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

AvidSaver

Hi, I’d really like to join this challenge. Having participated in previous challenges, I am hoping this will be my last one as I am aiming to completely clear my £84,219 mortgage.

DiscountDuck

I’m a long term lurker who has finally got brave enough to give my first ever challenge a go. Having just bought out my ex husband, my aim is to reduce my 80k mortgage to 50k by the end of the 3 years, because that feels achievable. However, given that I’m on a great fixed term rate for 3 years with Platform mortgages, anything over and above my goal ready for when I have to change mortgage in 2022 would be brilliant.

trix-a-belle

Avidsaver; I don't think I've had a registration form from you yet

JEdwards; Welcome! Well done on taking the first steps

I think i'm now up to date on the spreadsheet and first post for everything received.

AvidSaver

Registration form completed and submitted. Thank you.

The_frugal_fairy

Really liking having the challenge. Form sent and today's balance is £ 42,219.38. Hoping this time next year the balance will start with a 2 :beer::beer::beer::beer:

trix-a-belle

On your marks then people!!!
forms and numbers up to date based on what i've received on google drive

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks for running this again Trix!

Please sign me up with challenger number #47 - savings target: increase from £143,378.17 to 225k.

Achieving this target would see us halfway financially independent :cool: No idea if this is in any way realistic The figures include S&S and pensions so impossible to predict over such a short timescale!

I've posted more detail on my diary if anyone is interested

trix-a-belle

So of course Nationwide applied the overpayment I made yesterday afternoon before midnight last night immediately dropping my starting figure lol. Its about the journey though and its not a sprint, good job as I don't have a plan for achieving my target yet, answers on a postcard

taka

Gah... I can't decide what to do... Part of me would love to join up again and part of me thinks I'm in the wrong place now!

I've being doing the MFiT challenge since the first one... and I still have a mortgage which is just under £10k now. Historically I wanted to be MF by the time my 1st ever mortgage would have ended - summer 2019. I'm now technically mortgage neutral and could pay it off now, though I am still making small OPs. It now costs me less than my council tax... Mostly, instead I'm prioritising things like my pension and S&S ISA in the hope I can retire sometime before the 67 (prob 68) that it looks like my DB and state pensions will be payable at without reductions. I want to document this all and do a challenge (as I find it helps no end!) but I have no idea whether it should be on here or not, and am struggling to work out how to track it if I do!

Current plans for the next 3 years...
Mortgage £9864.98 to £5k (which is roughly £1.5k OPs presuming no rate changes)
S&S ISA Add £200/month so extra £7200 to be added.
Pension - Increase DC pot with voluntary contributions (salary sacrificing a % chunk of my gross salary). The scheme is up in the air with threatened change from a hybrid DB + DC to DC only and in the meantime while this is being argued over basic contributions (which pay for the DB bit) are increasing from 8% to 11.7% over the next 16 months in 3 stages unless something else is decided in the mean time. Its blooming hard to model how much I can challenge myself (and afford!) to add with moving goal posts involved! Its hard enough trying to calculate my take home pay re Scottish tax bands...

TLDR: Can I join but get advice on how to count all the bits? It is making my head hurt! :cool: :rotfl:

trix-a-belle

Taka
Have a read of SuperSecretSquirrel's plan they did for T4 & for T5 written here/in the T4 thread/their personal thread, it might suit you as they counted everything in together somewhat, you just need to be clear on what is and isn't included & you can always tweak targets part way through