Quest for (mortgage) freedom

eat_that_frog

My March was a fortunate one. My partner and I both received good bonuses at work, which we put towards mortgage overpayments. We overpaid £6.5k in total in March and put just under £500 into our emergency fund. So we are now over halfway towards our target of £18k overpayments this year and over halfway towards our savings target for this year.

With the luck of our bonuses getting us well ahead on our OPs, my strategy for the rest of the year will change slightly. Previously I would have said that I would increase our OP target. But with everything going on, we're keeping our mortgage OP target the same rather than increasing it - instead any surplus left at the end of the month will go into savings. This should give us a bit of a buffer against cost of living increases/inflation.

South_coast

Wow, brilliant OP 😀😀😀!!!

Cornish_mum

Congratulations on the bonus and OP!

eat_that_frog

I've had a good April so far.

I've paid £1500 off the mortgage, taking the outstanding total down to £185,000. So in the summer the second number should tick down and I should be firmly in the £170k bracket. Feeling very excited and motivated by this.

I also put £500 into savings, so I'm now more than two-thirds of the way towards my savings goal for this year.

I decluttered nearly 50 items from my home, mainly outgrown baby clothes and toys, and nearly all of which have been donated to charity, sold, or recycled. So I'm just over 50 items away from hitting my 2022 in 2022 decluttering target.

I've lost 4 lbs since February. I was really pleased with my weight loss in 2021, and am delighted that I've managed to keep it off and am now losing more on top. I am doing it very slowly to ensure all changes I'm making are sustainable long term, but every little helps.

With all that said, I've been thinking recently that maybe I'm too focussed on becoming MF and maybe need to focus a little more on having some fun too. It's funny, @caeler posted a few days ago about being so focussed on the MF goal and what happens after that. Although I'm still some way off becoming MF, I'm making more of a conscious effort to get out and about more and ensure I'm enjoying my earnings and not just going through the motions to pay off the mortgage early.

eat_that_frog

I've had a good May but have had a bit of a change of tack with regards mortgage overpaying, so have decided to try something new this year.

I've decided to overpay the remaining 10% allowance for 2022, which was £7k. I took this from my savings, which I'll build up again back to where they were (and maybe a bit extra) during the rest of the year. Still have a comfortable emergency fund of 6 months bills and outgoings left over. I think I'll do something similar next year too, if I have the savings available to do it.

So my mortgage outstanding is now around £177k. Absolutely delighted to be in the £170k bracket. By the end of the year it should be around the £175k mark, based on my regular monthly payments.

Time will tell whether it was sensible or not for me to overpay in 1 chunk out of my savings, and then backfilling my savings each month, rather than overpaying steadily each month out of my earnings and keeping my savings untouched. But aside from having 6 months of an Emergency Fund (which I still have) I don't see the point in continuing to increase my savings when the interest rate on them is still pitiful whilst my mortgage balance is still so high. I'd rather try and get the mortgage daily/monthly interest down sooner. It makes my head hurt to think about it but hopefully I've made the right call.

In other news, I've lost another 1lb in weight this month. I've done some more decluttering in my attic (long overdue). Due to have a second bite at the garage this month. Think I am on target to hit 2022 things decluttered by the end of 2022. Also my partner has an interview next week for a new role with his current employer, so hopefully he'll get it. And lastly we're still working hard on finishing the garden, it looks so different to what it looked like this time last year, and I think by the end of this summer we'll have got to where we want to be with it.

South_coast

Ooh, excellent work on the chunky OP 😀!  That will make a big difference to your daily interest, which is something I have a feeling people are going to be a lot more interested in in the future!

eat_that_frog

Thanks @South_coast! Yeah I agree, I think getting the monthly and daily interest rate down is going to become a big factor for a lot of mortgaged homeowners. Also our mortgage fix comes to an end in Jan 2024. Without a crystal ball who knows where interest rates will be in 18 months time, so I'm keen to get our outstanding balance down as low as possible and our LTV as good as possible over the next 18 months.

Sweetie83

Well done that’s a good strategy and really good overpayment 👍🏼

savingholmes

Just caught up on your diary. You're making excellent progress. Look forward to reading more.

eat_that_frog

Doing a grocery challenge this month to try and bring my costs down. My food shopping bill week before last hit £100...Looking at my budget from last year, I was spending about £50-60 a week in the same shops for the same sort of weekly shop!

I already shop at the German discount shops anyway, so I can't use that as an option to reduce the overall bill. I already meal plan every week and batch cook where I can, so I can't use that as a way of reducing costs either. So what I am looking at is cooking more budget meals to get us through. BBC Good Food have just set up a £1 a head meal budget section, which I've started to use this week. I'm also trying to work through what I've already got in my freezer, cupboards etc to get us through the summer, although that won't last forever, I'll probably get 6 weeks out of it.

So I did a food shop, for my week of budget meals, and spent £77. If it lasts for 7 days and I don't run out of things, or need to pop out for 'extras', I'll consider that a victory!