Lolu's Mortgage Free odyssey

LadyWithAPlan

Good luck. !!

misslolu

Now that Christmas has been and gone and we're back to work, it looks like finances have finally settled down. I'm on a big mission to get this debt gone ASAP this year, and i'm looking very closely at our finances to see how we can achieve this. One thing I've noticed is that the grocery spend has gotten a bit too high, though it's difficult to really pin down as I'm someone who likes to stock up for months. For example, we'll not need to buy non-perishables like toilet roll, toothpaste, detergent, softener, washing-up liquid, shower gel, etc till September at the earliest, and some are good until next year. I've definitely caught myself buying more convenience food, though, so I do want to stop that and get back to home cooking. A look at the week's finances:

CC2 (Ours) -  6,106 5,805
CC3 (His) -  3,014 3019

Medical Loan (Mine) -  762 677
Student Loan - 4,686 4285
Mortgage - 182,364

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 14,568 13,786

S&S LISA -  12,075 12,157
Premium Bonds -  8,575
Joint Savings - 2,500 1,400

Total Savings - 22,132

It's not quite payday but there's still been a small amount of progress since my last update. Obviously being Christmas my payments towards debt were smaller than usual, but this month with no major expenses foreseen I should be back to regular programming. I have about 10 weeks before I have to review my plan to pay off my student loan and see if I have to modify it in any way so fingers crossed that goes well. With respect to my overall debt payment plan i've also made some progress, my optimistic dfd started off in april 2026 and is now October this year! But best of all my pessimistic dfd started off in late 2026 and is now December of this year, which is super exciting!!! Just need to keep persevering and staying frugal with spending. 

misslolu

Thanks @LadyWithAPlan!

The crawl to payday was crazy, and I was definitely on my last legs. It's funny that it happened this year because we were only paid a few days earlier than we usually would have been, so I wasn't expecting to be hurting so early in the month as I held back on debt payments too. Either way, i'm expecting that from this month I should be able to pay at least £600 towards the student debt. I do, however, need to be paying about £900 a month to fully pay it off before my re-mortgage so I may have to dip into personal and joint savings to get that gone ASAP. I'm hoping we have a decent bonus payment in March which should help get me on track, but no word on that just yet. If it's the same as last year I got a few hundred extra student debt payment as well as a good £1k-ish chunk of cash which would more than cover the deficit, so fingers crossed on that. Finances for the week:

CC2 (Ours) -  5,805 5,364
CC3 (His) -  3,019  2,849

Medical Loan (Mine) -  677 593
Student Loan - 4,285 3,562
Mortgage - 182,364 182,083

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 13,786 12,368

S&S LISA -  12,157 12,661
Premium Bonds -  8,575 8,625
Joint Savings - 1,400 1,852

Total Savings - 22,132 23,138

Finances are definitely looking good, my pessimistic debt forecast has me completely paying off my personal debt by the end of November while my realistic forecast has me at early October. My non-number driven optimistic forecast will be June but I would say this highly depends on the bonus I receive and also doesn't take into account my medical loan which I will leave since it's interest-free and due to finish in September. After that it's full steam ahead saving for the baby and a house deposit for the new house we're planning to move into by the end of next year. We want to have a holiday sometime this year which would slightly dent our joint debt plans but even that should be gone by December. I do need to check the interest free dates though as we may need to shuffle some things around.

All in all, it's been a good beginning to a potentially exciting year and i'm really hoping i'll have some good news to share with you all in the coming months.

LadyWithAPlan

How great you so focused - I would not be surprised if you get your personal debt paid off end summer with your focus..

misslolu

@LadyWithAPlan I really hope so! I've been trying to keep costs down and focus all extra money on the student loan. Sometimes I really wish i'd known about the requirement to pay it off earlier as I paid off quite a lot of debt in the months leading up to the agreement. I'd have probably almost paid it off by now. We did get news that our bonuses will be coming with March pay and we should get to know the full amount in the coming weeks. Once I have that, I can plan in earnest for the last few months of the deadline. Currently my thinking is:

From feb pay - £1650 (includes all of my mini savings)
From March pay - £1000
From April pay - £400+
From May pay - £400+

The Feb payoff is high because i'm putting ALL of my mini savings towards it. I'll then begin building it up again from scratch where it will be on hand to pay any shortfalls or cover any emergencies. March pay includes my portion of the bonus (I split it with the household) the last few years have been no less than £1k which is what i'm using as the baseline. April & May only use my baseline debt payment which means there's definitely potential for more if necessary, but I can't exactly quantify how much. The good thing is that with the budget above, I will pay off the student loan before the deadline which is just amazing and I can't wait. The annoying thing is that SFE seems to be down for maintenance, so i've not been able to pay anything just yet. A look at finances for the week:

