Lolu's Mortgage Free odyssey

misslolu

In a crazy turn of events, i'm very glad i did in fact leave myself that money instead of paying everything to debt. Weirdly, a few days after this post i forgot i had a £100 subscription for professional fees coming out, my sis came to collect on a debt i didn't even know i owed her AND i got a parking ticket!!! I had £150 left in my usual account so had to use some money i'd not bothered to move over from my holiday to bail me out. Luckily, i had the money, and more in savings if I needed to. This was directly a result of me being disorganised, which I will hope doesn't happen again. The method worked though as I was able to put just under £900 towards the debt this month which is amazing and has gotten me to about £550 left on OH's CC not including the interest. I have a real shot of completely paying that off with December pay and being able to focus my sights on my student loan in earnest from January, super exciting! Finances for the week:

CC2 (Ours) -   5,986 
CC3 (His) -    4,017 3,867
Medical Loan (Mine) -  1001 931
Student Loan -  5,370, 5393
Mortgage -  183,211 182,913

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 16,177
Total Debt - 199,090

S&S LISA - 11,300
Premium Bonds  - 8,425
Joint Savings -    1,200 1,902

Total savings - 21,630

Another thing to note is I used my mini savings to help with wedding costs so that went back to zero in September. It should take another 2 months or so to get back to my £1k threshold so I can use that towards debt as well. My personal DFD has moved back to Jan 2026 which is great, but i'm on a mission to get this to September 25 (which happens to be my birthday) before the end of the year. Ideally ALL debt would be paid off before the baby comes or at least before my maternity froms from 90% pay after the first 3 months which we're hoping is this time next year. Feels like we've made soo much progress, can't wait to continue.

misslolu

Well, if there's one consistent thing about me, it's that i'm inconsistent. I decided not to do the weekly debt payment thing this month as i had a few trips planned and didn't want to leave myself short. Instead I reverted to my normal payment cadence until  my next payday and will decide what to do then. Apart from that it does look like we've made some  progress with the debt since the last update:

CC2 (Ours) -   5,986 
CC3 (His) -    3,867 3,757
Medical Loan (Mine) -  931
Student Loan -  5,393 5,169
Mortgage -  183,211 182,913

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 16,177 15,843
Total Debt - 199,090

S&S LISA - 11,300 11,622
Premium Bonds  - 8,425
Joint Savings -    1,902 1,800

Total savings - 21,630 21,847

It's payday soon, so looking forward to get some proper debt payments in. I'm also expecting a decent amount of expenses to come in from an office trip a few weeks ago. That trip, plus another one to visit some friends and family in the south meant I wasn't able to make much additional payments this month. I'm hoping that i'll be able to put a good chunk in this month (over £1k across all debts) and dip into the mid 14s. Then, all we have to look forward to is the last payment of the year which should be the Friday before Christmas. A good month for both of those should take us into the 13s, which is definitely lower than my plan for the year but still sets us up amazingly for 2025.

In other news, my mortgage fix ends in 6 months so we're remortgaging, likely to another lender. The current one my lender suggested for me isn't too excited about my debt ( which is weird because I earn more than I did at my last fix and way more when I bought the house. They want me to pay off student debt by May next year, which is about 6 months earlier than I initialy planned to. That would leave me with about £10k in debt in today's figures. So right now i'm not 100% sure what the best way to do it would be. 

Option A - keep paying as normal (ie paying car then student loan debt) and hope they don't mind if we get down to £10k in general rather than specifically paying off the loan.

Option B - aggressively pay down the student loan from now, and hope I can gather enough extra payments to get this to 0 or almost.

Option C - switch ALL payments to student loan from now while paying minimums on the other cards and pay them back once the student loan is one.

I tend to get a bonus in March/April which is pushing me slightly towards option A. I only have a few hundred left on my part of the car loan, less than £200 so I don't see why I would delay paying this off. Especially since it's now higher interest than the student loan.So once that's gone, with normal payments and the bonus I should only be 1k max away from paying it off. Ideally, that could be handled by savings or borrowing from the joint account. Either way, I can probably look at more options when i'm closer to the time.

misslolu

Payday has been and gone and the finances are looking quite decent. But something that's even more decent is...I'VE PAID ANOTHER DEBT!! I got some money back from some work expenses, so was able to put down and in conjunction with my monthly payment, pay it all off. All that's left on there is a bit of interest so I need to discuss with OH how that will be paid, as he's now responsible for the rest of the debt on his own. Either way I don't forsee that being more than £200 or so.

