Fighting the mortgage interest

Greenglockenspiel

Good luck on your journey, numbercruncher. I think fighting the interest is a really good way to look at it!

Numbercruncher_mfw

Thanks all for wishing me luck. The plan came into fruition today and we have made a £250 overpayment, very proud  😃 At our 2% interest rate that means we have saved £5 in interest this year from this one overpayment alone. 

longway2go

Well done, great to get off the starting block isn't it!! A warning, the addiction grows. 

SuperSecretSquirrel

I spot a kindred spirit

We've been on the journey you are starting out on. Started with small overpayments (much smaller than yours) age 28, still spent money on holidays etc. Ramped up the OPs over time. We became mortgage free at 35 and have been saving towards early retirement since.

We have been thrown some curve balls along the way, but the process has paid dividends. Those curve balls would have come our way regardless, but we'd have been far less well equipped to handle them!

We're now in a position to live happily on a single minimum wage income if needed, anything more brings us closer to earlier retirement, anything less just eats into our savings. It's incredibly freeing to live without money worries.

Best of luck on your journey, you're gonna smash it

Numbercruncher_mfw

SuperSecretSquirrel said:

I spot a kindred spirit

We've been on the journey you are starting out on. Started with small overpayments (much smaller than yours) age 28, still spent money on holidays etc. Ramped up the OPs over time. We became mortgage free at 35 and have been saving towards early retirement since.

We have been thrown some curve balls along the way, but the process has paid dividends. Those curve balls would have come our way regardless, but we'd have been far less well equipped to handle them!

We're now in a position to live happily on a single minimum wage income if needed, anything more brings us closer to earlier retirement, anything less just eats into our savings. It's incredibly freeing to live without money worries.

Best of luck on your journey, you're gonna smash it

Thanks so much, I feel like a MFW celebrity has stopped by on my thread. I have read your thread over the years and it’s given me the motivation to start my journey. I love reading about the financial position you’re in now and the flexibility that allows in your work life.  Do you have any regrets of tackling the mortgage and forgoing some treats along the way? 
I need to find the ‘sweet spot’ where I’m paying a good chunk off the mortgage, have a good chunk in savings and enough for nice holiday. I’m still trying to work out that number....

Numbercruncher_mfw

Well I’m settling into life working from home: I got a monitor this week which means I’m no longer hunched over a laptop.

Some highlights from this week:
 - Getting the fridge stocked once a week from the food shop is now an exciting event as is choosing what’s on our shopping list. 
- I’ve started reading an interesting book on self esteem (The six pillars of self esteem) which has made me reflect on how i approach things in life. I’ve struggled with low self esteem recently so reading up on how to increase it.
- In TV land, I’ve discovered that the first series of location, location, location is on all4. It’s fascinating to see people hunt for properties in 2001 and see the prices (especially  in London).

Well it’s the start of a sunny weekend, I’m excited for my weekend walks and the weekly takeaway tonight.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks so much, I feel like a MFW celebrity has stopped by on my thread.

😂 😂 😂 No autographs, please 😎

Do you have any regrets of tackling the mortgage and forgoing some treats along the way? 

Honestly? No...

We've never felt that we live a particularly threadbare existence. I guess we've somehow dodged lifestyle inflation to a degree, while being lucky enough to earn decent enough (but far from high) salaries for a solid few years.

Before children, we lived our lives exactly as we pleased. I guess a fairly studenty lifestyle day to day and extra spends for holidays and cars etc. After children, some costs went up, others went down (lack of time, energy, etc), life changed but didn't suddenly get expensive. Now post mortgage the monthly nut is quite tiny by most people's standards, which makes for a laid back life. It's exactly how we want to live, so there is no sacrifice.

I may have come close to having a small regret recently. If you have over 16k in savings you are totally on your own if things get especially bad, the kind of bad that is floating around for many right now... We could have spent spent spent in the past, and have the taxpayer look after us in dire circumstances, so in a way our approach could end up leaving us worse off. Then I gave my head a wobble and realised there was nothing much we'd have wanted to spend that money on in the past, and relying on our own savings rather than the taxpayer is something I'm far more at ease with. I also imagine relying on benefits rather than savings would cause some stress and anxiety. So no, no regrets as yet ☺️

Numbercruncher_mfw

SuperSecretSquirrel said:

Now post mortgage the monthly nut is quite tiny by most people's standards, which makes for a laid back life. It's exactly how we want to live, so there is no sacrifice.

This sounds ideal to me.

South_coast

Numbercruncher_mfw said:

SuperSecretSquirrel said:

Now post mortgage the monthly nut is quite tiny by most people's standards, which makes for a laid back life. It's exactly how we want to live, so there is no sacrifice.

This sounds ideal to me.

Me too - now to get there as quickly as possible 😢

julicorn

Just wanted to stop by and say happy not-quite-super-new-but-still-fairly-new-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things diary! I'm looking forward to seeing you tackle this mortgage
Balancing the mortgage with other goals is important. For us, the key was budgeting and being really clear on our priorities and how those change over time. We still spend more than the average person (I think at least!) on holidays, but are fairly frugal in other areas, simply because they are areas that we don't care about all that much. We have cut back a lot of spending in some places to be able to throw lots of money at the mortgage, but those cuts haven't had any impact on our happiness or enjoyment, simply because they weren't that important to us in the first place. We were spending money because we were used to spending it, rather than it having that positive an outcome.