CC2 (Ours) -  5,364 5,380
CC3 (His) -   2,849 2,824

Medical Loan (Mine) -  593
Student Loan - 3,342
Mortgage - 182,083

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 12,368 12.139

S&S LISA -  12,661
Premium Bonds -  8,625
Joint Savings - 1,852 2,300

Total Savings - 23,138 23,586

Something else on the horizon is our bi annual service charge. This is the first time we could potentially pay it off completely from savings but i'd rather not at the moment due to some potential travel plans where we have to show funds we can access on the trip. I may just pay a few hundred from savings and put the rest on the 0% card. DDs are coming out on Monday so i'm super excited to see how low our debt has gotten. With my SL payoff we should be under 10k which is a huge milestone to hit. Also, since we're paying off an average of around £1k per month, it's very likely that we'll have paid off 80% of the debt by the end of the year, I can't wait! The more debt we pay off, the better position we are in for babies, saving for maternity and the house move next year, woo!

misslolu

DDs have come out and i've paid this months SF payment off. We're looking really good at the moment, and surprise surprise, we're now under £10k!! This is a huge milestone to hit, and the fact it's taken so long has reinforced my wish to never be in so much non-mortgage debt again. A look at finances:

CC2 (Ours) -  5,380 4,970
CC3 (His) -   2,824 2,676

Medical Loan (Mine) -  593 508
Student Loan - 3,342 1,692
Mortgage - 182,083 181,700

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 12,139 9,766

S&S LISA -  12,661 12,750
Premium Bonds -  8,625 8,675
Joint Savings - 1,852 2,300

Total Savings - 23,586 23,725

Next week, we start paying off the service charge which will mean we temporarily go over £10k again, but we will be down again next month as i'm still committed to paying down my student loan & other debts in earnest. What's even more exciting is that for my personal debt the optimistic timeline is now the beginning of August while the pessimistic is the end of August. This means my realistic is somewhere in the middle of August and I just can't believe it! That's legitimately 5 months away!!!

misslolu

Edit: I though I posted this last week so the info is a bit old.

I've had a whirlwind week at work but the most exciting thing is that we've been told we're getting bonuses in the month's pay packet. I initially estimated i'd get around the same amount as last year but it looks like it will be almost DOUBLE! This means i'll most likely be paying off the student loan with this and April's SL salary deductions so I won't be putting any more money towards it. This means that effectively, i've paid that off since no more money will be coming from my active pockets, but obviously I won't consider myself debt-free until the account reads 0. Finances for the week:

CC2 (Ours) -  5,380 6,295
CC3 (His) -   2,824 2,702

Medical Loan (Mine) -  593 508
Student Loan - 1,586 
Mortgage - 182,083 181,772

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 12,139 9,766

S&S LISA -  12,661 12750
Premium Bonds -  8,625 8,675
Joint Savings - 1,852 2,300

Total Savings - 23,586 23,725

As I said last week, the service charge has been paid which has temporarily taken us over the £10k mark again but since payday is coming quite soon, we should drop right back under. Since i've now stopped paying into my student loan, i'll be focussing on my last active debt, my portion of the joint CC. That's hovering at just over £1k which reduces my forecast from the whole of August to early june to mid July. If i'm disciplined I could probably get everything done and dusted by May and then begin to focus on building my savings from scratch. I think out of principle, I am not going to use any of my share of the bonus to pay off debt. I don't quite have an idea of what i'll use it for, but i've got plenty of time to think.

misslolu

Payday came and I honestly felt like a king when my salary dropped. I've never seen so much money in my current account before except when I was transferring money to my solicitor when I purchased the flat. I had to take a screenshot before I started distributing the money to its rightful home. I've given OH and the joint savings a nice little amount from the bonus to keep them sweet too, it puts us in a much better position savings wise and also means OH can start building up his savings after paying off some personal wedding debt.

