Our Mortgage Free Journey

Bargainhunter30

Well done Ami-Rose. You're doing a great job. I found the first year of home owning the most expensive as there's always something that needs doing or something to buy. It's a good idea to wait for the bigger jobs, as once you settle in you'll discover what works well and what needs changing. We moved to the North Coast of NI and I love it here, especially on days like today. I bought towels from Tesco and Asda recently and although the Asda ones are ok, I wish I'd waited and bought more luxurious ones! Enjoy your new home x

Grogged

Just catching up on your two bits of good news!
Great to see you putting your stamp on the place and OH getting promoted.

Ami-Rose

Just checked our KFI for the mortgage and it projects that we'll be £631.43 short of dropping into double digits owed. Our payments will be ~£5,250 this year and over half of that is going on interest. I feel quite queasy at the thought... Part of me really wants to push and overpay that £631 but another part can see how much the house is pushing our budget already!

FtbDreaming

I pay £270 a month and only £140 of it is capital. I was shocked at it when my first payment went out but I’ve now focused on rounding it down to the next £100 by overpaying the ‘odds’ left over which is around £60 a month. 

We have to remember it’s a arathon not a sprint and the first couple of years are always the hardest when the mortgage is at its biggest and the house needs most work doing. I’m just counting on in 3 or 4 years time the mortgage will be lower and I’ll have more disposable income to overpay a lot more then. It’s about prioritising for now x

LeighofMar

FtbDreaming said:

I pay £270 a month and only £140 of it is capital. I was shocked at it when my first payment went out but I’ve now focused on rounding it down to the next £100 by overpaying the ‘odds’ left over which is around £60 a month. 

We have to remember it’s a arathon not a sprint and the first couple of years are always the hardest when the mortgage is at its biggest and the house needs most work doing. I’m just counting on in 3 or 4 years time the mortgage will be lower and I’ll have more disposable income to overpay a lot more then. It’s about prioritising for now x

It's painful isn't it when you see what goes to capital and the rest interest? Our starting payments were $90.00 to capital and $229.00 to interest and the rest to insurance and property taxes. So out of my 490.00 payment, 400.00 is going to everything but my equity. I'm so glad we started overpaying early because if we hadn't, we'd still be paying pennies to the capital. Like you, I'm looking forward to the disposable income and keeping the majority of my paycheck. What a concept 

Ami-Rose

FtbDreaming said:

I pay £270 a month and only £140 of it is capital. I was shocked at it when my first payment went out but I’ve now focused on rounding it down to the next £100 by overpaying the ‘odds’ left over which is around £60 a month. 

We have to remember it’s a arathon not a sprint and the first couple of years are always the hardest when the mortgage is at its biggest and the house needs most work doing. I’m just counting on in 3 or 4 years time the mortgage will be lower and I’ll have more disposable income to overpay a lot more then. It’s about prioritising for now x

Yeah, that's probably the focus I should have! And long term it will be, I was just gutted that we will be so close to double digits and not quite make it. We'd have to pay about £100/month extra to do it and while we could with OH's promotion, it would slow down the EF savings/furniture and decorating the house. We've decided to round or payment up to £500/month from £434 and be happy with that for now. Maybe aim for double digits by the mortgage anniversary rather than calendar year. 😊

Ami-Rose

Just spent ~£50 on decor in Tesco. It's a good job I only go in if we've forgotten something in the delivery or we'd have no EF at all. 😂 I got some sofa cushions and a small artificial plant for the living room, plus a basket for the bathroom windowsill to contain the products we use daily. I think a floor lamp, new lampshade and some prints for the wall will finish the living room. 😊

family355

It’s took me a while to find you @Ami-Rose so have book marked to have a read through! 

Sounds like you’ve got off to a great start though-we’ve been here 8 years and still have no pictures up 😂

Ami-Rose

7 months since I posted, eep! 2 more surgeries under my belt though so I have a good excuse.

Had absolutely nothing to update until today anyway. OH's PC went caput over the summer and he was just about to start a new degree so EF got emptied to replace it. It's taken us until now (from July/August) just to get out of the overdraft and start replacing savings. The EF was there when needed though, so trying not to beat ourselves up.

The added bonus is that the new one can mine cryptocurrency, so it'll pay for itself in ~1 year. We've very much got into crypto this year with our fun money and been making a hell of a profit. Its staying as our personal fun money atm, but if it ever got to the kind of numbers that would pay off the mortgage we would happily put it across! The money we're making from mining is being kept as a household investment and is currently earning us a lovely 6% compounding daily.

With everything going on the mortgage had taken a bit of a backseat, but we're hoping to move back to England in the next few years so we wanted to know what the savings goal is to make that happen. We've made 9 payments so far and less than £500 has come off the capital. Thoroughly depressing! So although it's not much, we've rounded up our DD to £450/month, which is an OP of £15 and some pennies.

The statement also gave us a HPI, which I've never heard of before, but it reckons our house value has increased ~£5k since we bought it. I'm sticking to original purchase price in my calculations to be cautious, but if that's accurate it puts us at 81% LTV. Our new goal is to hit 80% in the hopes of qualifying for a better interest rate come renewal time. Ive realised there are still 4 years to go so I'll probably have to work out what's realistic and set something a bit more ambitious!

Nabbed myself a new tablet, which was planned spending, but used cashback and black Friday to get it £37.50 off and almost £17 cashback. Very pleased! And means I can start doing more freelance work from next month.

Christmas is sorted too - only doing presents for the 3 smalls this year which just need wrapping. Snacks and chocolate have been stockpiled in the garage over the last few weeks too, most bought on clubcard price. All that's left is to buy the regular food we'll need and a joint of some kind for Christmas dinner.

Ooh, just remembered OH has been offered for his annual bonus to be put in his pension instead. The employer gets a discount on NI etc if they do that and have offered to add that in too as an incentive. It works out over £3k into his pension so we're gonna go for it.

Even though we're ending the year with the EF about the same as when we started, it's fulfilled its purpose multiple times this year and pension, ISA and general net worth is up so I still consider it a win. Don't have actual numbers because my little shadow keeps me too busy to get near a spreadsheet these days!

I will try to be better about updating, but if I don't, happy Christmas!