Mortgage free by 45

South_coast

Wow, that's some amazing yellow-sticker shopping! 

Thick_n_Thin

That’s an amazing haul on the shopping, why not pretend you paid full price and use the difference for a sneaky overpayment? 

Mortgagefreegonnabe

Thanks all.   I'm definitely in the honeymoon phase of my light bulb moment but I'm determined to stick with it.
I'm probably a bit of a control freak (it's the only way I can manage a busy home life and busy job) so learning to let go during this lock down has been quite tricky and it's nice to be able to take control of something positive again.
TnT - I will definitely try that trick when I actually go main food shopping but it was meant to be a no spend day so I'm not counting it as being more than a couple of quid spend.   

So - I may have cheated a little bit and convinced my OH to put an extra £50 per month into the joint while he isn't driving much and I'm going to match it so that's £100.   
June OP =
£300 joint
£50 energy refund
£100 OH/me own funds
£24.50 ebay
£6 in SouthCoast style I'm paying £6 towards the couple of bottles of homebrew that a neighbour kindly left on our doorstep
Total £480.50/ £500
Fingers crossed for the rest of the ebay stuff x

MovingForwards

Hello, well done for finding that amount for O/Ps and your other savings. I'm sure you will like watching the mortgage reduce each year!

South_coast

Paying for free booze, I like it 👍

Mortgagefreegonnabe

Have had a lovely, quiet couple of weeks.   OH has been furloughed for 2 weeks and this is the most chilled I've felt for years! 
Nowhere to be (apart from my work which I enjoy), nothing to do and OH to help and share the load - we've had more BBQs in the last 2 weeks than we did in the whole of last year.
Back to lockdown normal next week which means OH locked away in a bedroom and me doing school for 3 kids plus everything else plus work
Focusing on these OPs and personal savings is so empowering though.    I feel really lucky that I can do this (after spending years paying off debt) and I make every penny count these days.   Much to my OHs annoyance 
Balance at start of May £100 132 and May OPs were £552.17 and came from the pots that I decided not to keep anymore apart from the holiday fund which will be topped up with a token £100 a month.
Balance at start of June (otherwise known as now) £99176.31 and June £500 OP is accounted for = 
Energy £60
Beers £6
OH/Me £100
Ebay £17.69
Trouser refund £14.31
Joint savings £300
Plus £464.69 usual payment so balance at end of June should be £98 212.62 (although I haven't added interest on which I think is around £130 p/m).    I'm finding it really hard to log where I'm at because as soon as I've made a payment the daily interest is added and the total goes up again so these figures are all roughly done (apart from the actual OPs which are correct). 
Now onto July OP =
Remainder of above trouser refund £1.69
OH/ME £100
Joint savings £300
Total = £401.59 found and £98.31 to go.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
I thought future me would benefit from knowing how my personal savings were going as well so I'm going to log them monthly. 
£275 from May salary saved (no opportunities for overtime due to lockdown situation so I was paid a bit less than normal) so current balance £2 135.00.   
p.s. Fingers in bold to make it a bit easier to read as I'm not very good at formatting my blurb

Mortgagefreegonnabe

Figures not fingers   

LeighofMar

Congrats on the OPs even during COVID. This situation makes me even more determined to pay this house off. Well done even with furloughs, lockdown, no overtime, and homeschooling. 

Mortgagefreegonnabe

Happy New Year!
Rubbish at updating.   I'm still here, quietly reading all your diaries most days and still massively inspired by this lovely community.   
Like everyone else I'm reflecting on this last year.   At Jan 2020 we were:
- £500 o/d with no savings and so many outgoings that made life very stressful
- £0 savings 
- Mortgage of £101 817.34  (We also have a smaller 2nd mortgage of £5k on it but I'm ignoring this for the purposes of MFW)
- Paying into basic employer pension 5.8%