A look at finances:

CC2 (Ours) -  6,295 5,072
CC3 (His) -   2,702 2,527

Medical Loan (Mine) -  508 418
Student Loan - 1,586 660
Mortgage - 181,772 181,451

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 9,766 8,676

S&S LISA -  12750
Premium Bonds -  8,675 8,800
Joint Savings - 2,300 3,300

Total Savings - 23,725 24,850

Unfortunately, I slightly overestimated the money that would go to my student loan so i will need to pay off some more if I want to meet my deadline of the end of may. Had it been end of June, i'd have been absolutely fine, so I may just try to pay it all off before the end of the month so I know I have another debt off my plate well in time for the remortgage deadline. The end of my personal debt is most certainly near now as I have less than £1500 split between the three - £660 for the student loan, £248 for the joint debt and £418 for the medical loan. I should have enough this month to pay down the student loan to be fully covered by my next payment, i'm not sure I can get it further than this, then the rest should be covered by my next loan payment + extra money from not paying the student loan! It somehow sounds very unrealistic that I have a very doable plan to get this all paid off by the end of the month, but i'm SUPER excited because it sets us up very nicely for the next stage and it means I can finally start building up my personal shorter term savings & add more to longer term.

misslolu

Payday has come and gone, the bills have just gone out and guess what? I paid off two more debts! I have fully paid off my portion of the joint debt and my student loan. I'm just waiting for the student loan portal to update with my payments and hopefully there won't be any rogue change left for me to pay. This leaves me with ONE MORE DEBT WOOOO! So my last debt is a 0% interest medical loan I took out a few years ago. I actually only have 4 months left on this but i'd like to be able to say that i'm personally debt free, plus I have some extra cash from my daily spending I can use so it shouldn't cause any issues. Finances for the week:

CC2 (Ours) -  5,072 4,411
CC3 (His) -   2,527 2,360

Medical Loan (Mine) -  418 334
Student Loan - 660 0?
Mortgage - 181,451 181,156

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 8,676 7,105

S&S LISA -  12750 11,854
Premium Bonds -  8,800
Joint Savings - 3,300 3,904

Total Savings - 24,850 24,558

As you can see, it's quite a significant drop to the £7k from last month. Unfortunately, since apart from the medical loan, I have no more personal debt it looks like the debt will be reducing a lot slower from here on out. By our current payback levels (which I may slightly increase for the joint debt if there's scope in the budget) we're probably looking at about £600 a month, which is decent but not mind-blowing. But OH is very content with the pace of his payoff so i'll leave that to him. I'm now debating that since it's purely his debt, whether I should leave it off of here, I may leave it here just to get a more realistic picture.

Now that i'm very close to debt payoff I have a bit of a dilemma. What am I going to do with my extra money? For the past 7 or so years, i've always had a major timebound goal, eg to put together a deposit, or save for a wedding or pay off debt. Now my goals are a lot more abstract, we want to buy a bigger car when we have a baby, we want to move to a bigger house when we have a baby, we want to save for ad hoc upcoming expenses like holidays and birthday parties and get money put away for retirement. While all of those things are great and it's good to prepare in advance there's not really a lot of urgency and they're not really set in stone just yet. Any thoughts would be welcome, otherwise i might just find myself helping to pay off OHs debt just to stave off boredom.

misslolu

For reasons I don't fully understand, but no doubt will soon find out, I had much more money left over this month than anticipated. I think I mentioned earlier that I give myself a budget of £100 a week to spend (and £50 for half a week depending on when payday is) so at the end of each week after the bills have come out, I put anything above that into debt. This month, I not only had extra money to pay off my last debt, I didn't have to use all of my monthly amount that goes to mini savings which is what i've been using to supplement debt payoff. What this means is that as of 4th May 2025 I am personally DEBT FREEEEEE, woo! I feel like bursting out the champagne to celebrate.

What this means is that I do not have any debts that i'm personally responsible for clearing anymore. I have one CC that we jointly put the car on, i've paid my "half" of this so no more contribution is expected from me. I also have another 0% CC that we put some pretty hefty visa fees on, as well as our bi-annual service charge fees. This card's 0% interest will end pretty soon so need to get looking at that after the mortgage, but we'd rather pay it off slowly while building our savings than pay it off and have 0 savings. I'm considering upping the DD for this one once we remortgage as our payments should be a bit lower. At the current amount (and considering future service charge payments) we're likely to pay it off next year March, right on time for another lot of even heftier visa fees in May 😭 which could take another year or so to pay off. Ultimately, it's way too far ahead for me to plan at the level of detail that i'd like to. A look at today's finances:

CC2 (Ours) -  4,411 4068
CC3 (His) -   2,360

Medical Loan (Mine) -  334 0
Student Loan - 0
Mortgage - 181,156

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 7,105 6,428

S&S LISA -  12750 11,854
Premium Bonds -  8,800
Joint Savings - 3,904 2,200

Total Savings - 24,850 22,854

We're considering making a large purchase in the coming weeks which will be at least partially funded by debt. It's a necessity due to our current circumstances and upcoming plans so i'm trying not to look at it in a negative light. It is frustrating that after pushing so hard to get where we are now, that we're potentially going above £10k debt again *sigh*. Well, I guess we'll see what the damage is when it happens and assess (and i'll come here to confess our sins).