Quest for (mortgage) freedom

savingholmes

Good luck 🍀. It does take more effort but will be worth it

eat_that_frog

This week I marked 2 years since deciding to become mortgage free. Delighted to say that in that time, I've got my outstanding mortgage balance down from £240,000 to £175,900.

Absolutely thrilled to be in the £175k bracket, which was my aim for 2022. Can't make any further overpayments as I've maxed out the 10% overpayment limit. So I'm topping up our savings - I moved £700 across this month.

savingholmes

£65K in 2 years is absolutely stunning. Well done.

Cornish_mum

Congratulations that’s an amazing reduction CM

Sweetie83

Oh wow that’s amazing! Congratulations

eat_that_frog

Thanks all.

With all the news at the moment around interest rates rising and inflation hitting 15% next year, it's more important to me than ever getting my mortgage down as far as possible.

We are on a fixed rate until Dec 2023. I don't know what interest rates will look like then, so we're really incentivised to keep overpaying and really get the outstanding balance down. I've been looking at whether it's worth paying the early repayment charge and fixing onto a new 5 year rate now, but it's just hard to know what the best thing to do is.

My OH had a promotion at work last month, a small payrise but every little helps. I'm also applying for internal promotions to try and help things.

Like everyone else, we're noticing the price of essentials rising rapidly. Our weekly shop in Lidl is now a standard £70, it used to be £40-50 depending on how much meat etc we bought. We don't really buy alcohol or treats and we already shop at a discount German shop so there's not much else we can do to strip back other than cooking more budget meals, which I am trying to do.

We've been largely sheltered from rising energy costs to date because we're on oil and we filled our tank to the top back in early Jan when prices were still normal. But we will need to top up in readiness for this winter and that will be expensive.

In more positive news - our back garden is nearly finished! It's been a 2 year project including building a patio, landscaping the garden area, refurbishing the summerhouse and building a playground area for our preschooler. We've done it all ourselves with largely 2nd hand materials (including the patio stones sourced 2nd hand for £100 which look amazing and would have cost over ten times as much new!) and in total we've spent £1k, some of which we got back from selling things the previous owner had left behind (we made about £400 in total).

In other positive news, I've lost a bit more weight and am now halfway towards my target for the year. Absolutely delighted and feeling much better for it.

savingholmes

Sounds like you've done a great job on your garden 

eat_that_frog

Not a huge amount to report since my last update. I've put another £2200 into the savings account for next year's 10% mortgage overpayment, so I'm now over two-thirds of the way to the £12k target for that pot of money.

No weight loss, unfortunately. Things have slowed down somewhat on that front.

I'm not enjoying my job and I haven't been really for a long time. I've been doing it for 15 months now, so I'm looking for another opportunity internally.

Otherwise I've been getting into my hobbies recently - getting back into reading, puzzles, and arts and crafts. I love having a nice project on the go.

savingholmes

Well done on the savings. 

Hobbies can be very rewarding too... 

eat_that_frog

Well where does the time go? 3 months since my last post. A lot has happened.

1. I've got a new job! Same company, different part of it, and a little bit more money too. Really looking forward to starting the new role soon.

2. No new OPs to report on, as I maxed out my 10% OP allowance earlier this year.

3. Since maxing out my OPs, I've saved just over £11k towards my £12k target. Not been paid for the month yet so hopeful I can get that total up to £12k before the end of December and hit that target.

4. I decluttered 100 items from the downstairs part of our house this week. I won't hit the 2022 target but I'll up it by 1 and roll it forward to become a 2023 decluttering target!

5. My weight loss has slowed down but I have lost a further 1lb so the weight is slowly creeping down. I'm half a stone off my target weight so I think that's a realistic target for 2023.


...I need to have a think now about my goals for 2023 hmmm...

I hope everyone has a peaceful and restful Christmas!