First home/Forever home!

Coffeekup

Finchy2018 said:

I've been looking into TSBs overpayment system - its frustrating you have to complete a form to overpay rather than just transfer to mortgage account. I will be looking in that case to save u[ chunks of money to make over payments, I think each time i get to £1000 I will make the OP.

A bit of a journey you've had. 

I have a TSB mortgage too, I struggle to understand it in overpayments and had a bit of an issue trying to get info on how to overpay when I started overpaying. Eventually (and what seemed reluctantly) TSB gave me the account info, and told me how to reference. So every month I overpay anywhere between £40 - £900 depending on what I have left. My mortgage payments have stayed the same so far (after about 7 months of overpaying) and I never had to fill in any paperwork. 

As an alternative to figuring how much you can afford to overpay.... Look at falling in to the next LTV bracket by the time your fixed finishes, then see if you can afford the overpayments to get into that bracket. If not maybe hold back on doing a job on the house for a year or 2.

Good luck with your journey.

Finchy2018

Thanks! 

So last week I set up my overpayments for the house, not sure if this will kick in this month or next, I'll find out when the direct debit leaves. 

Spoken to a couple of financial advisors about what to do with my savings and I think I am just going to plough as much in the house as possible. The sooner I am mortgage free the better. 

I do need to get the bathroom and kitchen done, so will use my savings for these too whilst continuing to build and save where I can. 

debtfreeoneday

Great it’s now all yours. Exciting times ahead. 

Finchy2018

2 more months have passed, 2 more mortgage payments paid, with my new over payment. I think I might sell after my fixed term is up and relocate, but until I decide I am going to just keep putting money in the property as much as I can. Splitting my savings between investments and over payments seems to be working for me. 

Still working on getting bathroom and kitchen redone, but I have redecorated the living room and it looks great.

Finchy2018

It's been over a year since my last update! 

Still in the same old house. Have had the kitchen redone. and steadily making over payments on the mortgage. I'm just about to fix to a new deal, i'll start shopping around next month. When  I started this thread my mortgage was £200k ish, currently I am sitting at £184,757 - this feels like very slow progress! But with the current economic climate any over payment i am is a bonus i feel! I had intended to use my payrise this year to go straight into over payments but realistically it will get eaten up by gas and electric bills!