Quest for (mortgage) freedom

eat_that_frog

Realised I haven't provided an update for a while! Have been plugging away with increasing my savings pots, we now have £31,900 in there, so I've met our savings goal of £30k for the year. Absolutely delighted with this and hopeful I can stretch this to £35k by the end of December which would be a huge success for us with remortgaging coming up.

We have a mortgage offer in place now for moving onto a tracker mortgage, which will give us the flexibility we need. We have done a few things last month which have cost us money (getting the best quotes and renewing all our insurances which always come up in Sept, getting both cars serviced and MOT'd) but those are some major expenses out of the way now for another year. We have also done a couple of things this month to save money - we renegotiated our TV and Broadband package and have saved a decent wodge there, plus we looked at other ways to trim our household budget.

And lastly - I've been busy decluttering again! We managed to recycle or donate to charity around 150 items, that total was achieved was just through sorting out the playroom and outside shed and garage! Felt really good to get those areas looking organised and less overwhelming again, genuinely I find it so cathartic. I've got 3 other areas I want to look at - my wardrobe, the kitchen, and the bookshelves/cupboards dotted throughout the house. I wouldn't say our house is cluttered as such but with a young child and busy jobs we aren't good at streamlining when new things enter the house, particularly at birthday/Christmas time. 

KajiKita

Awesome news on the savings and the decluttering 😊

Is that enough savings to make it worth looking at an offset mortgage option?

KK

eat_that_frog

As it's nearly the end of the year, thought I would post my usual yearly summary against the goals I set at the beginning of the year:

Goals for 2023:

Mortgage: £16k overpayments, £151k left owing on mortgage by end of 2023 (£16000/£16000 so far) - goal met! And after overpayments, just through regular monthly payments I ended up getting my total mortgage down to £148k. Lovely to see that number drop below the 150 mark.

Decluttering: 2023 items decluttered by end of 2023 (1923/2023 items decluttered so far). Very nearly there! Only 100 more items to go which I think we will do quite easily as we sort through the garage in the new year. I love living in a decluttered house and I am very proud to say we are keeping it up - when things come in, I look at what can be removed to make way for it. 1 in, 1 out, where possible.

Saving for remortgage: £30000 saved by end of December (£36900/£30000 so far) - goal met! Very happy with this one, we worked really hard as a family to save where possible knowing we had to remortgage end of this month, and the result is nearly £7k more saved than our original ambitious target.

Weight: 12lb lost by end of 2023 (0/12lbs so far). Ah well maybe next year!!!

Energy usage: Reduce usage in Q1, from £120 per month average use to £100 per month average use - goal met! Again happy with this but need to keep an eye on energy prices next year. We are on oil out in the sticks so the numbers above are just electricity.


Hope everyone has a peaceful and restful Christmas and New Year!

eat_that_frog

Hope everyone had a peaceful Christmas. Ours was very relaxed, just the way we like it.

Setting out my goals for 2024....

Unlike my previous years' goals, I am putting more emphasis on personal goals rather than the financial goals. Becoming mortgage free is still really important to us as a family - my husband was put at potential risk of redundancy in October/November, although he was fortunately able to find a job quickly at the same grade paying the same within the same company. So we did come through it unscathed thank goodness and at the same time made us appreciate the security of having a roof over our heads that is solely ours and not part owned by the bank. But we have also had other issues within our wider families, serious health issues mainly, and it's given our priorities a bit of a shuffle - e.g. the second half of 2023 we've not being able to get out and about with our 4 year old as much as we'd like due to commitments related to family health issues (hospital appointments, caring responsibilities etc) - this is something we want to improve in 2024, even just in small amounts to begin with.