Throughout the year we have been gradually getting ourselves sorted out and now at Jan 2021 we have:
- No overdraft 
- Holiday summer 2021 savings £163.11/£1350 (aiming to fund this entirely through 'free' money, ie surveys, marketplace clutter selling, tilly tidies, cashback and not doing too badly so far touch wood.)
- School pot £103.98/ £300 (emergency dinners, school residentials, etc)
- Sinking fund £161.83/£500 (was higher but got wiped out by emergency drain work we had done in Nov - don't ask but so glad I had it!)
- Christmas cash funded
- Mortgage of £94 520.72 including overpayments of £3 226.09
- Have increased pension contributions from 5.8% to 13%.   My employer doesn't make any extra contributions for my increase so I don't know if I've done the right thing here or if I should be putting it into a LISA or SIPP (I don't understand what a SIPP is) I really need to research this properly.
- Opened Freetrade account and have £48.40 in there doing ok and will keep topping up £25 per month.   I find it really good fun. 

During 2020 I did okay (for me) in my personal savings mostly by salary saving/overtime (after all overtime being stopped during the first lockdown it then picked back up from the summer and I haven't looked back) and managed to save £4k over the year however my brilliant sister is in the process of buying a flat in London and I wanted to help her as much as I could so I gave her £3.5k (kept £500 back for emergencies) towards the deposit.   
I didn't think I would mind too much as it was going towards a good thing and it's not like I can go anywhere with it at the moment (travel with my kids is my main reason for trying to save lots) but the anxiety I felt at having no money again really surprised me.   
I've set myself an ambitious aim of £5 880 but hopefully I can achieve this because it was worked out - not just guessed at random.   I already have £1 688.25 of it from the original £500 I kept plus overtime/salary/Christmas money.   I have a side hustle which has unfortunately been none existent for a lot of this year but I'm hoping this will pick back up again from spring-ish.   

I didn't achieve my aim of £500 per month that I set out to do in May and I definitely could have done better - food is a big money pit in our house - but I'm not beating myself up as I'm still happy with this amount.   It has come from the joint account and being as frugal as poss a lot of the time.    I know that we/I can do a lot better - husband is mildly onboard (sometimes it makes me a bit sad about what we could achieve if he was completely onboard but mildly will have to do) and so I've joined MFW 2021 with a target of £5k in overpayments.   I'm excited for the challenge and posting at the end of each month to keep me accountable.   
Take care everyone and thank you for all the inspiring content 

Mortgagefreegonnabe

Jan update
* Overpayments - £228.76 - current balance £94 900.   OP end date March 2039.   All overpayments made using Vinted/ Prolific (quiet month) and a few Tilly Tidies.
* Personal Savings from salary which was mainly Christmas overtime £1 803.   Would have been more but car had to do it's MOT.    Feb will hopefully be a decent pay packet due to new year overtime but then it will be a bit depressing on just my basic salary (I always do about an extra 20 hours per month at least) as I can't take on anything extra thanks to home schooling which all falls to me as well as working 25hours per week out of the house.   Things are busy!!!   
* Summer holiday fund is now at £330.35 funded by Prolific, some money back from postponing our CP trip to next year and Tilly Tidies.    Sometimes when I withdraw money from one of the accounts I then transfer the money direct to the mortgage (even before it has hit our account) and then when it does hit I tell myself I can't remember if I've transferred it (I usually can) so I do it again just in case.   A double overpayment!

I'm only selling clothes at the moment due to lockdown - I've reduced my clothes from 1 half of a MASSIVE wardrobe to what will fit in a small vintage gentleman's wardrobe that I've had for years and love.   This has involved a LOT of decluttering and I love how much extra space there is now.   OH is going to dismantle the wardrobe during half term and once lockdown is over we will sell it.   It came with the house and we've always hated it and hopefully we should make some money from it.      
I've been massively decluttering (still so much to do though) and have so much to sell on FB marketplace once restrictions have lifted.   I can't wait for the space and freedom!

I've been doing well with Feb overpayments but will update that on 28/2 as want to keep it to a monthly post.    Still lurking and reading all your diaries.  Thank you for the inspiration x