CC2 (Ours) -   5,986 5,725
CC3 (His) -    3,867 3,182
Medical Loan (Mine) -  931 846
Student Loan -  5,393 4,912
Mortgage -  182,913 182,673

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 15,843 14,655
Total Debt - 199,090 197,338

S&S LISA - 11,300 11,622
Premium Bonds  - 8,425
Joint Savings -    1,902 1,800

Total savings - 21,630 21,847

We're now WELL into the 14s which brings me such joy. I did hope that we would sneak into the 12s this year but, barring a huge random christmas present, it's impossible for now. This now leaves me with about £1100 on the joint card (which is interest free) and then obviously my student loan. The rest of the funds went towards reducing the loan which has got me under £5k. £4k was my plan for the year, so i'm actually doing a really good job. This has pushed my debt-free date back to the first week in 2026 which is great, and i'm sure with a bit more of a push I can actually get my debt paid well before the end of the year.

In mortgage news, we've been given the offer which is to start after this one ends. That means that we get a very good rate locked in and if we see better, we can always move it. It's almost been a full year since we bought the car which means MOT, service and insurance renewals. MOT has come back good and i'll need to call the insurance company about a quote i've received. With good luck we can see our insurance dropping to £700 from about £1800 which is just crazy savings, fingers crossed on that. Finally comes the service, assuming there's nothing major we shouldn't have to spend much more this year apart from service charge which should leave us up for the year! Can't wait to see what the final verdict is!

misslolu

Another week has come and gone, i'm crawling towards the finish line. Just a few more days left until I take my leave and i'm super excited. I do have some non-work stuff to do this weekend, but once that's done i'm freee. With all the hustle and bustle, we've not really been feeling super christmassy, no decorations up at all. That's something that's going to be fixed this weekend though. In finance land:

CC2 (Ours) -   5,725 6,396
CC3 (His) -    3,182 3,189
Medical Loan (Mine) -  846 762
Student Loan -  4,912 4,848
Mortgage -  182,673

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 14,655 15,195
Total Debt - 197,338 197,868

S&S LISA - 11,622 12,075
Premium Bonds  - 8,425 8,475
Joint Savings -    1,900 1,750

Total savings - 21,847 22,300

Sooooo, we've gone back into the 15s but I can explain! Since we bought the car last december, it's meant quite a few car related expenses have cropped up this time of the year. We have road tax, MOT & insurance all rearing their ugly heads. Road Tax & MOT are relatively low so we've decided to cash flow them, however, we've had to put insurance on the 0% CC as it was £100 extra paying in installments. The CC deal is coming to an end in April so I need to make sure we are in a decent place when it does, so we don't see ourselves shafted. To combat this, i'm taking advantage of the 60% reduction in insurance and will be updating the monthly amount to include paying the current insurance money into the credit card. That should pay the insurance itself off and still make a sizeable dent in the debt. When we get to April i'll have to make some decisions on maybe getting another 0% deal or, if that's not possible, doing a money transfer and getting it all on 6%. This wouldn't be ideal, but would be better than having the debt go to 20-30% interest if I didn't.

South_coast

Could you not take the money out of the premium bonds and clear the card when the 0% ends? Or is that set aside for a particular purpose? 

misslolu

@South_coast PBs are an emergency fund, and i'm trying to get to 6 months expenses on it for a start. I've not done maternity leave calculations yet, but it's possible we may need slightly more to cover bills when I drop down to statutory pay. Obviously, a lot does depend on when I get pregnant, but i'd rather keep some low interest debt ticking along and have money to pay bills than the alternative if you know what I mean.

misslolu

So we're coming up to the last few days of the year, but I've decided that I'll wait until next week to do our final finances because there may be some scope for one or two extra payments. Looking at the penultimate finances for the year: 
CC2 (Ours) -   6,396 6,106
CC3 (His) -    3,182 3,014
Medical Loan (Mine) -  762 
Student Loan -  4,848 4,686
Mortgage -  182,673

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 15,195 14,568
Total Debt - 197,338 197,868

S&S LISA - 12,075
Premium Bonds  - 8,475 8,525
Joint Savings -    1,750 2,500

Total savings - 22,300 23,100

I've only just been paid, so luckily I won't really have to wait much longer than usual for the next payday, but i'll still need to be careful not to go overboard in the meantime. In good news though, we're back in the 14s which was my hope for the last few months of the year and it really sets us up for the new year. My personal DFD is now Jan 2026 but with some overpayments and extras I should be able to get that down to October 25 at the latest but i'd love if I could get that down to June. A lot of that would depend on if I get a bonus in the early part of next year. Last year it was a few grand, a similar amount this year would definitely get me on my way! A girl can dream! 

To keep this post from being long and unstructured i'll get some proper posts up for the year's roundup and our plans for next year in the next few days.

misslolu

Happy New Year everyone, here's to a prosperous and money savvy year for everyone!! It's a bit late but i'd like to take some time to review everything that went on last year and compare to my goals for the year at the beginning of 2024!

