Financial Freedom through Mortgage Freedom!

financialfreedomxo

Made a small OP over £122.34. Hoping to make another one before the 24th. Hopefully a bit more this time. 

Grogged

Looks like your making some good progress.
A good way to make sure you stick to your budget is to pay yourself first.
This simply means that you pay all of your non budgeted (so spare) cash into savings as soon as you're paid.
This does mean that you need a proper monthly budget, but that's no bad thing. 😁
Good luck on your journey.

Freein45by45

Good luck with your progress - it's very motivating to make the payments and see the balance going down!

A_Frayed_Knot

Welcome.I have just read your diary from the start. You are doing so well.  Just like to add my tuppence worth.

You mention paying off your CT - If you have the cash sitting in the bank, then I would o/p your mortgage, then just pay your CT as you normally do.  (This way you have reduced your mortgage by £900 and so therefore not paying interest on that massive £900 for a good few months).  This is one of the ways how I worked my o/p's many times over - had a large bill to pay - say in 6 months time and had the cash siting there, so paid that to my mortgage, then replenished my "pot" for the bill over the next 6 months, with every little extra also going to the mortgage.

I also found, if I concentrated on the 4 or 5 last digits on my mortgage balance I would try and reduce the figures to 00.00's
It kept me motivated and amused !!!

Pay what you can, when you can, straight to the mortgage, no hanging about in jars, paid as soon as I could, telling myself, ha - that's another £?? I won't be paying interest on, ever again,  That really pleased me   

Keep going, your doing great !!!

financialfreedomxo

Grogged said:

Looks like your making some good progress.
A good way to make sure you stick to your budget is to pay yourself first.
This simply means that you pay all of your non budgeted (so spare) cash into savings as soon as you're paid.
This does mean that you need a proper monthly budget, but that's no bad thing. 😁
Good luck on your journey.

thank you for the advice! Going to start doing that from next month 

Nurse2047

Well done looks like your doing well 👍 I’ve started to pay myself 10% of my salary into my EF and regular OPs to my mortgage each month and then additional to round up to a 00 figure 😄 seeing the balance go down each month is addictive! 

Grogged

It's also worth understanding how your provider treats over payments.
For mine (NW), an OP of £500 offers the choice to immediately reduce payments or reduce the term.
Typically your OPs will be reviewed every anniversary and your monthly payment maybe reduced.
Knowing how your provider treats OPs may change how you make them.
I round the bank account down to nearest £5 every Monday with a small OP and put my main OP into savings.
I then do a £500 OP when I've saved enough as I want to reduce the term.
Everyone is different, so see what works for you.

Another good visualisation trick mentioned a lot is to print a house or boxes onto a page with each brick or box representing £500 or £1000 of your mortgage and colour them in when you get to that milestone.
It satisfying to be able to colour in the next brick and see how far you've come.

powerspowers

Looks like you are pushing hard, are you on track to reach your target date?
your starting amount is similar to mine so it’s exciting to see how quick it can go when you put everything at it 😄 

financialfreedomxo

Just a little update. I haven't been updating much because we purchased a new home recently and the purchase took 7 months to complete. So we were in limbo for 7 months.

We are now moved in and ready to get back on track with overpaying.  With the purchase of a new home, we took on about £25kish more debt. So we are now at - £85,995.00. Our goal is still to be mortgage free by 24 Aug 2022. I know we will have to be overpaying aggressively to achieve this but I am willing to do that even if it means cutting down our food budget.

Why? Because if I complete the mortgage on this property I am free to move my family to a hot country like Australia or Southern Africa without too much worry and this has always been my goal. 

From today 21 March 2021, I aim to make a small overpayment every week of about £25 (where I have to actually login and look at the figures etc). I know it's not much but it will keep the mortgage overpayment on my mind constantly which in the past has helped me to achieve a lot. 

Before March is over, I want to set up a regular overpayment which comes out via direct debit, but I need a bit of advice on this because my mortgage is in two parts, one part has a 2.2% interest rate and the other part has a 3.38% interest rate. Should I prioritise the higher interest part?  Hmmm, I'll ask around. 

financialfreedomxo

I have just made an OP of £999.99