regularsaver MFW journey - Achieving a dream.

Grogged

Apart from the fortnightly shop and DD we're also not spending, which given a 20% salary drop should balance things out...
Our bank has also dropped the savings to barely positive so we moved to ma cuss to take advantage of their 1 year fix and general high rate. Could have done better, but just wanted a simple one stop shop.
Also planning on the impact lasting to end of 2021, if it does we're prepared, if not no harm done.

South_coast

regularsaver said:

I think the two highest paying current accounts are Markus and Saga at 1.2% and someone is doing a 1 year fix at 1.6%. 

In the first year of saving for my deposit, I had a Halifax regular saver at 10% interest (I can still remember Howard singing about it in the adverts, and he was on posters in the window 😂) Even after paying the tax on it as you did then, it still added up to a fair old chunk and the woman in the branch was impressed when I went in to close the account. This would have been about 2008/2009 and the banks were desperate for people to make deposits. It seems crazy to think of now! 

South_coast

In case anyone is thinking "Who on earth is Howard???" 😂

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oURFZPDj1A4

South_coast

P.S. Sorry for the hijack!

regularsaver

Sistergold said:

regularsaver said:

Good afternoon all,

I am a long time lurker on these forums and since purchasing my first house in January 2019, I have been a regular reader of diaries in the MFW section of the forums. A big congrats to all those working towards being mortgage free and also thanks so much for the inspiration. I had wanted to make a few overpayments in my first year of house ownership but, people aren't kidding when they say the first 6/12 months are super expensive.

However, I feel now like I can start to concentrate on making some overpayments and really work towards getting the mortgage figure down as best I can.

I am not sure if there is a standard way of starting these threads but it seems like a little summary is a good place to begin -

- My house cost £138,000
- Deposit was £22,100
- Mortgage when taken out in Jan 2019 was £115,900
- Balance as of Jan 2020 - £113,643
- My mortgage type is repayment (think thats the correct term) paying capital and interest
- My current LTV is 18.57%
- I currently accrue interest at a rate of £7.32 a day / £227.24 a month
- My monthly mortgage payment is £429.75
- I am on a 5 year fix mortgage at a rate of 2.35%
- Mortgage term is 32 years.
- I am 37 and single.

Having spoken with my mortgage provider I have a 10% per year limit on overpayments and they can be as big or small as I like.

I have since before I moved into my home, been using Martins budget planner which has been really helpful and I have just updated it actually to reflect any changes to this years bills etc.

Not sure if I have missed any information, I think that's the usual stuff covered but absolutely please let me know if I have missed anything, and if you have any tips then please share, I love learning new things.

I shall be looking closely at all areas of my budget, and any unspent money at the end of each month I will be looking to overpay. Currently I am also working a fair amount of overtime too, so rather than saving it all, I am thinking about splitting it 50/50 savings/OP.

I do have just one question at this point, I have seen abbreviations such as DD, DH listed in peoples threads etc, I havent fathomed what these mean, I know this will be a silly question and I shall laugh at myself when/if someone tells me what they mean but had to ask

Thanks for reading so far and I hope you will join me on my journey to keep me motivated!!

Hello there 
You have a very good action plan there well done. Your LTV(Loan to value) is 82.2% there abouts on looking at your figures? 

Hey Sistergold, 

Thankyou for your post and kind comments. I'm really quite new to all this so absolutely still learning. Thankyou for correcting my LTV figure. I reckon it probably looks even better now, with the purchase price of £138,000 and the current balance of £112,664, a quick online calculator gives me 81.64%. Wow thats quite addictive to keep checking that and being 1.64% away from owning one fifth of my house too! 

Apologies my maths isnt always great, especially around percentages but I am slowly working on it and working on financial stuff more is helping. 

Payday is coming up too so that means another mortgage payment as normal and another over payment. Cant wait. Even at the age of 37, I find all this quite exciting and motivating. I feel like I am getting myself in order, and by overpaying I am investing in my future. 

I hope you dont mind me asking, but I noticed your signature and mortgage amount and proposed time to pay it off by and wow, that will be incredible, best of luck with that. If you have any tips I would love to hear them. Thankyou again!  

regularsaver

Grogged said:

Apart from the fortnightly shop and DD we're also not spending, which given a 20% salary drop should balance things out...
Our bank has also dropped the savings to barely positive so we moved to ma cuss to take advantage of their 1 year fix and general high rate. Could have done better, but just wanted a simple one stop shop.
Also planning on the impact lasting to end of 2021, if it does we're prepared, if not no harm done.

I think the way you are planning is probably very wise. If we plan for the worst happening, then you are exactly right, we are then prepared and anything better than that is a bonus isnt it! 

regularsaver

South_coast said:

regularsaver said:

I think the two highest paying current accounts are Markus and Saga at 1.2% and someone is doing a 1 year fix at 1.6%. 

