Quest for (mortgage) freedom

eat_that_frog

Hope everyone had a good Christmas! We had a lovely time at home as a family.

I've set out my 2025 goals. On a similar theme to previous years, my aims are financial, health and general wellbeing.

1. Make mortgage OPs of £18k. The mortgage is currently £55k. If we overpay £18k in 2025, on top of our monthly regular overpayments, we could get the balance down to £35k by the end of the year.  And at that point, I think I'll be able to start a 'mortgage free in 18 months challenge' and really push ourselves to live frugally to make the OPs we need to pay off £35k in 18 months. Just typing this out feels really huge. Nearing the home stretch now...

2. Keep emergency fund at £10k.

3. Lose 12 kgs. My baby weight needs shifting.

4. Try 1 new activity/experience as a family per month. In 2024 we did a very good job of getting out at weekends as a family and enjoying our time together. Now it's time to try and broaden our horizons and try new things together as a family. We already have a few ideas in mind for the first couple of months of 2025.

Bring on 2025! Hope everyone has a good new year!

eat_that_frog

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2025 is happy and healthy for us all.

So following a heart to heart chat with my other half yesterday about our 'resolutions' for 2025, we've decided that this is the year that we pay off the mortgage for good.

We've got £55k to pay off. Our plan is to use some of our emergency fund, move some other savings pots around, and live frugally and throw everything we've got spare from our monthly payslips. We are on a tracker mortgage, so there's no ERC to worry about. We've set ourself a target date of 31st December 2025.

It's one hell of a challenge, but we think we can do it, with a bit of luck on our side. And whilst the children are so young (5 and 1), and their interests are so low-cost (give my 5 year old a trip to the playground, followed by a trip to the library, rounded off with a choc chip cookie from Costa and he thinks he's had the best day out EVER), now feels like the time to really push to maximise our savings and get the mortgage down to zero. 


So...the countdown to mortgage freedom begins! 365 days to go!!!

KajiKita

Oooh! Exciting times. I will be following with interest and cheering you on! 😊❤️👏

KK

Jessy103

You got this 💪

South_coast

Wooooo, this is very exciting 😀!

eat_that_frog

Thanks everyone! It's super ambitious, and means we'll be making overpayments of around £1k per week (on top of our usual monthly payment) to get the £55k down to zero...but we figure that even if we 'fail', we'll still have got a fair chunk more paid off than if we'd continued with our original plan to overpay £18k this year. 

We just want this mortgage gone now, we are well and truly over it   

Today's frugal wins:
1. Today whilst shopping I bought yellow sticker meats/chicken to go in the freezer. On top of what we already had, we've got enough meats/chicken now to last through January and February.
2. Resisted the urge to buy a coffee whilst in town food shopping. Takeaway coffees are my money saving weakness for sure.
3. Moved money from 1 savings pot in preparation to overpay the first £1k at the end of the week.

364 days to go!!!

LadyWithAPlan

What a fantastic exciting target! As you say your kids are so small this is a great time to do it. Cheering you on and loving the countdown! I will borrow your  countdown for buying and home and getting a mortgage I think!

Not sure if you ever read @caeler MFW blog when she went full on focused to pay down her mortgage  asap - it was v inspiring 

Owen1991

Amazing read and motivation as we start our diary this week, £188k over 30 years feels unbearable. 

HNY and good luck, I’ll be keeping an eye out till the end!

eat_that_frog

Thanks both!

Yeah I remember really enjoying reading the final countdown @caeler wrote, it definitely inspired me to start mine and I remember distinctly having a feeling of 'I really want to achieve mortgage freedom too'. 

@LadyWithAPlan I love that quote in your signature about just don't buy stuff. That's going to be my motto this year if I want to get the total cleared by the end of the year.

I've been looking on the other boards, I quite enjoyed reading on the frugal living challenges people separating out their wants from their needs, and setting an annual amount to cover those 'wants'. I've also been reading about having a 'no buy' year, again I'm going to adopt a lot of those principals too.

362 days to go!!!

eat_that_frog

I've had a good first week of January! Keeping on track so far...

This week's frugal wins:
1. 3 NSDs (out of 5 days in January so far, I need to maintain motivation to keep this up. The snow definitely helped!)
2. Stocked up freezer with yellow sticker items. I have enough meat/chicken/fish to last until end of February, if not longer!
3. Have done a thorough freezer and pantry audit and have meal planned until the end of January.
4. Frugal meals this week: Thursday was leftover ham with roast carrots, parsnips and potatoes all bought for 8p before Xmas, Friday was egg on toast, Saturday was spaghetti bolognaise and today's lunch was cottage pie - the latter 2 meals were made out of half of 1 small box of mince, with the other half put in the freezer.
5. Took both children swimming yesterday at the leisure centre in town. We all had a great time!
6. Moved money around in order to make a mortgage overpayment tomorrow - tbc once the building society opens.

360 days to go!!!