Beginning at the start!

Yellow_mango

Thank you for the support south coast :-)

doingitanyway

Happy New Year. I'm a bit late to the party so belated well done on the house purchase.
I will be following your success

Yellow_mango

Happy New Year. I'm a bit late to the party so belated well done on the house purchase.
I will be following your success

Thanks for dropping by!

I’ve updated my spreadsheet and it’s looking like we should have somewhere around £1k a month to put towards savings. I’m considering increasing the mortgage direct debit to a round £3k making a regular OP of £435, then putting the rest, along with anything else I can scrape together into savings for EF / house renovations.

There are also a number of things we want / need to do to the house. So actually maybe this is the year to get on top of that. At least in terms of detailed prioritising, planning and costing.

We are on a 5 year fixed rate on the mortgage, due to expire March 2024. So that’s my target. By the time we refinance I want the mortgage to be below a) £500k, and b) 75% LTV. Both those should allow us to access a significantly better rate. Ideally we’d also then have headroom to access some additional lending to fund some more major work on the house (extension).

longway2go

Hi,

I thought I would drop in on your diary and see how you are getting along. Fantastic news on getting rid of your other debt. I would say get an ef to see you through a few months before op, I know that's frustrating but if you needed to fall back on it you will be glad you sorted it and once is at a level you are comfortable with you can focus everything on Ops. With my ef, I got it to a comfortable level, I set myself mini targets for my mortgage and am starting to tag in a small addition to the ef so that it's growing all be it gradually.

Best of luck

Yellow_mango

Well where has this year gone! It's been a weird one that's for sure. 
I have just submitted a request to increase dd to make a monthly overpayment of £435 - our first OP :-)
Still debt free. I keep getting notifications that my credit score is decreasing because I'm not using enough credit. That's a problem I'm happy to live with! We've mostly just been slowly plugging away at an EF. Currently have around £16k stashed away. Not earning any interest to speak of, but it does give some comfort that it's there. 
Mortgage balance today: £547,082. Whilst it's still a very scary number, looking back that's nearly £20k down from where it was at the start of the year, even with no OP. Can't wait to see it moving down a little faster! 

LeighofMar

That's great. A 16K E-fund gives peace of mind. And now your OPs will start making a difference in the mortgage. Every little bit helps, and it's so addictive watching the numbers come down.