£99,963.74

Bored

Payday is in less than a week and I am already plotting and planning. I reduced my emergency fund from £2000 to £1500 earlier in the month to fund my first overpayment and I will have another £500 to allocate this month.

I'm currently debating the following options:
1. Overpay mortgage by £500
2. Replenish the emergency fund back to £2000
3. Withdraw another £500 from the emergency fund and overpay mortgage by £1000

I know the last option sounds extreme, but I'm only planning to overpay to this extent to get myself in a lower LTV bracket for my remortgage next year (ideally from 95% to 85%). After that is done my monthly mortgage repayments will be lower and I plan to save a full 6-month emergency fund.

Moneyfordreams

I suppose it all rests on how safe your job is and your ability to get another one.

I keep my EF fairly low as I'm in a secure job and my family keep needing my support. My comfort zone is £1500-£2k, however my current is around £750 as I've just shelled out a load. We do have long term savings me £100pcm and OH £300 pcm that really have made me feel safe. I'm not OPing much at the mo as we have so many renovations to pay for.

I'm with AFK and like to see the zero balance at the of the mortgage figures it makes for easier sums

Bored

Thanks for the advice Moneyfordreams.

It's payday today and I've been thinking about this issue a lot over the last week (sad, I know!). Anyway, I've come up with the following goals to be completed in order and to resolve my dilema!

Goal 1: Save up a 3-month emergency fund (£4500) - current balance: £2000
Goal 2: Reduce mortgage balance to −£127,500 by August 2020 - current balance: −£134,483.74
Goal 3: Build up a 6-month emergency fund (£9000)

Goal 1 is really to get me in the habit of saving. I am not good at saving - I'm good at paying off debt really really quickly. So in order get out of that mindset and to make sure I never have to resort to using credit again, I'm going to stick with my original plan of building up the emergency fund.

Goal 2 is to reduce my mortgage to £127,500. There are a few reasons for this particular target. First, it equals exactly £10,000 paid off from my original borrowing amount. Second, providing the Nationwide house price calculator values my flat at around the current mark (~£150,000), this puts me at exactly 85% LTV for my remortage.

Goal 3 is there for the same reason as goal 1, but it's not realistic to save a 6-month emergency fund and overpay my mortgage in the timeframe I need for my re-mortgage, so this is my compromise.

In other news, my first month back using YNAB since I cancelled my subscription a year or so ago and my bank balance is looking better than it has in months. I have ~ £40 left to spend for the next 5 days from my original £400 allocated monthly spending. I don't know how good this is compared to what others spend, but the last few months (without YNAB), my spending has been around £500-600 a month. :eek:

Bored

It's the final payday of 2019 and I think this is diary is long overdue an update. Despite being terrible at keeping a diary, I have been sticking to my YNAB budget and working towards my goals:

Goal 1: Save up a 3-month emergency fund (target: £4500) - current balance: £2500
Goal 2: Reduce mortgage balance to −£127,500 by August 2020 - current balance: −£131,786 (£2500 overpaid).

That's a total of £5000 towards my goals this year. Since I got back into using YNAB I definitely feel like there has been a big improvement. In fact, since I restarted it in August, my net worth has increased by £8,509.84, which is an increase of 32%! :j

I got a small pay rise last month so I've rejigged my YNAB budget for 2020, and it looks like I should have £500 per month to throw at the emergency fund and mortgage next year. I know that this is the same amount as I was saving previously, but now I have enough to save the £500 while also contributing towards my sinking funds for things like Christmas, holidays and car repairs.

On another note, I reached a personal target I've been aiming for, which is to save £10,000 in my pension by the end of the year. As an eternal student I've only been contributing to my pension for 2 years so I'm happy with the progress so far, although I want to increase my contributions after I remortgage.

Here's to a happy (and productive) 2020 for all mortgage-free wannabes. :beer:

Bored

As per usual, I have been terrible at posting regular updates! I've been doing okay-ish on the financial front this year although I really want to kick things into higher gear going forward. My job is secure, despite COVID, so I've just been sticking to the plan.

Time to review the goals! 
Goal 1: Save up a 3-month emergency fund (£4500) - DONE
Goal 2: Reduce mortgage balance to −£127,500 by August 2020 - DONE (current balance: −£127,100)

Goal 3 was to build up a 6-month emergency fund of £9000, but I've changed my mind about this one. I stopped my mortgage overpayments temporarily to save up the £4500 emergency fund, but now that this is banked I really want to get back to paying down the mortgage ASAP. I'm still saving some additional cash each month, but the majority will be thrown at the mortgage.

The other thing to report is that I was able to switch my mortgage deal during lockdown, so my interest rate has reduced from 4.04% to 2.14%. I'm currently on a tracker mortgage with no ERC, but I need to keep an eye on this because I may need to get a new fixed deal if the base rate starts going up. 

Bored

I realised that I didn't set myself any new goals in the previous post so I'm back with another update.

Goal 3: Save up a 3-month emergency fund (£9000) - ON HOLD
Goal 4: Reduce mortgage balance to −£117,500 by September 2021.

So far I've paid off £10,000 from my original mortgage balance. I really like the idea of splitting the mortgage into manageable chunks, so my next goal will be to pay off another £10,000. It took me around 18-24 months to pay off the first £10,000 but my interest rate has been halved and I have more disposable income now, so I'm hoping that I can get this chunk knocked out faster - ideally within one year. 

Bored

Sent an overpayment of £600 to the mortgage, which takes my new balance to −£126,607.   

I've also been doing a bit of an overhaul of my budgeting system since it wasn't working as well as I would have liked and I was finding the periods in between payday a bit too long and boring. I've decided to switch to a weekly budget amount on Monzo so that I get a 'mini payday' each week. I've given myself a fairly generous amount, although still less than I've been spending recently, and any excess will go into pots for irregular expenses that would be too much for my weekly budget to cope with. If there's any left after all that, then I can throw it at the mortgage. 

I've been reading other peoples' diaries to pick up some additional tips, and I've been really impressed by how much people are making on Prolific. Have signed up this evening and completed all the 'about you' questions so I'll see how that goes. 

ruby_eskimo

Well done on hitting 2 of your 3 goals and negotiating a better mortgage deal.  I've still got another year before I can look at reducing my extortionate interest rate.  Prolific is one of the better survey sites but it's a bit hit and miss because obviously it all revolves around university research which is a bit short at this time of year but should pick up again around Christmas hopefully. 

Mrs_Binxtoria

"I've been reading other peoples' diaries to pick up some additional tips, and I've been really impressed by how much people are making on Prolific. Have signed up this evening and completed all the 'about you' questions so I'll see how that goes."

I have been doing Profilic for a few months now and made about £120 which has gone to overpaying the mortgage.  Some of the surveys are quite dull but there are others that are really interesting.  Some are around 30p and others a few £.  I like seeing the total add up and it does add up pretty quickly.  I withdraw at the end of the month and pay it straight to the mortgage.

Good luck with your goals.

Bored

It was payday on Friday so I have thrown another £500 overpayment at the mortgage. Few other finance bits and bobs to report for this month:

• Have made a slow start with Prolific - only completed one study so far. I have just installed the chrome extension that tells you when a new study is available so will try to up my game this week. 
• Pretty happy with my spending this month - focusing on weekly spending limits has really helped rather than just having a pot of money to last the entire month.
• Got an email from Bulb saying that my electricity tariff is going up for the second time this year, so I've switched. M&S Energy seemed the best value based on price and customer service score - plus they will give me £50 credit, which will be useful to top up my balance for winter. Nothing available for M&S Energy via TopCashback but I get around £10 for using a comparison website.