The Crossover Point

Zola.

I thought I would make a shiny new diary detailing my family's journey to the end goal of becoming debt free.

Five years ago my wife and I bought our first home. After a lot of saving, we put down a decent deposit and entered into a five year fix at 3%. A year ago, my wife gave birth to a beautiful little boy and he is keeping us really busy and brings a lot of joy, as well as sleepless times   OH works in Account Management, I work in IT & Marketing.

The five year fixed deal is almost up and we have just agreed to enter another five year fixed deal at 1.9%.  I know rates could go down, but it still feels like such a good deal and I like the stable monthly cost.

Over the past five years, we have over paid by around £6000, which has made such an impact... we now owe around £106,000, soon to be in the five figure club!!!

We plan to over pay each month once the new deal starts, as well as investing on the side.. 

The theme of this diary is our journey to mid 2025, where I have projected (health and God willing ) that our mortgage balance (including the overpayments) may meet a point in our S&S ISAs where we have enough to pay off the mortgage (as long as there is no huge market crash between now and then, also assuming 5% returns).

I don't think we would actually pay off the mortgage, but it would be an amazing goal for us to achieve, to at least have that choice.

Until then, I will aim to document frugal hacks we discover, ways to side hustle for extra cash on the side and anything else which positively pushes us towards our goal.

I hope I can provide some fun discussions, value and interest to people on a like minded path!

Cheers!
Zola 

Grogged

Good luck on your journey and (belated) congrats on ds.
Looking forward to reading about your journey.
G.

tinah

Good luck on your journey. Anything you repay will be worth it in the end. Looking forward to reading how you get along.

Zola.

Thanks @Grogged & @tinah. 
I have signed and posted the offer for mortgage renewal which will kick in from April  . Looking forward to updating my Google sheet when the first few payments go off to see the total owed drop a bit more aggressively!
Quiet weekend at home with the family, weather is too poor to go anywhere...
On the side hustle front, I recently built a simple website for a small startup company which netted an easy little sum of £400. This allowed me to use the cash for groceries and boring things like car fuel without touching the joint account. If only I had one of those little jobs every month!

Grogged

Just checking in, how'd February go?

Zola.

Grogged said:

Just checking in, how'd February go?

All went quite well, thanks. How was your month? Spending was reasonably low in Feb. Lots of Netflix, so rainy also.

Mid March has rolled around already and all we see is Covid-19 stuff, its inescapable! Its baffling how the masses have taken to clearing out supermarkets, bizarre behaviour, and to be honest hard to not get caught up in it... do they know something I don't? I ended up loading up our chest freezer with some extras, but didn't go totally overboard.

Shares have totally tumbled since the start of the month, wiping multiple thousands from my pension and our S&S ISAs. Although this may last a while, I am viewing it as a buying opportunity. I have read continuously about market drops and I feel prepared to stomach it, as long as jobs are safe and we have time on our side!

We have put our direct debits up by another £100 between us, so we now have £500 going into Vanguard a month. I also just added £170 to buy some VANGUARD FTSE DEVELOPED WORLD EX-UK EQUITY INDEX.

This weekend will be super quiet, activities which were planned have now been dropped and I cant see anything happening other than trying to avoid the news about the current situation!!

Grogged

February was Ok, March has been interesting...
I'd been able to move my underperforming SL pension to Vanguard before corona hit.
I now have the joy of investing the cash... 😱
To be fair, I'm drip feeding it in on daily basis into a mix of VG funds, so it's not tanked, just dented! 😂
My preference is the Global All Cap over the FTSE Developed World, but it's as broad as it is long.
As I've only just set up my DD, I'm leaving them alone for the mo.
Other than that, like you tending to the super quiet weekend...
ATB g.

regularsaver

Hello Zola., 

I have booked your diary and look forward to seeing how you get on and keeping an eye out for hacks and side hustle tips! Good luck!

Grogged

Hello Zola, as you've not posted here in a while just touching base.
Keep safe.

Zola.

Hello all, 
I hope you are all well at this time.  How have you all been coping?
@Grogged@tinah@regularsaver

I have been terrible at keeping the diary up to date... life has been super busy with work (thankfully OH and I have been working constantly at home throughout the pandemic, feel very lucky). Our child is back in the nursery so working from is considerably easier now. I am loving working from home arrangement. I am a social person, but the benefits I find from being at home are so much better than the daily commute and all the office politics, attire, etc. I find a lot more time to go for exercise now and it's just such a huge benefit from this rather gloomy situation we all find ourselves in. 

Some key updates:

• Son is a full talking crazy toddler now, so happy to have been at home all during lockdown to see this massive change
• The mortgage balance now sits around £102,800 , I knocked the overpayment up to £800 a month a couple of months ago, overpaying by £270. We are so close to the five figure club!!
• S&S ISA dropped like a stone in March, then has grown back with continual contributions to a new balance  £32,400, with cash in the bank of around £9000 (it was around 2k before lockdown!!), which takes us to around £41k in assets which I am pretty happy with.. we gotta keep on keeping on
• So glad that we decided to stick with one car since my last one died. Working from home has really lead to a reduction in driving and saves thousands a year by sticking to one motor! Long may that continue...

What's been happening with you? 

Grogged

I think it would be fair to say it's had its downs and ups! 😆
Really pleased to see you're still about and had the opportunity to be with toddler at such an important time in their life.
My SIPP and ISA also tanked in March, but have since recovered.
Must say that everyday is starting to blend into meh?day, whilst I'm enjoying working from home, I do miss the office.