Time to stop (over)thinking and time to start doing!!

Throwaway1

Suit and shoes purchased. On a whim, we decided to call into Matalan as we remembered we have one down the road and they had the colour suit we were wanting on offer for £50!!! After a frantic look through the jackets, we found one 34 (amongst loads of 40+s) but the only size 32 trousers were on the mannequin. The lady in the shop kindly undressed it for us and the husband tried the suit on. All was fine except the trousers were a long instead of a regular but we got them anyway as they could be altered easily. We also bought a pair of brown shoes that were on offer for £13.40! Once we got home, we decided we might as well go to the Matalan that's a 10min drive away (we live in a city) on the hopes that we could find trousers that would fit that we could exchange for. The first pair we looked at were his size :j he tried them on, they fit beautifully so we swapped for those and also picked up a nice £4 tie whilst we were there. So all in, a suit, trousers and tie for £67.40. :T I'd rather have the money still but that's less than half the price I was imagining it would cost.




My colleague (C1) text me this morning to say she won't be in for the next 2 days (daughter having wisdom teeth out, emergency cancellation this afternoon) so, as my other colleague (C2) has just renewed her sick note (back operation) for another 2 weeks minimum I'm guessing some overtime will be coming my way as we cannot operate with just 1 person (me) down from 3 as it doesn't even cover the opening hours never mind the work to do. I'd rather not have it as work has been stressful enough these last 4 months with me having to manage everyone who comes in to help for half a day occasionally and be responsible for everything day to day but it will help offset the extra spend this month. Especially as C1, who has upped her part-time hours the last few months to help cover C2 not being here, has said she doesn't want to anymore so now I will need to work full-time plus overtime to allow us to keep open after school.

Throwaway1

Stag do is over. Husband failed miserably at keeping within budget and ended up £100 over! It could have caused a big argument but he was very contrite about it and I decided to not push it too much as falling out won't bring the money back and he doesn't go out very often.

We totted up our totals since our last pay days (his isn't until Tuesday but he doesn't have any more DDs coming out before then) and we had around £1200 profit :beer: (not including the 1k OP made a few weeks ago).

We have now paid off the remaining £666.66 OP for this month to bring it a total OP of £1666.66 in May and remain on track for 10% OP this year.

The overpayment calculator says our OPs so far will save us £8898 in interest payments alone and means we will finish out mortgage 2 years and 1 month sooner :j.

Edit: Ooo just logged into the app and we have broken through to the next barrier. Our balance now stands at -£151,965.90 with the £649.08 payment and interest (usually around £350) to be applied on 1st June.

Throwaway1

Another expensive spend - albeit an expected and unavoidable one. It's car insurance renewal time at the end of the month so that's £434 gone. My renewal quote was £528 but I always shop around. I should be getting £67 cashback though as I clicked through Quidco first. It's weird but we've worked out that we somehow spend at least £300 on one offs every month (football season ticket, all the elements of the stag do, car insurance, a large kitchen appliance etc.), it's not planned that way but it seems to happen every time.


We completed a Farmfoods shop earlier that came to £45 and included way more food than we will eat in a month so we'll only need little top up shops that won't cost much for the rest of the month now.


We also set up a new ISA as our current one only had an interest rate of 0.6%. The new one is 1.5% and is easy access with unlimited withdrawals. We knew we could get better rates locking it away but we decided that wasn't for us. £20,000 has gone in there which will net us £300 interest at the end of the year if we go the whole year with needed to touch it.


I'm getting impatient as our mortgage payments normally come out on the 1st but they haven't yet as it's a weekend. I really want to see what the new interest payment amount is and if we have made a slight dent.

NorthernMonkey1

If you read through a few diaries, there are quite a few people who aim to be mortgage neutral rather than mortgage free.

The idea being if you have £100k mortgage and £100k in an isa, you could pay off all your debts with savings of the need arose, but you retain flexibility of having easy access cash if the need arises.

If you’re using a cash isa, the interest rate will be less than the 2.64 you’re paying on your fix rate, so you need to find the balance that works for you.

Either way, by spending a lot less than you’re eating you’re putting yourself on the front foot for the future.

Throwaway1

NorthernMonkey1 wrote: »

If you read through a few diaries, there are quite a few people who aim to be mortgage neutral rather than mortgage free.