In the first year of saving for my deposit, I had a Halifax regular saver at 10% interest (I can still remember Howard singing about it in the adverts, and he was on posters in the window 😂) Even after paying the tax on it as you did then, it still added up to a fair old chunk and the woman in the branch was impressed when I went in to close the account. This would have been about 2008/2009 and the banks were desperate for people to make deposits. It seems crazy to think of now! 

Hey South_coast, 

Hope you are well! Wow I remember too when rates were around 10%. Feels like so long ago! I suppose if savings rates were 10% right now, I hate to think what mortgage rates would be?!

Hahah! I used to love those adverts with Howard! Sometimes I could never get that music out of my head! Thanks for bringing back that memory and posting the video! Brilliant! That made me smile. Have a great weekend!

Sistergold

regularsaver said:

Sistergold said:

regularsaver said:

Good afternoon all,

I am a long time lurker on these forums and since purchasing my first house in January 2019, I have been a regular reader of diaries in the MFW section of the forums. A big congrats to all those working towards being mortgage free and also thanks so much for the inspiration. I had wanted to make a few overpayments in my first year of house ownership but, people aren't kidding when they say the first 6/12 months are super expensive.

However, I feel now like I can start to concentrate on making some overpayments and really work towards getting the mortgage figure down as best I can.

I am not sure if there is a standard way of starting these threads but it seems like a little summary is a good place to begin -

- My house cost £138,000
- Deposit was £22,100
- Mortgage when taken out in Jan 2019 was £115,900
- Balance as of Jan 2020 - £113,643
- My mortgage type is repayment (think thats the correct term) paying capital and interest
- My current LTV is 18.57%
- I currently accrue interest at a rate of £7.32 a day / £227.24 a month
- My monthly mortgage payment is £429.75
- I am on a 5 year fix mortgage at a rate of 2.35%
- Mortgage term is 32 years.
- I am 37 and single.

Having spoken with my mortgage provider I have a 10% per year limit on overpayments and they can be as big or small as I like.

I have since before I moved into my home, been using Martins budget planner which has been really helpful and I have just updated it actually to reflect any changes to this years bills etc.

Not sure if I have missed any information, I think that's the usual stuff covered but absolutely please let me know if I have missed anything, and if you have any tips then please share, I love learning new things.

I shall be looking closely at all areas of my budget, and any unspent money at the end of each month I will be looking to overpay. Currently I am also working a fair amount of overtime too, so rather than saving it all, I am thinking about splitting it 50/50 savings/OP.

I do have just one question at this point, I have seen abbreviations such as DD, DH listed in peoples threads etc, I havent fathomed what these mean, I know this will be a silly question and I shall laugh at myself when/if someone tells me what they mean but had to ask

Thanks for reading so far and I hope you will join me on my journey to keep me motivated!!

Hello there 
You have a very good action plan there well done. Your LTV(Loan to value) is 82.2% there abouts on looking at your figures? 

Hey Sistergold, 

Thankyou for your post and kind comments. I'm really quite new to all this so absolutely still learning. Thankyou for correcting my LTV figure. I reckon it probably looks even better now, with the purchase price of £138,000 and the current balance of £112,664, a quick online calculator gives me 81.64%. Wow thats quite addictive to keep checking that and being 1.64% away from owning one fifth of my house too! 

Apologies my maths isnt always great, especially around percentages but I am slowly working on it and working on financial stuff more is helping. 

Payday is coming up too so that means another mortgage payment as normal and another over payment. Cant wait. Even at the age of 37, I find all this quite exciting and motivating. I feel like I am getting myself in order, and by overpaying I am investing in my future. 

I hope you dont mind me asking, but I noticed your signature and mortgage amount and proposed time to pay it off by and wow, that will be incredible, best of luck with that. If you have any tips I would love to hear them. Thankyou again!  

Hello regularsaver 
I am enjoying your thread by the way and am also keeping up with you to stay motivated in what feels like a lonely journey sometimes. 

Thank you for the well wishes we all need them. 

I have set my mind on making overpayments like you. Initially I set up with my mortgage provider to take an extra £277.61 together with the mortgage payment. Now that there has been a reduction on my interest rate due to Bank of England reducing rate I have now gone on and set up a stop order of £125 bringing monthly overpayment to £402 thereabouts.  This alone puts me on track to pay 4years sooner. 

Each time I scrutinise an unnecessary regular bill I will direct it to mortgage over payments. 

