a different stage in their journey so its not about their original borrowing or what they might pay if they had it for the whole 25 or however many years, its just the mortgage balance at the start of the challenge period and how much can be thrown at it to get rid of it as soon as possible or to hit the necessary figure for remortgage/renovation/move/mortgage free, whatever the aim is.

T._x

Update in for this quarter (sorry day late). I'll be behind schedule but happy still chipping away this year. Lots to make up

Keep going everybody.

T. x

inigma

Do people offset their savings vs the mortgage when submitting their numbers?

violetblue

inigma wrote: »

Do people offset their savings vs the mortgage when submitting their numbers?

Personally I don't, as I feel like my savings are still savings (and could be used for something else) until they are actually paid off the mortgage.

But others might, in fact I think some people have a savings goal rather than a pay off the mortgage goal.

Basically you are free to make your own rules and goal, and as long as you're consistent when you send in your figures, I reckon it all counts! :T

trix-a-belle

inigma wrote: »

Do people offset their savings vs the mortgage when submitting their numbers?

Some people do inigma, a sort of informal offset as Trying to be Good termed it in T4, there have been instances where due to overpayment limit rules people save into a dedicated account first before paying across and include that account balance in their challenge balance as its specifically being saved to pay down their mortgage but savings, especially easily accessible accounts and rainy day funds can easily be spent on other things.
As violetblue says you can set your own rules the key thing is consistency when submitting figures & having it established across the whole challenge.

trix-a-belle

Chart 3 is here!!!

Big kudos to Radish who has reached their target during this last session, its well deserved & is great incentive for the rest of us to keep chipping away.
Following up behind Suffolk Lass is leading the pack at 70.32% of target achieved with the big hitters of Lomcevak (62.31%), The Frugal Fairy (62.27%) & Utopiah (59.89%) making lots of progress too!

inigma

Thank you Trix for maintaining this, it's acting as a really good reminder to keep me focused on my mortgage.