Wedding
Plan - Total spend of £10k
Mid Year - £4k
End of Year (EOY) - £15k+

The wedding was something I knew would end up costing a lot and i'm not surprised we went over budget by so much. At the end of the day, we had a good day, everyone had a good time and we have lots of lovely memories from the day that we'll cherish forever. It also meant more practical things could start happening, like planning for future housing and family planning.

Housing & Mortgage
Plan - £175,000k
Mid Year - £184k
End of Year (EOY) - £181k

The mortgage essentially stayed on the back burner due to the sheer amount of other stuff we had to plan and keep track of. I did get a remortgage set for when our fix is up this year with a pretty good rate, which I'm happy about. The only caveat is that they want me to have fully paid off my student loan before then, which may be tricky; more on that later. We specifically got a mortgage we could port to another place as we're seriously going to start looking in earnest for a new place towards the end of the year, so it's a good option to have. I'm not sure what's better between overpaying and saving for a deposit at this time.

Debt
Actual finances then v mid year v now
(Mine) - 1,197 - 0 cleared!   Still 0!
CC2 (Ours) -  4,057 - 3,597 6,106
CC3 (His) - 9,034 - 5,516 3,014 

Medical Loan (Mine) - 1,779 - 1185 762
Student Loan - 7,726 - 5,978  4,686

I managed to clear my personal debt on my and his credit cards, which leaves me with about £1k debt on the joint CC as well as £4.5k left on my student loan debt. As things stand, my conservative estimate has me paying all debts by early December this year, while a more agressive schedule could mean i'm home and dry by October. Now this doesn't include any bonuses or major survey payouts, so it's possible I could be debt-free even sooner. If everything goes well, I think my most optimisitic but realistic scenario could mean i'm personally debt free by the end of May. Oh's card will revert to his full responsibility from next month as i'd have paid of my portion of the interest, but I'll continue to track that, and the joint card should be automatically wiped out with the money saved from reduced insurance. An upcoming service charge, which has been slow to arrive, is the only potential snag in future, but I hope it doesn't cause any disruption when it does arrive. All debts have decreased massively except the joint cc which is partially my fault, but also because this year we've decided to pay some things annually rather than monthly but didn't want to cash flow it. I've increased the DD to cover this and we're on track to have it fully paid before October.

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 24,337 - 16,276 14,568

S&S LISA - 8,406 - 10.448 12,075
Premium Bonds - 7,625 - 8,275 8,575
Joint Savings - 4,403 - 3,259 2,500 

So as you can see, we've managed to drop £10k worth of debt and increase savings while all planning and funding a wedding which i'm pretty happy about. I'd love to aim for the same for this year but baby-making has started in earnest and we're hoping that i'll be on maternity leave before the end of the year. This means that we NEED to have debts paid off ASAP so we can switch to saving to cover my earnings shortfall for the latter maternity leave months. My company isn't too bad with it but i'll be at half salary at some point which is just about enough for us to cover essentials so we need to run a tight ship this year. I'll get my goals in a different post.

LadyWithAPlan

Well done on a very successful year, paying down debt whilst saving for a wedding is such a great result.

I am sure with your focus you can get that debt done ready for the new arrival.

misslolu

Thank you @LadyWithAPlan hopefully we both have a great year this year as well.

I've had a big think with OH and we've decided not to make it too diificult this year. We're going to focus on a few main goals and hopefully will be able to meet them without too much trouble.

Debt
The first goal is to pay off ALL outstanding debt, yes ALL. We have over £14k worth of debt to pay but also a lot less to spend money on, so ideally we should be bang on target to pay everything off by the end of the year. As we're in money-saving mode this should be pretty straightforward.

Savings
On top of debt payoff, we'd really like to get a decent amount saved towards both the new house we're going to start looking into later in the year and also to cover a maternity leave for a few months. The aim for the year is £10k, which is very scary considering the lot of debt we also have to get through, but honestly, if it's not scary, why try it at all?

Find a house
This obviously depends on the market, but we're desperate for some more space to accommodate the kids we want to have. A forever home would be nice, but we'd take a nice-sized 3-bed for the next decade or so over the 4-bed we'd love to stay in forever. Obviously, to move, we'd need a good deposit to add to the equity we already have here.

Baby
This is obviously the one that's most out of our control. We've improved our lifestyle to include more fresh, cooked food & healthy amounts of fruit & veg. We've also both been taking some conception vitamins to aid the process and have taken up exercise together. If all goes well, there will be a baby Lolu in Q4 this year to snuggle and hold. Fingers crossed!

That's really all we have for the year, very simple goals, but if we achieve them all our lives would significantly improve.