Anyway, these are our 2024 goals:

1. Health: increasing our fruit and vegetable intake and reducing our UPF intake as a family, to improve general overall health.
2. Getting out and about: doing an 'activity' or something even smaller as a family, once a week to begin with, building up to 2 times a week in April '24 and 3 times a week in July '24. We owe it to our 4 year old for this to become a regular family thing again like it used to be before life challenges overtook us in 2023.
3. Physical exercise: a personal goal, some sort of physical exertion, even just a walk around the village, to improve my health. Start with 3 times a week, build up to 4 times a week in April '24 and 5 times a week in July '24.
4. Decluttering: this is a personal goal, I love living in a decluttered house which we've been doing for the last couple of years. It's so good for our mental health also. So our goal is a) to declutter the garage, outhouses, garden and attic and b) keep on top of the toys, books and clothes&shoes by continuing the '1 in, 1 out' approach which works so well.
5. Financial: make mortgage OP of £6k in 2024. Our new mortgage arrangement starts this week, we'll be throwing all our savings (except our emergency fund) to get our mortgage total down to £88k starting 1st Jan. In 2024 I want to overpay £6k against this mortgage total.

South_coast

Sorry things have been challenging the last few months. Plans for 2024 sound fab, will be cheering you on x

eat_that_frog

Well I've rather neglected updating this thread in 2024 so far!

I'm feeling in a much more positive frame of mind than at the end of 2023, it's fair to say. We've really been focusing on our health and doing things together as a family, and I think that's really helped. No mortgage OPs yet but my OH and I get paid our bonuses at the end of this month so we will use those to make a lump sum overpayment off the mortgage.

In terms of our goals...

1. Health: We've made a noticeable effort to eat more fruit and veg. Hard to tell if our UPF consumption is going down overall but we're certainly making a lot more homemade meals rather than buy a ready meal or order a takeaway, and of course this is having a positive impact on our finances too
2. Getting out and about: we are definitely doing a lot more of this. Our goal at this stage was to do 1 weekly activity as a family...I think we're averaging 2 a week, sometimes 3, and it's been fantastic frankly. Homemade pizza picnic night on a Friday in the sitting room while watching a film, family walk on a Saturday, going swimming on a Sunday...these have become part of our family routines and it's a great feeling. We're also eating homemade meals together as a family more regularly which is wonderful.
3. Physical exercise: I go for a 30 minute brisk walk most days so I am definitely hitting this target, and feel better for it.
4. Decluttering: so far this year we've decluttered the garage. Our next job is to declutter our home office, mainly our paperwork.
5. Financial: haven't really made much progress here. Our emergency fund is just slightly above £10k but we haven't made any mortgage OPs yet this year...that will change once we get paid our bonuses end of this month.

eat_that_frog

We had a good end to March, me and my OH both received good bonuses which we have chucked at the mortgage. So our outstanding mortgage is now £76k. We decided not to reduce our monthly mortgage payment, it still feels comfortable, but we have just started on a tracker remortgage so hoping the interest rate comes down at some point in the not too distant future.

I did the calculations of the difference in interest we're paying now we've made the OP....

Back when the mortgage was £88k in the early part of this year we were paying about £13 a day interest. Now it's around £76k we're paying about £11 a day interest. So monthly we're saving about £60 and yearly around £720 in interest. I love seeing the interest paid coming down, makes you appreciate the hard work behind the OPs all the more.

eat_that_frog

Writing this post to mark the 4th anniversary of being on MSE and starting my mortgage free wannabe journey.

I remember the day vividly, I was just finishing Maternity Leave with my first child, who was just about to turn 1. He was napping in the back of the car, I'd parked up in a local beauty spot next to the river, and I made the decision there and then to chuck everything at the mortgage. At that point, we'd had the mortgage for nearly 18 months (it was our second step on the ladder, our forever home) and the outstanding balance was £240,000. We'd started with a balance of £250,000 18 months previously when we bought the house... and I had a moment of clarity of how utterly depressing/demoralising it was that we'd barely made a dent in the mortgage.

Anyway fast forward 4 years, we've now got the outstanding balance down to just under £75,000. 

4 years on, I still don't have a 'plan' as such other than 'chuck anything spare at the mortgage'. And 4 years on, I still don't have a target date for becoming mortgage free. 

And as I've always pictured that I'm writing this diary for me and my family to look back on once we are mortgage free, I just want to say that I'm loving enjoying the journey 

South_coast

Absolutely amazing progress, you're doing so well 👍!

Jessy103

Great progress, well done! 🙂