RT's path to MF 16 March 2019 at 11:34PM in Mortgage-free wannabe 13 replies 1.4K views

rumpetroll

Having followed a bunch of these diaries over the years and now just about to complete on the purchase of a flat I thought I'd start my own MF diary.

I'm 37, currently single and have 2 children, DD lives in Switzerland with her mum as did DS until a couple of weeks ago but he has now moved to England to live with me (I'll put more on this later). I'm hoping to be exchanging on the flat this week and completing shortly after, given that it's chain free and the purchase process started back in October it's been a bit frustrating with how long it has dragged on.

The financials
Property Cost: £215,000 (The seller bought this brand new 2 years ago for £240k)
Mortgage: £193,500

Salary: £65,000 (Take home £3700/mo after tax and pension contrib)
Bonus: 15%-30% in January, so somewhere between £5k and £10k after tax

Monthly outgoings
Mortgage: £711
Child Maintenance: ~£175 (this is under discussion at the moment, it was £350 when both kids were living with their mum)
Mobile Phone: £13
Other Flat Costs: £320 (Guestimate as not paying these yet, includes service charge, ground rent, council tax, insurance, utilities)
Sports: £225 (DS and I both do parkour and go karting)
Food: £300 - £400
Switzerland Costs: £800 (~£570 to rent apartment there, plus travel costs, probably an over estimate)
Petrol/Car: £70 (inc insurance paid annually)
Holidays/B'day/Christmas: ~£300

Total: ~£3014
Total left for overpayments: £686 (not including my annual bonus as this might just be put straight in to my pension)

Although this is a MF diary, I am actually going to be splitting where the money goes and I will class it as MF when my savings + investments is worth the same as the remaining mortgage, I currently have around £9k invested. Each month I will be putting some money in to my investments, and the rest will go in to savings accounts that pay more interest than the mortgage cost. At any point where the savings rate is less than the mortgage interest I will be paying the mortgage off with it. I can currently save at 5% so money is going in there ATM.

rumpetroll

The situation with my kids is a little complicated as can probably be seen from the first post. My ex moved to Switzerland with our children 8 years ago (DS is now 9, DD is 11), she now also has 2 younger children. Things were a bit difficult to start with but over the years we've become friends again and I've been renting an apartment over there for some time and travel over regularly (probably spend a week or so of every month there). So while the maintenance I pay may seem low compared to my income it also takes in to account my expenses since she chose to live over there, infact the maintenance plus expenses is significantly more than I would pay in maintenance if she lived in the UK.

As to why my son has moved over, his school in Switzerland had only 14 other children in with a 3 year age span, he wasn't being challenged with the work and he was suffering from bullying which was causing some behaviour issues. After discussing it with his mum we decided to try him at a school over here, we offered him the choice and he decided he wanted to try it, so he's now been here living with me and going to a UK school for the past 2 weeks. We're going to discuss it all again during the summer holidays and make a decision from there as to where he continues as he is due to go up to a much bigger school in Switzerland next school year, so it may be a case that he moves back then or he'll continue on over here.

So lots of change for me at the moment but couldn't be happier.

nyc_451

That was a very interesting read.

May I ask why did you choose a flat over a house, do you live in an expensive city?

My purchase was also chain free and took approximately 5 months, very frustrating...

rumpetroll

Thanks blue_mango.

A couple of reasons for choosing a flat, firstly, like you suggest, it is an expensive town to live, the lowest cost houses that suited me were anywhere from £270k-£300k (2 bed and not in a rough area of town).

It's also a 3-4 minute walk from the beach and very close to the town center which I wouldn't have gotten with a house. And finally with how much time I spend away in Switzerland I decided that a top floor flat in a secure block was more secure than a house.

However, if I'd known at the time that my son would be living with me then I'd perhaps have chosen a house with a garden.

rumpetroll

I was beginning to think it would never happen but had a call today from the solicitor and looks like we are going to be trying to set a completion date for Friday, with exchange of contracts hopefully happening tomorrow. So will be heading down to the bank to transfer over the deposit funds, and I've also got to go and get a new tyre on my car after getting a puncture last week from running over a nail, so an unexpected cost on that one, but at least I'm past the days of driving expensive cars with similarly expensive tyres.

FIREdoc

Happy new diary! And hope all goes to plan with exchange/completion!

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary

greent

Fingers crossed for a smoothly-running day today....

rumpetroll

Thanks everyone, after being told we would be exchanging every day this week it finally got to the point yesterday where we were ready to exchange but the sellers solicitor had already gone home by 4pm so we ended up exchanging and completing this morning, but finally it's all done. The mortgage is also showing up in my online banking already which is nice, and there's already £24.28 of interest charged!

Thankfully I don't own a huge amount of stuff so have already loaded most of it up in to a van and just about to head out and get the keys. It'll be great to unpack as 99% of our stuff has been boxed up for about 4 weeks.

Then to buy a TV as DS doesn't agree with me that we don't need one, which I guess will mean getting a TV license for the first time in about 7 years.

greent

Glad it's all happened in the end

twinklie

Sounds like a busy weekend ahead for you. Don’t forget to just stop occasionally to acknowledge that this is your new home. We moved in November and I frequently walk round thinking “I cannot believe that this is my house.”