Time to Face The Music

RelievedSheff

I have set up an overpayment for our mortgage account starting next month. We already overpay slightly by £5.73 to make it a round number but we have decided to add an extra £100 per month from my pay rise to the mortgage as well. So the over payment is now £105.73 as of the 1st February.

Sun_Addict

Good idea. I’ve been overpaying our remortgage off at £100 a month extra and it’s shaved a year off the term. Realised this morning it will be gone completely later this year so will shift the overpayment to the proper mortgage. 

Balances looking good. 

RelievedSheff

Sun_Addict said:

Good idea. I’ve been overpaying our remortgage off at £100 a month extra and it’s shaved a year off the term. Realised this morning it will be gone completely later this year so will shift the overpayment to the proper mortgage. 

Balances looking good. 

I was playing around with our lenders over payment calculator and the overpayment will shave off 1 year and 3 months off the remaining term which is amazing really for such a small amount overpaid.

Cherryfudge

Overpaying is the best, if you can do it. I took about 4 years off ours and it finished immediately before lockdown and my husband being out of a job, so it really was a gamechanger for us. Even without those extraordinary circumstances, the extra in your account once the mortgage is gone is really nice!

RelievedSheff

Cherryfudge said:

Overpaying is the best, if you can do it. I took about 4 years off ours and it finished immediately before lockdown and my husband being out of a job, so it really was a gamechanger for us. Even without those extraordinary circumstances, the extra in your account once the mortgage is gone is really nice!

Once we have the credit card paid off I do think we will make larger overpayments on the mortgage to get it cleared as quickly as possible.

We have 13 years and 4 months remaining as of today. So with the current overpayment that takes that down to 12 years and 1 month.

When we remortgage in May 2026 we would like to be able to reduce the term again if at all possible but that will very much depend on mortgage rates at the time I suppose.

In other news I have opened a new savings account with our bank which has a better rate than the one we were using, still not a great rate at 1.75% but it is instant access with no penalties for accessing the money. And have transferred all of our savings (barring the Premium Bonds) into that account. For now I think it will be easier for us to just have the one savings account and the Premium Bonds. When we have enough savings to stash some away in a longer term higher rate account we will do that at a later date.

RelievedSheff

It will be a no spends day today. Number 2 for January.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be from stores. Breakfast was crumpets, we have both taken our packed lunches to work and dinner tonight is pork loin chops with stir fried vegetables and bean sprouts.

Tonight's jobs are:

• walking the dog
• cleaning the kitchen

Hoping for a quieter day at work today. Managed to wade through the stack of emails and get some of the more urgent jobs done yesterday so hoping to ease back into it today.

LittleMissDetermined

Good idea with the overpayment on the mortgage, that will be our plan once we are debt free too

milann

We shaved years off our mortgage. When the high mortgage rates dropped in the 80’s we continued paying at the higher rate most of the time….it’s surprising what a difference it made. I never imagined completely owning our house in our 40’s 😀

RelievedSheff

LittleMissDetermined said:

Good idea with the overpayment on the mortgage, that will be our plan once we are debt free too

I did consider putting it towards paying off the credit card, but decided that is ticking along nicely and is due to be paid off at about the same time as the motorhome loan so paying extra off the card which is on 0% won't make any difference to our debt free date.

Our savings are ticking along nicely so it made sense to put the extra money into the mortgage which will make the biggest difference to how much interest we pay over the loan period. Whatever we can pay off now will mean less we have to switch over to a higher interest rate mortgage (most likely) in 2026.

RelievedSheff

Not a no spends day today. I have been to pick a few bits up from the shop this morning and the window cleaner is coming today.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are from stores though. Breakfast was toast, we have both taken our packed lunches to work and dinner tonight is spag bol and garlic bread.

Tonight's jobs are:

• walking the dog
• cleaning the bathrooms
• vacuuming the house

I think we are back into the swing with going to work again now. The first couple of days have seemed to take some getting back into but this morning seemed a bit easier.