Climbing hills 21 July 2020 at 3:11PM in Mortgage-free wannabe 58 replies 3.2K views

Every_penny

Right, here I am all raring to go. About to get my mortgage for our next house. Slowly moving up the ladder but I feel like I'm coming to this a bit later in life than some others - I'll be 40 next birthday and want to be MF by the time fifty hits. I didn't leave Uni until I was 25 and didn't buy my first property till I was 33 so a late starter and want to do some catching up.
We're moving from a 3 bed in an expensive area of the country to a 6 bed where we can get more value for money. I'm married with two kids (2.5 yrs and 9 months) - husband is a Stay-At-Home parent while the children are small - this was an organic move due to his work drying up as the babies came along. So anyway, my salary covers everything right now but hopefully we'll have a second income once the kids are at pre-school/school. We got the large house to accommodate aging parents, if ever the need arises as we don't see ourselves moving for around another 10 years. His parents have both just turned 80 and mine are arriving at their 70's.

Finances:
No real debt of which to speak of. Paying off the last bits (£1700) of an interest free credit card balance used to buy a car 18 months ago. Porting current mortgage of £68,000 at 1.99% with 2.5 years left and topping up with a 2.24% 2 yr fixed rate for the remaining £167,875 required. Opted for a 30 yr term which seems crazy, as I can afford a much shorter term but in this COVID climate, I didn't want to stretch in case I lost my job etc, especially with husband not working. I plan to make OP's every month once we're in and settled. From the sale of our current property, I am putting down a 15% deposit and will have just over £20K remaining for work we want to do on the house. Although I'm hoping to keep this balance at around £10K as the emergency slush fund.  I may need to consider a product for the savings account once the purchase of the property goes through but for now, it'll go into my low rate savings account. After the 2 yr fixed is over, I plan to move to a 5 yr fixed for the whole amount (with a small hit from the early repayment charge on the smaller mortgage) and will most likely reduce the term to 20 yrs, but let's wait and see!

Being MF in 10 years seems like a short time to pay of this balance - a mountain to climb - but even if I don't hit my target, every OP helps, right?!

yogavibes

good luck with the move - exciting times ahead for you. We have a similar size mortgage and I am also hoping it will be gone in the next 10 years - we can do this!

Every_penny

Thanks yoga vibes. Good work on your OP's!

Pocket_poor

Welcome and good luck!

Hazelnutty

Welcome to the board!

LeighofMar

Welcome. 10 years sounds like a great goal. 

Socajam

I love your plan, but my only exception is that in this corona virus pandemic, we have no idea what post corona virus will be, so instead of overpaying every month, I would save the money in Premium Bonds and then pay a lump sum annually.  You can even set up a standing order to buy them monthly.
This way is something unexpected were to crop up, you would have money readily available.
As a person who have been mortgage free for 6 years now, I can tell you its one of the best feeling in the world. 

Every_penny

Hi Socajam, Thanks for your comment. I hadn't thought to do it that way but PB's could be a good solution. I actually already have a standing order so i could bump that up. I suppose the advantage of putting it in premium bonds is that you can access it without penalty for emergencies, but not so readily that you can use it for impulse purchases. And of course there's the chance of adding to the pot with winnings! I can't wait to be mortgage free.
If my plan goes ahead and I can do this by 50, the kids will be starting secondary school so we could opt for private education if we needed/wanted to. (The area we are moving to has great primary's but not so great secondary schools).

Every_penny

So, I’m still in the process of purchasing but hoping to complete in a few weeks. The mortgage has been approved and waiting on valuation. I’m porting a small mortgage as well as taking a new mortgage on a larger amount as I’m currently in the middle of a five yr fixed (plan is to merge in 2 yrs to avoid large ERC payment). 

Have been reviewing outgoing to see where we can cut back - we don’t have an extravagant lifestyle but when we’re busy we are prone to the odd takeaway, but if we forward plan this can improve. One of the killers on our big shop is buying convenience food and junk. Once we move I’m planning to make small lifestyles changes like trying to snack more on fruit. Our local greengrocers shut down last yr and I find some supermarket fruit to be hit or miss do I tend to avoid as lots goes to waste. Fortunately the place we’re moving to has a great market so will be pleased to shop local. 

Every_penny

OK, so one thing I didn't mention is that our house has solar panels with feed-in to the grid. The house is situated nearly perfectly south facing (0.03 deg off).  Having never owned a property with solar panels before, I didn't really know how they work in terms of what electricity you pay for. Having done a little digging and discovered that it's going to be much cheaper to run appliances in the day, I'm already obsessing about how I'm going to switch around my schedule for laundry, cooking and evening showering! I need to be careful that I don't get too carried away with the energy saving stuff - we have to live our lives too! Anyone else got Solar panels and do you maximize their use on sunny days?

Our move in date is supposed to be in around 3 weeks but I think that will slip a couple of weeks. If it does, I'm going to pop a little extra OP on to my current mortgage. 
_EP

longway2go

Just wanted to pop on and wish you luck. We are similar ages with small children and a slightly smaller mortgage (not counting our BTL mortgage).  We would like the residential paid off in the next 10 years ideally.
I now do alot of batch cooking which saves so much time and money, its worth looking at the batch l*dy if you haven't heard of her.
Good luck and what an exciting move ahead.