Quest for (mortgage) freedom

eat_that_frog

Thanks everyone! I hope everyone has a brighter and healthy 2021! 

I thought I'd use this chance to note down my goals for 2021:

1. Overpay £20,000 on the mortgage. This is a stretch goal - based on my overpayments in 2020, £18,000 worth of OPs in 12 months is realistic. So in order to stretch myself, I've set a goal of £20k to try and push myself a bit more.

2. This isn't money related but I'd like to really focus on losing 14lb this year. I already am quite an active person; my downfall is hot drinks with sugar and enjoying biscuits/cake after meals. So I hope by cutting down these empty calories I can lose some weight slowly but healthily.

It'll be interesting to look at this post again at the end of the year and see how I've got on. If I've met these goals (or come very close), at the end of the year my mortgage total after regular payments and overpayments should be around £200k and the scales should show me as 14lb lighter! Something to aim for... 

Viking_mfw

Good luck!

savingholmes

Good luck with your goals. Happy 2021

SandyShores

eat_that_frog said:

That's great that you've got online access to your mortgage account @SandyShores. Unfortunately my mortgage company don't have that facility, so when I phone them to overpay I have to ask them to tell me the new balance each time, and keep track of it that way. Feels a bit outdated in 2020 but hey ho. Good luck building your EF! 

Hi Eat that frog and a happy new year.  I was just assuming that all the mortgage people had online access - although I've got to say it stresses me out slightly as the interest is added daily so its a constantly moving target.  I just noticed we have a similar weight loss goal too

eat_that_frog

I've just recalculated the daily interest I'm paying on my mortgage. It's currently £11.56 per day; when I started this challenge in 6 months ago in July 2020 the daily interest rate was £12.50. Doesn't seem a huge saving but a decent nearly £30 saving per month or £360 per year so every little helps 

I phoned the bank today and my yearly overpayment allowance (10%) restared again on Jan 1st - so I'm allowed to overpay £22645 this year. I think that's a bit too much of a stretch, but if I do hit my 2021 goal of £20k I'll be very happy! 

savingholmes

Well done you. It is a great feeling to make progress in at least one area during these crazy times

Sweetie83

That’s really good saving well done 👍🏻 I’ve got £308,000 to go but started last year as £348,000. Sometimes it’s good to reflect on how you’ve come! 

caeler

@eat_that_frog that’s a great reduction! Every penny matters! I’ve only recently I’ve started to understand daily interest and now I’m obsessed! 

eat_that_frog

Yeah I find the daily interest really interesting. I probably wouldn't recalculate it more than every 6 months because my monthly overpayments aren't big enough to make a huge dent in the daily interest rate on a monthly basis - but combined over the 6 months it looks like a nice saving 

eat_that_frog

I have been looking through my accounts to see what my NSDs have been looking like. I'm going to try and set myself a little mini challenge each month to try and meet a certain number of NSDs that month.

In December '20 I managed 15 NSDs, which I think's pretty good bearing in mind Xmas, but was also definitely helped by tier 4 announcements. So my target this month is to match that, and get to 15 NSDs in the month of Jan '21

I've tried out food shopping delivery for the first time this month. I used to shop at German budget supermarket which is over 10 miles away (my nearest shop, we live in middle of nowhere). The food was great and we were v.happy with the price, but we heard about another shop (one of the cheaper ones) doing online deliveries in our area. So we booked it in and got a delivery pass which cost us £20 for a weekly delivery for the next 6 months. We think this is a bargain and suspect we would have spent more than the £20 on fuel in total for a weekly 20 mile round trip every week for 6 months. So far we haven't noticed any increase in the weekly food shop bills but we've only been doing it for 3 weeks so we'll have to see how it pans out overall. And interestingly even though I order the super budget brand value products from their range, they have a habit of replacing them with far more expensive equivalent branded items and not charging us the difference. We've checked and double checked the receipts. I didn't realise online shopping did this, and we'd be happy with the own brand cheapest items...but it is quite nice to eat slightly more extravagantly for the same price.

Main downside so far is I miss the outing to the supermarket, what have I been reduced to by Covid when I miss my regular food shop as entertainment source