The idea being if you have £100k mortgage and £100k in an isa, you could pay off all your debts with savings of the need arose, but you retain flexibility of having easy access cash if the need arises.

If you’re using a cash isa, the interest rate will be less than the 2.64 you’re paying on your fix rate, so you need to find the balance that works for you.

Either way, by spending a lot less than you’re eating you’re putting yourself on the front foot for the future.

Thank you for this, it's something we hadn't thought about. At the moment, as we cannot get a better saving rate than the 2.64% interest rate we will continue as we are but may consider it in the future.

Throwaway1

Another £1000 OP made :j.

After our moving of money around (where we have the same amout but it looks like less as in different accounts), the car insurance payment and unexpectedly finding out it was TV licence renewal day, it looks like we probably won't feel able to pay the remaining £666.66 which is a bit disheartening. Especially as pretty much that exact amount will take us below £150,000 owed. In happier news though, I did just cash out £40 Next vouchers that arrived yesterday that we are going to use on two tins of paint to finally get rid of at least one room's worth of cream walls :rotfl:



The OP calculator says we will now pay off our mortgage 2 years 4 months earlier and have saved £9683 in interest payments :beer:

Throwaway1

I've not updated in a while as there's been a lot going on but the OPs have still been happening. The main focus of our time has been decorating. The paint may have been free thanks to the Next vouchers but we ended up having to buy a £25(! - who knew they were that expensive?!) wrench to take the radiator off the wall plus various rollers, dust sheets etc. so I think it came to about £70 spent to do the 'free' decorating. It also took us absolutely forever to do due to the terrible job that had been done by the last owners. It was almost enough to put us off for life.

We did just end up having enough to pay the £666.66 in the end, although we only had £1.25 'profit' left across our bank accounts compared to the previous month's balance. This was very satisfying as it brought us below the 150k barrier which was a great physcological boost.

This month is going to be ridiculously tricky again as my best friend who lives in Luxembourg is getting married there in October. As she is getting married during term time (I work in a school), I've had to request time off. I really didn't think I would get it but I've been working crazy hard covering for my long-term sick colleague so they recognised my good will and are letting me take it off, albeit unpaid. The flights and hotel for 3 nights have come in at £398 (minus £16 cashback from Quidco). I'm not sure how to take it, moneywise, to be honest as it is an expense we really didnt need, especially when we factor in petrol to airport, parking and spending money but it was a decent bargain for what we've got.

In terms of this month's OP, we have paid off £1000 of the £1666.66 needed for July. We've fallen into a routine of paying £500 each half way through the month, to get the interest down asap, and then checking our banks to see what we can pay off at the end of the month to reach the required total.

The OP calculator says we will now pay off our mortgage 2 years 9 months earlier and have saved £10,908.85 in interest payments.
:beer:

Cheery_Daff

Hello :hello:

Just popped in to see how you're doing - and I'm delighted that it does indeed look like you're doing splendidly, well done! :j :j :j Very impressive overpaying :j :j :j and it's making a huge difference. Gosh, how lovely to be mortgage free in 10 years :money:

Throwaway1

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Hello :hello:

Just popped in to see how you're doing - and I'm delighted that it does indeed look like you're doing splendidly, well done! :j :j :j Very impressive overpaying :j :j :j and it's making a huge difference. Gosh, how lovely to be mortgage free in 10 years :money:

Hi Cheery, thanks for popping along It feels like a very long, very hard slog but it will so be worth it in the end. I just have to keep reminding myself that every year will get easier, which is a good job as I couldn't live like this for 10 years :rotfl:

savingholmes

You are doing amazingly well - very inspiring. You might find the R@msey baby steps helpful. You do steps 1-3 consecutively and steps 4, 5 and 6 together:

Baby Step 1: Emergency fund of £1K - you have this
Baby Step 2: Debt Snowball (credit cards and loans) - you have this
Baby Step 3: Create a 3-6 month emergency fund -
Baby Step 4: Invest 15% of income in retirement funds
Baby Step 5: Save for kids college if you have any - (my DS costs me £4.8K a year at uni)
Baby Step 6: Pay off the house
Baby Step 7: Build wealth and give

I agree with the other poster on mortgage neutrality - save it in a savings account if you get to the point you can't overpay on your mortgage.