Burning the mortgage and kindling FIRE 16 May 2021 at 1:15PM in Mortgage-free wannabe 32 replies 2.5K views

kaycastle

It will be for veg I've been growing veg in very temporary raised beds and pots for a while now but we want a proper area and want to create zoned areas of the garden. We have got some sleepers for the raised beds which weren't too bad. It's first time I will have such an official and nice area to grow veg in, very excited. And of course will make the garden look nicer.

Edgeoftheburn

Sounds fantastic kaycastle a dedicated space for growing will make a huge difference. I have been pottering in the garden today, have potted on Turks turban pumpkins, butternut squash, sweet peppers and jalapenos all are coming along nicely. The threat of frost has gone now, I think. I lost my first batch of tomato plants within 24 hours of purchase due to frost.
Counting down the days to payday it's so satisfying to refresh the budget, shuffle money and review progress.

Edgeoftheburn

Popping on with the end of the month scores on the doors.
- Mortgage now £185,500 was £320,000
- New solar panel and battery loan £7,500 (fitted today and part of our self sufficiency plan, interest rate is lower than the mortgage rate)
- Savings (Emergency fund, Shares, ISAs and old endowment policy) £59,740
- Overall net balance £-133,260
Mortgage Neutral projection Oct 2024, Mortgage Free projection Oct 2025

Edgeoftheburn

Called my mortgage company today as I had a question and the lovely chap said while I have you there is something I can see on your account I want to discuss with you........there are a lot of very odd small transactions are you aware of these? I then had to explain my game of making as many payments as I can with whatever extra money comes my way, he was totally bemused but said he would add a note to my account so no one else looking would suspect fraudulent activity 😂. I feel like I have an official mortgage overpayment weirdo badge of honour.

Edgeoftheburn

Little steps of progress this week. £121.74 paid to mortgage this was from top cashback payout, some current account interest and the last of the solar panel loan. The loan % is lower than the mortgage %. We plan to pay down the loan quickly but that starts next month.
Had another EPC rating done to demonstrate the change solar system has made and was very happy that we have moved from just into B to very solid A rating, this should get us a slightly reduced mortgage rate. Our lender bases rate on eco ratings of homes. We have also dramatically reduced our electricity from grid usage to between 3 and 10 units a day depending on the light intensity.
Looking at our daily mortgage interest from May 2020 to May 2021 we have managed to reduce it by £5.19. This and the reduced interest rate will hopefully help us decrease the mortgage faster.
Anyone else play with figures regularly in different ways to break this marathon down into small wins?

Edgeoftheburn

Another £40.00 to the mortgage this was electricity credit refund following switch, wasn't expecting it so quickly as I cancelled my DD to stop the account having too much credit built up. Have just moved some of the emergency fund over to Premium Bonds and plan to buy monthly. Got to be better than my awful bank account interest!

ilselm

Edgeoftheburn said:

Anyone else play with figures regularly in different ways to break this marathon down into small wins?

Absolutely this. It is a long slog and can at times feel like swimming in treacle. I’ve taken to gamification by setting out the journey into milestones; and use a ‘mother and father of all FIRE spreadsheets’ to chart these along with actual, OP planned and non-OP planned trajectories as motivational indicators.

Edgeoftheburn

Love it ilselm you have hit the nail on head, it is gamification to feel some short term reward. I have never thought of breaking down planned and unplanned overpayments what a great idea, that will help the focus to keep finding the pennies which eventually turn into pounds. My excel skills are rudimentary but I do use YNAB so may make a new category to track those.

edinburgher

@Edgeoftheburn - was the solar panel and battery loan a Scottish Government scheme, or commercial? Care to share the specs of your new kit? We have solar panels, but I am uncertain re. Battery storage as I am not sure the numbers would add up. Also like your reduced mortgage rate for better EPC - is that Ecology or similar?

Edgeoftheburn

@edinburgher we didn't want the faff and delay of the government scheme as we wanted to get the installation in ahead of this summer, so just got a loan with the bank and we plan to pay it off in a year. The system we ended up with is a 8Kw array with Solis Inverter and 2x5Kw PureDrive batteries. It has scope to add 3 more 5Kw batteries, but we will see how we go with 10Kw and add more later if we think it is worthwhile. Today we would have charged that as we have generated 30Kw.
We chose this system as it is able to work as back up power when there is a power cut which we have frequently enough as we are rural with overhead cables.
It will take about 5ish years to pay for itself but has a warranty for twice that and energy prices are only going to go up. You can use the battery to buy energy cheaply from the grid with Octopus and a few other suppliers, there are 5p night time tariffs which we still need to figure out once our smart meter is installed. The biggest driver for us is really mostly about self sufficiency.
Mortgage is indeed with Ecology, we choose to stay with them because they are amazing, rates are higher but we couldn't have built without them and they are so easy to deal with.