Time to get my house in order!

Thick_n_Thin

So after learning the hard way how to manage my finances and money over the last few years I have finally arrived at a point where we are in a position to start overpaying on the mortgage. It’s not a massive amount just short of £64,000 and with 6 years 11 months left to run. In my head I want to get this gone in 3 years so we can have a bit of financial freedom and use our mortgage payment to build up additional savings for semiretirement or even retirement, By then I will be 52 and OH will be 59. I will give more details in the next couple of posts, obviously with everything that’s going on currently at the moment I’m not sure how my 1st overpayment will look but I’m determined to make a start, being at home more has really made me take stock of what’s important to me and I want to act on it and start making my dreams come true rather than frittering money away that could actually benefit me and my OH. Bit of a rambling 1st post but I really want to get started now!

Jessy103

Good luck on your MFW journey!

longway2go

Lots of luck with your dream, remember everything overpaid makes a difference. 

Thick_n_Thin

Jessy103 said:

Good luck on your MFW journey!

longway2go said:

Lots of luck with your dream, remember everything overpaid makes a difference. 

Thanks both 😀 I agree Longway2go every little really does make a difference. I have been thinking long and hard about the HOW, how am I going to achieve this, past experience has taught me I struggle with consistency, I’ll go in all guns blazing and then struggle to keep the momentum when it gets a bit tough, this is an issue in other areas of my life so I really want to learn to take baby steps with this. 

A big area I am determined to tackle is my day to day fritters, going out for milk and then spending £10! I have done a quick skim of my current account and was horrified to find that I spent over £200 here and there in April and Just over £120 in March, there’s a big overpayment right there.... I know a lot of this is due to buying more food ect at the start of lockdown but this really needs to be managed now. My 1st overpayment will happen next Friday when I get paid, not sure at the moment how much as we are currently furloughed but I’m hoping for at least £200. 

Plans for today.... bit of cleaning then I’m going to relax in the garden this afternoon and hopefully finish my book, a planned NSD as well.

jenni_fer

Good Luck!
Set yourself mini challenges each month / few months to keep motivated?

rkd_999

Good luck for your new diary - I agree I find writing everything down in relation to spending makes for sobering reading!! And makes it easier to spend less!

Thick_n_Thin

jenni_fer said:

Good Luck!
Set yourself mini challenges each month / few months to keep motivated?

rkd_999 said:

Good luck for your new diary - I agree I find writing everything down in relation to spending makes for sobering reading!! And makes it easier to spend less!

Thanks both.. definitely up for setting mini challenges each month to keep me on track, I find if I use MSE daily rather than dipping in and out it helps keep me focused and on the straight and narrow so to speak, I think a challenge for the remainder of the month really needs to be around grocery shopping, I need to go back to Aldi rather than Tesco which I’ve been using for sheer convenience whilst on lockdown however it’s costing me a fortune, so this needs to stop this week. I’ve spent much of the afternoon reading diary’s on here and have also been reading The escape artist blog around how to achieve financial freedom, a lot is plain common sense but there is some learning to be done around investing that I want to explore further, I’ve also looked at where my pension pot is up to, I’ll post tomorrow on the true state of affairs currently and more on what I hope to achieve over the next couple of years. Being at home has given me a lot of thinking time and made me realise I don’t actually need what I have been conditioned to think I need!

South_coast

Great work, some time spent on introspection now will pay dividends for your future goals

Thick_n_Thin

South_coast said:

Great work, some time spent on introspection now will pay dividends for your future goals

I agree, I love the plotting and planning and getting things out of my head and down on paper. I’m fortunate that my OH is completely on board and is quite frugal by nature, it’s me who is the spendy one in our relationship!
So the financial situation currently looks like this

mortgage - £63,470 with 6 years 11months left, current rate is 2.94 currently fixed until June 2021, we can overpay by 10% per year. Current monthly payment is £855 per month, the high payment is due to us swapping from interest only to repayment a few years ago.
credit card - £970 outstanding on 0%, would like to have this paid off by end of year, minimum payment is around £12 but have been paying around £100 per month to try and get rid ASAP.
Savings1 -£1389 this is our emergency fund for things that we haven’t prepared for ( broken appliances ect) would like to get this to around £1500.
Savings 2 - £ 9760 this is our when sh£t hits the fan money and can never be touched ( loss of income, redundancy ect) I’m really hoping that this won’t be touched over the next few months as it has taken years to build this up, it was an investment product that I have recently cashed in as it was loosing money, we lost around £3k in six months so I cashed in, not sure if I did the right thing but it’s done now.
Monthly ( on paper anyway) we have around £1k leftover after everything has been paid so I’m really optimistic that £300 overpayment could be achieved, I also have a couple of pots set up for utilities that I try and pay £150 into for regular bills. 

OH also inherited some cash a few months ago however this is completely his money and the circumstances are still quite raw and painful for him so he has put this to one side for the time being as he is not ready to deal with it all emotionally at the minute, he has said that he will pay a chunk of it off the mortgage probably when our current deal comes to an end but he’s not ready to discuss any further and I won’t push him on this.
We both have company pensions which I still need to look into as I’m not sure how much we would need to enable us to retire early, I think my 1st challenge will be to see consistency with the mortgage overpayments otherwise I’ll get overwhelmed and give up.

Thick_n_Thin

Didn’t manage to update yesterday, 1 to many G&Ts on Friday (in the garden) meant I felt more than a little fragile! Most of the day was a right off however I did manage to finish my book so I am happy about that. It also meant it was a NSD as well as I never left the house so another small win. 

Today’s plans will be much of the same, I am debating weather to do a small top up shop but thinking I could probably stretch it for a another day and go tomorrow instead, my mum needs a few things but unless she is desperate for essentials I think I might go tomorrow. Feeling really lethargic today, I haven’t been out for a few days now so think I maybe in need of a walk later.

Thick_n_Thin

So after Boris’s update last night I don’t think I’ll be back in work any time soon, definitely not this month anyway. Seriously debating weather to put my 1st overpayment to savings instead?? Much to ponder over the next few days until I get paid again but I’m desperate to try and get my overpayments started and I’m aware that I’m fortunate to have this problem in comparison to some people. I did my top up shop yesterday and spent £27 so that will last us until Friday. Swept £20 into my utilities bill account to try and build this up again as it’s currently depleted, current account now stands at 26p and I have £14 in my purse to last until Friday. I have done some cleaning this morning, may go for a long walk this afternoon to blow the cobwebs away!