Oh how to be mortgage free...

becomingbetter

Yeah it seems great having somewhere to keep track and look at others for a bit of inspiration and motivation! 
The food budget is my thing, my partner gets so fed up when I go on about how much stuff I bought/made for £... we normally end up with 20quid or so left from that at the end of the month too. Mostly Aldi and lidl to thank for that though!

becomingbetter

I wish their was a face palm smilie! 

Ever since I started my own thread about our overpayments and savings, we’ve been rather extravagant and not entirely sensible lol. Maybe this was always the case and just keeping a note of it has made me more aware. 

So we bring our puppy home next week (not a very money saving purchase, especially with lockdown puppy prices) but it seemed like the right time, I cant see their being another opportunity to have some much time at home to housetrain a pup. So it was almost a now or never decision- our family are all very excited and really on board, we’ve been inundated with offers to puppy sit on days we both need to travel to work.
We have managed to stick to our overpayments and made some extra, so mortgage currently sits at £170,700. 

It means that after our Jan payment it will mark the first 10k being paid off. 

It’s amazing how quickly the balance seems to come down with just small and frequent OP’s 
The motivation, moving forward would be to aim to pay 10k off every year now. So starting with that nice round figure in January will be an easy way to track this.
Wishing everyone a merry Christmas! Although not feeling particularly festive yet, I am sure looking forward to a few weeks off after a very hectic year 

becomingbetter

Totally forgot to update this last month, but continued with our overpayments and a bit extra (we pay council tax over 10 months) So managed to OP an extra £300 ish, current balance is £169000.

I’ve also been clearing out and anything decent went on eBay, ended up with about £60 for bits and bobs that were lying around, so that went straight to the mortgage too. 

We were very fortunate in that a family member has given us a significant amount of money towards our wedding, so we really don’t need to put much more towards it. Another 6ish months (depending how we prioritise our saving) and we will have all our budget sitting there. Feeling good about it as we have already paid the deposit for all suppliers and venue, and a few things are paid in full such as cake, favours and rings. 

I’ve come up with a few, ambitious but achievable, financial goals for 2021; 
Pay off my mobile; £600 left (0% finance)
Add to personal savings; £800 (would see me at £11000) 
Add to joint savings; £4900 (would get us to £10000) 
Overpay mortgage; £160000 balance by the end of the year 
Wedding fund; £4000 (adding this extra would give us £13000, a few thousand more than the original budget. Enough to pay the remaining balances and all the unexpected things that I’m sure will crop up) 

becomingbetter

I was reading through some diaries yesterday and noticed someone (can’t remember who!) had mentioned that if you can, best to make OPs at the start of the year or at least as soon as you can to get the most out of the reduced interest. 

So I worked out that with our (now normal, but actually includes an OP) £900/month mortgage payment, we need to make £3000 OP by the end of the year to reach my aim of £160000.
We decided to ‘borrow’ some money from one of our other pots to make this payment just now and we will top it up over the next year. We use an envelope system, so currently have a new envelope with -£3000 eeek

It seems like the best use of our money as we still have sufficient amounts for emergencies and currently sitting in bank accounts payment very little, if any, interest. 

Current mortgage balance is now £166000! 

caeler

I figured that out a bit late! @becomingbetter
I’ve always drip fed OPs from my salary payment but last month released I could lump sum the rest of my allowance and then drip feed salary into savings. Interest successfully reduced, although my timescale is quite short so I’m only a few quid better off! 

becomingbetter

Not sure why but I don’t seem to get notified if anyone adds to this thread- apologies @caeler! 

I had a look over on your diary and it’s amazing, congrats on being so close to MF.

We managed to make some overpayments again this month, knocking another £1000 off. I’m getting to be quite obsessed with having the balance as a nice round number. 

Wedding savings are looking healthy and I paid off my mobile this month (birthday money and a very good spree on prolific help greatly) 
I need to try and rein myself in a bit now, the puppy has more toys than we have space to keep them, so will try my best not to buy him anything else for the next few weeks! 

caeler

Thank you! So very close and it feels totally surreal! @becomingbetter I get notifications if somebody replies to my thread but I follow it so maybe that is why? I've done that by clicking on the tab (oblong box?) that sits next to the title of my thread in the main forum.  
Good job with the overpayment! 

becomingbetter

I'm not quite sure where the last 5 months have gone... but my diary has been neglected for some time now! 

Mortgage overpayments are going well, current balance is £159,800. Which is way ahead of where I had hoped to be but has set us up nicely to aim for a 10k reduction each year from the point our mortgage started (We moved here end of August 2019, so think our first mortgage payment was around aug/sept) 
2 years and 20k paid off is a nice place to be!

We've entered a vicious spending cycle that has resulted in our joint savings taking a huge hit, with a grand total fo £60 in there. Not a disaster as I have 10k personal savings and we have (what I hope is) all our wedding fund sitting there too. 

Big purchases included a new car, its a 3 year HP type thing but 0% interest and a big final payment to keep it. We've been saving £300 separately each month to cover the final payment when it comes up. 
We are in future planning mode and figured that by the time we are married and hopefully start trying for a baby we will only have a year or so of car payments. 

I've just applied for a new bank account with HSBC and switched an existing account. There is a £140 switching incentive, if that all comes through, I'll throw £100 at the mortgage and pop the rest in our joint savings.

becomingbetter

Managed to make an overpayment yesterday and it showing on the mortgage this morning. 

The boiler is due a service and I had some money put aside for this but last week (perfectly timed) our energy supplier sent a letter to remind me about our free service!? So that’s freed up some cash. A nice bonus that I didn’t know was included, I just happened to pick the cheapest deal I could when we switched! And would never have known if they hadn’t sent a letter. Free service booked for the end of the month.

Anyway that has helped with the payment, so another £400 paid bringing us to £159,400.

becomingbetter

Payday overpayments all sorted yesterday. Made a small £94.12 OP to bring the mortgage to a round number. 

Currently £158700. 

Trying to get rid of the £700 as it looks much nicer with a load of 0’s at the end! 

Might take a few months of chipping away at just now, as trying to save a bit of easily accessible cash to pay for the wedding in a few months.