SLLM (Single Lady Large Mortgage)

Felicityfandangle

@Sistergold I'm just not as brave as you! Plus hurtling towards retirement at an alarming pace 55 months takes me to my 60th birthday. It looks like I will have to work until my npa (67!) but for the last 7 at least I should be relatively comfortable. xx 

Sistergold

@Felicityfandangle, you think I am brave? It was more of a woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do. If you are scheduled to finish paying your mortgage at 60 you are doing well. I am scheduled to finish paying when I am 70! If you plan to retire at 67 and you don’t need to pay your mortgage from 60 that should really be a relaxed 7years. What is terrible is having to work till 67 with the mortgage still to be paid. Xx

badmemory

There are a lot of us that have been in the position of "a woman's got to do what a woman's got to do" & that is what we do & tend to do so well.  Let's face it we all know you are going to be nowhere near 70 when you pay off your's.  When I took mine out they wouldn't let me take one past 65.  Back then it was quite unusual to overpay.  30 years ago so well before Martin!  I have to say I was really lucky.  It was back when building societies were buying each other out & the buy out of mine was 10% of my mortgage.  So I was there thinking what do I do with this money (I had a small EF by then) I was dithering between a fanastic holiday, a good holiday & half of it off my mortgage.  Then my sensible brain cut in assisted by the a***/ole stopping paying maintenance & I paid it all off my mortgage.  We don't go crying back to daddy, mine didn't even find out until I had to go back to court (I needed a childminder for a few hours).  As you say it is what we do, have done & will always do.  This is pretty much in the nature of a well-done you post -because I doubt anyone in real life will ever do that.

Do you know what really annoyed me about paying off my mortgage?  My single professional sister earning over twice what I did paid off her's the year before - cue big dinner out in celebration.  I paid mine off, child still in school - not even an oh that's nice dear.  No wonder my sister's psychiatrist (sp) thought I needed therapy more than my sister did.

Apologies for the rant!

slm6002

I think all of our stories show that even though we have all gone through tough times and had to fight sometimes to get where we are, we are all stronger and wiser for it.  I certainly have learnt that the only person I can rely on is myself and if I don't do something then it probably won't happen.  We are all great

savingholmes

Well I've literally spent the weekend reading this thread - very uplifting. Would love to have the income of some of the posters - but likewise I'm sure others would say that about mine too. 

I'm coming out of a 30 year marriage (my choice) and buying out Ex. We had an IO mortgage - so my new repayment mortgage will be £202K and is due to take me until I am 73 and 7 months to repay. If all goes well with the Finance Consent Order - the house mortgage should be in my name only within a matter of weeks. I'm jumping from an IO payment of £130pcm to a repayment of £930 plus his previous share of the bills. I got a 5 year fixed rate at 1.84% as I wanted cost certainty.

For me waiting to get a mortgage approved (got my offer) - and now waiting on the sign off of the Consent Order have been the most stressful thing. If all goes to plan - the formal part of the divorce will have taken less than 4 months.

Fortunately, timing wise I/we'd already repaid most of our debt - coming down from £70K at our worst down to less than £2K and the kids (18 and 23) have jobs. DS has since moved out. DD is mostly working away and just back for weekends currently. One of the many last straws was when Ex wanted to go straight back into debt before we'd even quite finished paying off the last lot. Given we'd had several of these cycles already - I'd had enough. 

I found the thought of taking on such a big mortgage on my own terrifying until I realised that if the worst came to the worst - it's a 4 bed house and I could take in lodgers &/or sell my car or in a true wipe out situation - sell the house. I have good pension provision - so I am also hoping once I'm over 55 to transfer an old DB pension, grow it and get a 25% TFLS to pay at least 25% off my mortgage. I'm seeing the repayment mortgage as kind of enforced savings - and again a contingency plan could be to change my mortgage type or length later if needed - to allow earlier retirement. I've nearly got enough years in for full state pension - just 4 years left to accrue - and I have a current DB pension. Together the two, if I continue working until age 67 are due to give me more unallocated spending £ than I have now if I take into account the mortgage, life insurance, OPs and pension payments - which I plan to be gone by then. According to the retirement calculators I've done - if I worked until age 67 - I might not even need the other 75% of my first pension if I managed to transfer it to a flexible drawdown type pension... or alternatively I could use it to fund a few years of early retirement & / or doing up the house.

DIY - I can paint, garden and hang wallpaper. I've hammered in plenty of nails and am not afraid to get my hands dirty. I have however never used a drill, a cable finder or electrical screw driver - although Ex is leaving me 2 out of 3 of those. I also struggle with lightbulbs as I'm quite clumsy. Luckily BIL lives within reasonable travel distance and has said he'll help me out. DD is training to be an engineer and has done drilling and used electrical screw drivers and assembled furniture... so hopefully it will be okay. I already have the contact details for a good plumber, electrician and general handyman. Even while married I was the one to drive the quotes down - so that doesn't worry me. I was always told to say you needed to discuss it with your partner any way and one single bloke I knew - used his cat as his partner - and would then come back and renegotiate the price and it worked!! LOL.

All this to say - hello ladies! Well done for what you are achieving and I hope we can all continue to encourage each other.

Sistergold

@badmemory, you are forgiven foe “the rant”. You are right as woman we are just survivors and we are also very practical and bound to make good decisions along the way! The money you got and used to pay off your mortgage rather than go on some fantastic holiday was definitely money well spent! And you are so right to be honest most of the time we are too busy or weighed down with responsibilities we don’t take time to celebrate our achievements! Xx

Sistergold

@slm6002, we have all achieved a lot despite all odds! “We are truly all great”! Xx

Sistergold

Hello @savingholmes and welcome to SLLM. Well done and thank goodness you are able to secure a roof over your head! You are so right that a repayment mortgage is indeed a “forced saving”. You are also in a good position as your children are all grown up so you can basically focus on organising for your retirement! It also dawned on me that I had to leave the marriage then or never as the the time to get a mortgage was going to be running out! There just comes a time one have to use common sense to see that you have gone round in circles in ones marriage. 

Being 73 years old at mortgage freedom is not bad at all and in the meantime you will be able to overpay when you can. With 4 bedrooms there is so much room to manoeuvre with the possibility of lodgers such that you can really get extra money if needed! Well done! Xx

Queen_of_the_Hive

Ladies I think I needed to read your posts tonight... My progress to where I want to be a painfully slow, full of pot holes but I aren't giving up (excuse the bad English). 

savingholmes

Thanks @Sistergold - thankfully it's 22 years to mortgage freedom at worst - hopefully can beat that. Your journey has been super impressive as is your apparent income. It wouldn't have occurred to me to look for DIY courses - but I may look into that at some point or see if BIL will teach me. 

I think it would have taken more guts to leave the marriage when the kids were younger - like you did - but you certainly seem to be securing a stable home and good future for them.