Secondly I opened an account just for money I intend to overpay on the mortgage but not straight away. I plan to save at least £20k a year in that account but it’s also emergency money just incase. If however at the end of the year if there has not been some kind of emergency I will send all that money to overpay. I must say at this point I also have savings for other things like emergency fund, general savings etc but I just decided not to tie this £20k straight away. This means if I should just decide to install a new kitchen for instance I can or an extension I can. The smaller overpayments I am making monthly will go to reducing the term but the £20k a year for first few years I will direct towards reducing my monthly payments. I pay over £2k a month for the mortgage( it’s a variable repayment mortgage) and want to bring it down to £500 per month. 

Thirdly every year I overpay the lump sum which will reduce monthly payment I will then calculate the difference between initial monthly mortgage payment amount and current mortgage payment amount and again make this part of the direct debit overpayment amount which will keep reducing mortgage term. 

Fourth is that I am open and will consider taking a lodger or two. I plan to look into getting a lodger once my youngest child starts secondary school which is September 2021. So I will possibly start looking into it from January 2022. Getting a lodger was always part of my plan to overpay but it is not necessary other than to that so I will only do it when I feel it’s okay interns of space and all. I am now convinced I can do it as I have been watching tiny house movement, van-life and minimalism and realised that we don’t need so much space and stuff. If I keep this in mind and get a lodger I might even pay off the house much sooner than the rent years I think. Once the mortgage balance gets to a certain amount I will consider just pay it off with savings. 

🧐😏 does it make sense? I Felt confused explaining the plan! Either way I will keep an eye 👁 on the balance and munch it until it’s finished! I am planning on some kind of snowball effect where I attack every aspect and the overpayment will get to a point it just has to overpower the mortgage! Amount for now is big but after sometime it will have to give for I will attack it from every angle! 

Xx

regularsaver

Sistergold said:

regularsaver said:

Sistergold said:

regularsaver said:

Good afternoon all,

I am a long time lurker on these forums and since purchasing my first house in January 2019, I have been a regular reader of diaries in the MFW section of the forums. A big congrats to all those working towards being mortgage free and also thanks so much for the inspiration. I had wanted to make a few overpayments in my first year of house ownership but, people aren't kidding when they say the first 6/12 months are super expensive.

However, I feel now like I can start to concentrate on making some overpayments and really work towards getting the mortgage figure down as best I can.

I am not sure if there is a standard way of starting these threads but it seems like a little summary is a good place to begin -

- My house cost £138,000
- Deposit was £22,100
- Mortgage when taken out in Jan 2019 was £115,900
- Balance as of Jan 2020 - £113,643
- My mortgage type is repayment (think thats the correct term) paying capital and interest
- My current LTV is 18.57%
- I currently accrue interest at a rate of £7.32 a day / £227.24 a month
- My monthly mortgage payment is £429.75
- I am on a 5 year fix mortgage at a rate of 2.35%
- Mortgage term is 32 years.
- I am 37 and single.

Having spoken with my mortgage provider I have a 10% per year limit on overpayments and they can be as big or small as I like.

I have since before I moved into my home, been using Martins budget planner which has been really helpful and I have just updated it actually to reflect any changes to this years bills etc.

Not sure if I have missed any information, I think that's the usual stuff covered but absolutely please let me know if I have missed anything, and if you have any tips then please share, I love learning new things.

I shall be looking closely at all areas of my budget, and any unspent money at the end of each month I will be looking to overpay. Currently I am also working a fair amount of overtime too, so rather than saving it all, I am thinking about splitting it 50/50 savings/OP.

I do have just one question at this point, I have seen abbreviations such as DD, DH listed in peoples threads etc, I havent fathomed what these mean, I know this will be a silly question and I shall laugh at myself when/if someone tells me what they mean but had to ask

Thanks for reading so far and I hope you will join me on my journey to keep me motivated!!

Hello there 
You have a very good action plan there well done. Your LTV(Loan to value) is 82.2% there abouts on looking at your figures? 

Hey Sistergold, 

Thankyou for your post and kind comments. I'm really quite new to all this so absolutely still learning. Thankyou for correcting my LTV figure. I reckon it probably looks even better now, with the purchase price of £138,000 and the current balance of £112,664, a quick online calculator gives me 81.64%. Wow thats quite addictive to keep checking that and being 1.64% away from owning one fifth of my house too! 

Apologies my maths isnt always great, especially around percentages but I am slowly working on it and working on financial stuff more is helping. 

Payday is coming up too so that means another mortgage payment as normal and another over payment. Cant wait. Even at the age of 37, I find all this quite exciting and motivating. I feel like I am getting myself in order, and by overpaying I am investing in my future. 

I hope you dont mind me asking, but I noticed your signature and mortgage amount and proposed time to pay it off by and wow, that will be incredible, best of luck with that. If you have any tips I would love to hear them. Thankyou again!  

Hello regularsaver 
I am enjoying your thread by the way and am also keeping up with you to stay motivated in what feels like a lonely journey sometimes. 

Thank you for the well wishes we all need them. 

