Moved to the "forever" home. Now to pay it off!

caeler

pepperwand said:

@caeler that makes sense, I think I'm going to focus on getting down into each £10k bracket....so on £269k and can concentrate on being in the £250ks at some point!

Celebrate the milestones, they are what will make you mortgage free eventually. 

pepperwand

Talking about celebrating the milestones, I've added our current LTV to my signature. I think it'll be a good motivator as more payments get made to the mortgage and our equity increases. 

pepperwand

We've had some good news and Mr Pepper has been given a bonus from work so we'll have another £2k to put towards the mortgage. I've just sent our first chunk of it (£499) to the mortgage account this morning. I do realise we're very fortunate to be in a position to have jobs, let alone work bonuses in the current climate. 

sonyarita

Hi good news on the bonus!!

I just read your diary this morning, re LISA I have opened one with Hargreaves Lansdowne, there is an option to reinvest the interest you make if that's your thing.

I don't really understand the investing in to funds yet so don't do that but it is really satisfying seeing the interest add up 😉

pepperwand

Hi @sonyarita thanks for stopping by! That's really interesting on the LISA I have a Stocks and Shares ISA with Nutmeg but that's just a robo invester that chooses my funds for me as I don't feel I have enough knowledge to choose my own investments. It's definitely interesting seeing how it performs though. I shall definitely have to have a think about whether I open a LISA as well.

powerspowers

Brill news pepper! Keep going and I agree with previous advice to have mini goals along the way 🙂

pepperwand

So a total of just under £1500 in overpayments made to the mortgage in March. I'm really pleased with that, all helped by Mr Pepper's bonus..... there's no way we'd usually be able to pay that much off in one month! 

pepperwand

So I've been quiet for a while.... it's been an expensive few months getting work done to the house and we seem to have had hardly anything left at the end of each month so haven't made any overpayments for the last couple of months. I've just sent £300 over to the mortgage account today though so I'm pleased with that. My eldest starts school in September so that will also save us £100 a month in childcare costs which hopefully we can direct off the mortgage.

pepperwand

Wow so it's been a while since I posted! We were concentrating on doing work to the house in the second half of last year so the overpayments really reduced although we tried to make an overpayment every month even if it was £50 and we ended the year having made £4000 of overpayments to the mortgage. 

Every time I sent a chunk of money to overpay the mortgage I tried to view it as money I'll never have to pay off again whether it was £50 or £100. 

This year our finances should improve as Mr Pepper has accepted a new job with a pay rise, I've also been moved up a pay band at work so although my increase is minimal at the moment my potential for salary growth in this pay band is higher. The really big difference though will be that our youngest chid will get the 30 hours funding at nursery from September so we should be about £500 a month better off at the end of this year than we currently are. We'll be prioritising savings and mortgage overpayments with that money.