Quest for (mortgage) freedom

Sweetie83

Great achievements well done 

eat_that_frog

Happy New Year everyone! Hope everyone enjoyed a bit of a break.

Thought I'd kick off my 2022 diary entries by listing my goals for the year:

1. I'm aiming for £18k overpayments, so around 10% of outstanding balance, which should take me down to £175k left owing on the mortgage at the end of 2022
2. As I can't overpay any more than 10%, I'm also aiming to put £3k into savings. When my mortgage fixed rate finishes next year I will put it towards the mortgage then
3. Lose a further 14lb in weight, taking me back down to my pre baby weight of around 9 and a half stone
4. I started decluttering in May last year and reached about 1300 items decluttered. I'm going to roll that amount forward so by the end of this year I'm hoping to have decluttered 2022 items from my home/garage/garden.

So by the end of the year if I am successful, my mortgage should be around the £175k mark, my emergency fund should be £3k bigger, my bathroom scales should read around 9 and a half stone, and my decluttering progress should have topped 2022 items.

If I reach these goals I will be absolutely delighted! I remember setting goals for myself for 2021, it feels like yesterday and I can't believe where the year went.

On a related note I've signed up for the Mortgage Free in 3 challenge (Take 6), aiming to repay around £125k in 3 years to bring my total outstanding down to somewhere in the £70k bracket. Now that I've been consistently overpaying my mortgage for 18 months I feel ready to set myself a longer term challenge and am confident I can carry on making overpayments over the next 3 years. It's a big stretch but my preschooler will start primary school next year, and then I can increase my hours (currently working 3 days a week) and consequently increase my incomings.

Good luck everyone with your own 2022 goals!

Sweetie83

Happy New Year, what exciting goals and looking forward to following your journey. I’ve hit the £259k mark so a bit behind but love the idea of setting a slightly longer term challenge as well. 

eat_that_frog

Thanks @Sweetie83 and well done for hitting the £259k mark yourself! So from reading your signature, is that around £100k you've paid off in nearly 3 years? If so that's amazing!!!

powerspowers

Happy New Year frog! I love the goals and will see you on the MFi3 challenge

rugbymadfamily

What a brilliant end to 2021! And some fantastic goals for 2022, will be here cheering you on!

Ps we ended the year with a mortgage starting with a 2 instead of a 3 so am with you on the excitement if that!

eat_that_frog

Thanks @powerspowers and @rugbymadfamily! Hope you both have a good 2022 and well done on all your achievements in 2021!

eat_that_frog

I've had a productive start to 2022. We decluttered the wardrobes today and decluttered over 60 items from there. Going to tackle a cupboard this weekend that's always been problematic, fingers crossed I make some good progress there.

Decluttering of slightly different kind but yesterday I spent an hour deleting old emails and unsubscribing from emails. It felt amazing to do. Digitial decluttering I suppose.

We're a couple of weeks away from payday but I've been able to put £100 away into savings. I'd already put £500 away at the beginning of the month so I'm making good progress on reaching £3k increase in savings by the end of the year. And when my fixed term comes to an end I'll use it to overpay the mortgage.

eat_that_frog

Hope everyone's having a good January. It has flown by for me, extremely busy at work and can't believe it's nearly February already.

Checking in with my progress this month: 

Mortgage: I've overpaid £1500 this month, so I'm on track
Savings: I put away £500, so I've so far saved £1100 out of the £3000 I'm aiming to put away this year
Weight: my bathroom scales have broken! So no idea honestly
Decluttering: a total of 85 items decluttered this month, taking my total to just shy of 1400 items decluttered in total.

So I'm happy with my progress so far in 2022 and just got to keep it up.

eat_that_frog

I've recalculated the daily interest I'm paying on the mortgage. It's now down to £10.06 per day. When I started this challenge back in July 2020 I was paying £12.50 daily interest; then in Jan 2021 it was down to £11.56 per day. So I'm delighted to have shaved off nearly £2.50 in daily interest since starting my mortgage free journey 18 months ago; that's a very respectable £77.50 saving per month or £930 per year.