Halving our income and still aiming for mortgage free!

smetf · 24 January at 8:09PM

Hi all,

New mortgage all eventually sorted. It's 41k, and we are tied to 10% OP, hopefully will make the majority of this OP in the next few months.

Looking forward to being able to sort getting it back to £39,900 once I have the app set up! May have to do some work on actual OPs as in effect this remortgage has undone £1052 of OPs this year...

SA being paid through tax code all sorted - took a phone call as the website sent me in never ending circles. I stopped being self employed in August 25 so am planning to get the return done as soon as I can after April this year.

This year our focus will be on future planning once the Japan trip is over and paid for, our initial thoughts are to increase my pension contributions, continue to build long term savings fund and to boost both the short and medium term savings (this also will enable a good chunk to be paid off the mortgage once the two year deal ends in Feb 2028).
S

smetf · 13 February at 9:58AM

Morning,

Have made a £1052 OP which brings me back in line with the old mortgage total (not counting it in the year's OP totals).

Savings have been creeping up and the holiday fund is pretty healthy so it seems sensible.

I will make another lump sum OP once a fixed rate saver matures mid March and then reassess once we're back from Japan as to whether I go up to the OP limit so it saves us maximum interest.

Japan accommodation all booked and half paid for. We've started booking the odd thing that needs advance booking so that's all going well.

Will update signature once the OP is showing, apparently might take a few days.

S

smetf · 20 February at 5:54PM

Hello,

Have made an OP of £350 from short term savings as there's some breathing space in there and saving a bit of interest seemed like a good move. Not too spendy a week here, looking forward to a new local parkrun and watching the rugby tomorrow (all free)!

Even got a free tea tonight as Mr S delivered very short dated gyozas so got a refund and switched the meal plan around to use them asap!

Hope you all have a good weekend,

S

smetf · 26 February at 8:09AM

Morning all,

Have moved more money to enable an OP of £1698 this morning, this is out of the short term savings which will be more than replenished when a Fixed rate savings account pays out this month. Figuring that doing it today is saving that little bit extra in interest and I'll pay the last bit of allowed OP for this year out of that too. DH has set up a fixed rate saver which will pay our full OP allowance when it resets next Feb.

We then need 10k in savings to hit our target of a 16k mortgage balance early 2028 which I think should be achievable, currently toying around with fixed rate savers/ Premium Bonds for a new pot rather than using our current pots. I've upped pension contributions to my personal pension and once the spendy holiday is done will look at increasing contributions to my work based pension too so overall future financial plans feel well on track.

S

smetf · 2 March at 8:46AM

Morning all,

Final OP of the year made! £1000.
Monthly interest down to £125.20 and daily down to £4.12.

We should hit mortgage neutral early in 2027, the next goal is building up a long term OP pot for Feb 2028 when the current mortgage deal ends.

Had a lovely weekend seeing lots of family and suddenly Japan is in just over a month!

S

Humdinger1 · 2 March at 10:26AM

Doing brilliantly @smetf! Not long now till Japan. Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx

smetf · 7 March at 3:46PM

Happy weekend all,

A call to the mortgage company today to keep monthly payments the same (they were dropping them by around £45 because of the OPs) led to an exciting discovery. Not sure anyone outside of this board would find it exciting 😂

We can OP a further £3100 this year - apparently this is because any OPs made in the first month of a new mortgage don't count towards the annual OP. I've done a bit of working things out and this should be doable alongside saving for next year's OP so have increased our OP goal accordingly.

I should be able to OP around £1500 as soon as the fixed rate saver matures, and will attack the remaining £1600 once we have reconciled Japan spends. All makes a difference to the interest and the long term MF goal.

The rest of today includes a couple of mini cleaning blasts but mostly relaxing before spending tomorrow running!

S