Beginning at the start!

Yellow_mango

We haven't even completed on our house yet (we exchanged yesterday and completion is set for Friday!) but I'm putting this here to try and keep me motivated to start chipping away on the terrifyingly large mortgage as soon as I can! And to give me somewhere to vent and think out loud.

I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed right now tbh. There isn't an enormous amount of wriggle room in our budget, and there is a seemingly endless amount of house expenses to plan and save for. Right now I'm spending far more time than is healthy on YNAB, and house related research. Hopefully things will all fall into place soon enough.

Any and all encouragement is welcome! :j

Yellow_mango

OK a little background.

I’m 41, married with 3 kids at home and one at university. We’re moving from job-related accommodation to our first “our own” home.

The mortgage will be for £576k :eek::eek: @ 90% LTV. It’s for 25 years, fixed for 5 years at 2.24%. So unless I make some decent inroads into this, I’ll be paying a mortgage until I’m 66, which I’d really rather not be doing

I still have around 5k of credit card debt (at 0%) to get rid of before I start on the mortgage, so I’m being a little premature here, but heyho.

Yellow_mango

I've been crunching a few more numbers and am feeling a little more optimistic. I've reduced my pension contributions from 23.5% down to 8% (the minimum that will still get me the maximum employer match), which will leave me with an extra £454pm to play with.

I've been on the overpayment calculator, and it looks like an overpayment of £500pm should get the mortgage down to below 70% LTV (assuming no increase in value) by the end of the 5 year fix. Which should put us in a better position to remortgage at that point. So that's now my goal

I'll need to balance this against also paying off my cc before the 0% expires (part in May and part in October 2019), building some kind of emergency fund, and also paying for various house repairs / renovations. Still, I'm feeling positive!

I'm also hoping for a promotion in September this year, so if I can get that in the bag that will be a big help.

kev2009

hi,

sounds like you have a plan! Wow 23.5% pension wow.. only have combined 18% going into mine Considering making this 20% but like you, keen to try pay most i can as OP this year and next as my fixed term mortgage is up next year and i want to pay i can off to hopefully ensure better deals and hopefully at a rate that is less than now but will see

Kev

Yellow_mango

Hi Kev - nice to have some company

I was making the most of not paying a mortgage for a year by maxing out my pension contributions. Now the situation has definitely changed!

I'm thinking that having a paid-off mortgage is probably a better / more secure retirement plan than a larger pension at this point. At least I'll have somewhere to live!

Interest rates in the future are a bit of a worry. All the more reason to OP as much as possible now

kev2009

Know what you mean, however when looking at the pension and see the low figures it predicts, does make me wonder. I've pretty much decided i thin i'm going to pay off as much as i can this year and next to hopefully get good rate on next 5 year fixed, then OP for that 5 years but reducing the term this time as by the end of that i'm hoping to be in a significant better position and then maybe still continue with OP but also increase pension contributions as for me i'd still have a few years whereby it could work in my favour. Plus i'm hoping to reduce mortgage enough that any interest rate rises wont have tooo much impact but who knows, will have to wait and see!

Kev

Yellow_mango

Completion day today :eek::eek::j:j

I'm so excited

Hoping it'll be all done this morning so I can go and pick up the keys from the estate agents and have a bit of a nosey round at lunchtime! Also need to pick up the Virgin broadband box and get that set up. Keeping kids entertained whilst we mess around in the house will be much easier with WiFi!

kev2009

Hope all goes well!!!!

Kev

new_mortgageeee

:j:j Good luck on your completion day :j:j

Yellow_mango

:j:j:j All done!

Have keys and a bottle of bubbly from the estate agents!

And a massive new mortgage to start OP :eek::rotfl:

LeighofMar

Welcome and congrats on the house.