I have set my mind on making overpayments like you. Initially I set up with my mortgage provider to take an extra £277.61 together with the mortgage payment. Now that there has been a reduction on my interest rate due to Bank of England reducing rate I have now gone on and set up a stop order of £125 bringing monthly overpayment to £402 thereabouts.  This alone puts me on track to pay 4years sooner. 

Each time I scrutinise an unnecessary regular bill I will direct it to mortgage over payments. 

Secondly I opened an account just for money I intend to overpay on the mortgage but not straight away. I plan to save at least £20k a year in that account but it’s also emergency money just incase. If however at the end of the year if there has not been some kind of emergency I will send all that money to overpay. I must say at this point I also have savings for other things like emergency fund, general savings etc but I just decided not to tie this £20k straight away. This means if I should just decide to install a new kitchen for instance I can or an extension I can. The smaller overpayments I am making monthly will go to reducing the term but the £20k a year for first few years I will direct towards reducing my monthly payments. I pay over £2k a month for the mortgage( it’s a variable repayment mortgage) and want to bring it down to £500 per month. 

Thirdly every year I overpay the lump sum which will reduce monthly payment I will then calculate the difference between initial monthly mortgage payment amount and current mortgage payment amount and again make this part of the direct debit overpayment amount which will keep reducing mortgage term. 

Fourth is that I am open and will consider taking a lodger or two. I plan to look into getting a lodger once my youngest child starts secondary school which is September 2021. So I will possibly start looking into it from January 2022. Getting a lodger was always part of my plan to overpay but it is not necessary other than to that so I will only do it when I feel it’s okay interns of space and all. I am now convinced I can do it as I have been watching tiny house movement, van-life and minimalism and realised that we don’t need so much space and stuff. If I keep this in mind and get a lodger I might even pay off the house much sooner than the rent years I think. Once the mortgage balance gets to a certain amount I will consider just pay it off with savings. 

🧐😏 does it make sense? I Felt confused explaining the plan! Either way I will keep an eye 👁 on the balance and munch it until it’s finished! I am planning on some kind of snowball effect where I attack every aspect and the overpayment will get to a point it just has to overpower the mortgage! Amount for now is big but after sometime it will have to give for I will attack it from every angle! 

Xx

WOW! Sistergold, thanks so much for the reply and detailed explanations of how you intend on doing things. I think it sounds like you have got everything worked out and are absolutely determined to attack it as much as you can. Good on you too!

I will have a search for your thread and make sure I follow it! 

I am with you on the minimalism side of things, especially as I live by myself. My house is a 2 up 2 down setup and I have a nice little garden and when I was buying, I had the usual dilemma, smaller house in what I considered to be a nicer area or bigger house, in an area I either didn't know a lot about, or wasn't as desirable to me (not trying to sound snobbish) and in the end I chose the smaller house in the nicer area. I am single so I have plenty of space although sometimes you wouldn't think it as I need to have a good tidy and sell a few things I don't use etc, but once sorted will be plenty. 

Onto a few bits of good news. I have now made my 4th mortgage OP, £128.73 this month, which is my 4th one in a row and have now OP more than one single month of my normal mortgage payments. Yay, go me, little win there, as soon as I realised the total for 4 months was more than 1 normal month is made me smile and also like a little goal had been achieved. I am being a bit cautious as I am still building up my emergency fund, currently at just over £6k with a target of £10k. Once I have that to a a level I am happy with I can then divert the money I am putting into that, into my mortgage over payments I hope. I haven't yet delved into any of the money I have been earning through overtime yet to put any of that into the OP as I have been saving that in a separate pot to buy things for the house and so on. 

I have also towards the end of last month changed my current account due to interest cuts and am now saving £4 a month on this and lastly I rang and spoke with my phone line and broadband supplier and negotiated 33.333% off my monthly cost, taking it down from £29.99 to £19.99 and locked that in for the next 24 months so I am pleased with that. It just took a little amount of time and a few phone calls speaking to a few different people after doing some comparisons online including Martins comparison site here which was great. 

My plans for this month are to look at all my other bills and see what else is possible to reduce and if there is more money to be saved from my outgoings. But a good month last month and I am now £14/month richer from just a few phone calls. 

Hope everyone is staying fit and healthy and your mortgage over payments are going well. 

regularsaver

Afternoon everyone, 

Are you guys finding you are managing a lot more no spend days at present? 

Aside from today, having needed to order some Oust de-scaler for my kettle, £3.32 for two boxes of 3 sachets, and the weekly food shop, I haven't spent anything all week which I am feeling really good about. 

I'm very much enjoying the lovely warm weather at the moment. Around where I live my neighbours put up lots of flags for VE yesterday and there was a little disco going on playing old songs for a few hours. I have to listen from my house as I am shielding. Did any of you guys do anything for VE day?