Aiming to be mortgage free before I am 62!

Tiredbutdetermined

Whoop!
won £50 in my premium bonds this morning. I started trying to buy a bonds from my side hustle when I could from the end of last April. I know they don’t give the best return but I like the excitement (and up until now the constant disappointment!). I had £1700 in for the draw and another £200 I bought last week so they weren’t in this draw. I had the win set to reinvest so my balance was £1950, which my mum found upsetting so she sent me an extra £50 to invest and round it off.

Somebody crashed into an EE phone mast a couple of weeks ago so our data has been a bit iffy. I lodged a complaint with EE yesterday and they rang this morning and they said it is showing as a significant issue for them so they credited me £111 for our 4 phones. Winning! Now when I can’t use my phone properly it makes me smile!

I went to look at bathrooms earlier
and managed to get a very swanky looking shower for only £50. That would have been a money saving win if my son and I had been able to fit it but we have messed up and I have had to turn the water off

My bathrooms need redoing and I was hoping to put it off until after I had paid off my car finance so I am a bit gutted at the prospect of having to use my savings for the bathrooms first. If I had been able to sort the shower then I could have delayed the bathrooms

LadyWithAPlan

Nice PB win! Well done on the £12k overpay

Is it worth googling how to fix the shower or a £200 plumber visit  as that 9% interest car finance rate is ouch..

Tiredbutdetermined

LadyWithAPlan said:

Nice PB win! Well done on the £12k overpay

Is it worth googling how to fix the shower or a £200 plumber visit  as that 9% interest car finance rate is ouch..

Thank you.

Our house is just full of shoddy work. The pipework behind the shower doesn’t reach properly and the tiles were butchered when the shower was put in originally. I have a plumber coming out tonight so I am hoping he can work some magic and not cost me a fortune. He was already coming out as the outside tap has stopped working and I need to pressure wash the decking as it is slippy, rotten and a death trap!
Clearly there is a recurring theme with my house and everything falling apart at once!

I think I struggle with a fixed mindset and I want to set myself goals and stick to them. Looking back, debt free was easy as it was a clear strategy. I knew my order of things and I was confident so I set up the plan and grafted through it.
The other side is so much harder. I thought I was just going at the mortgage and it would be the same thinking as the debt free journey, just a longer journey. However, this side is so much more strategic when I feel like I can play a game with savings and interest rates that work harder to build in balance with my mortgage rate.
There are things that need doing to the house at some point like bathrooms, the back garden, recarpetting and painting that will need some investment. I just don’t feel like now if the time but I do need to be able to shower.

When I was on my debt free journey I kind
of felt like my car needed to sit somewhere between a debt and the mortgage. I drive a 50mile round commute each day on back roads so I need a car which is reliable ish. I have nobody who could help me out if my car broke down and public transport to work isn’t a viable option either. I had to change my car after my husband left as he took the big vehicle and left me with a 2 door Fiat 500 and 3 teenagers.
I sort of had in my head that I would just always have to have a car on credit and a PCP would be an ongoing thing. Mine finishes in just over 2 years so I envisaged the car being a bit knackered by then and needing to trade it in plus I didn’t see myself being able to make the balloon payment.
However, since my mortgage rate has increased but savings rates are more favourable I am building a decent level of savings so the balloon payment should be saved ready but actually I can keep building the savings and pay the car off early.
I still live like I have most of my main debts going. I had two loans that I paid £165 a month each on so I still ‘pay’ those each month but into my savings. I have paid my insurances upfront but still charge myself the old monthly fees too and pop that into savings.
Once my car is paid then the £325 a month payment for that will also go into savings each month so at that point my savings should be building rapidly each month and then bathrooms and gardens are easy to pay for with those savings.

Tiredbutdetermined

I have updated my signature with my new mortgage balance. I am excited that in the summer I should dip under £150,000 so that will feel pretty good.
My savings balance against car balance is going OK. I can also bear in mind that the sooner I have the savings in place then the lower my settlement figure would be. I have a budget planning journal that I am shading in my progress in so I am looking forward to getting to a reasonable point to request an up to date settlement figure. I feel like I am due an annual statement at some point soon but otherwise I think I need to try to hold off until my savings balance hits £10,000 and things feel more attainable and timely

Tiredbutdetermined

The plumber managed to sort the shower so I now have a working very fancy shower. He also fixed the outside tap. The shower was a bargain at £50 and the plumber was £55 so I am really pleased with that bargain.
I still have proper companies coming out next week to give me quotes for the bathrooms so that will be good to get an idea of price for further down the line but I don’t feel like any of the bathrooms are super urgent anymore.

My back garden has been badly decked by my ex husband about 15 years ago so it is a death trap. The decking needs ripping out and is totally rotten and unstable in places. My drive is at the back of the house and accessed via the back garden so I have to park in the street throughout winter. Now that the outside tap is fixed I was able to pressure wash the decking yesterday and dig out a lot of the mould that was growing on it and causing it to be even slippier.
Now the rotten deck boards look darker in the rain so it is obvious which ones to avoid standing on. My daughter is visually impaired so I have walked her through the garden and pointed out areas to avoid as she likes to do gymnastics in the garden. I am quite chuffed again as I feel like that downgrades the garden from ‘oh my god, I need to sort it this spring/summer’ to it can last another year or two hopefully!

My boys have gone out with their dad for the day and my daughter is at a bag pack to raise money for the gymnastics display team so going to Chuck another layer of paint on the kitchen door frame and try to get my house looking a bit jollier!

Next week is looking a bit hectic and I need to put a dint in my emergency fund (which isn’t really for emergencies to be fair, more a floating fund!). We are collecting my daughter’s prom dress on Tuesday so I have the balance of that to pay and my car needs an oil change plus new tyres

Tiredbutdetermined

Whoop! Prom dress collected yesterday and I love the huge smile it puts on my daughters face
Went to sort tyres this morning and the guy said I need 4 but not for another 2000miles so they can wait until May half term.
i still need to sort the boy twin with prom outfit but that should be cheaper than his sister! 

mark55man

if you have any Scottish blood in you send him in a kilt.  My middle one did this and he was the belle of the ball (much to the girls disappointment)

beanielou

Another vote for the kilt!

debtfreewannabe321

Well done TBD I've read through your diary and you've done really well getting everything in order and paying the mortgage down so quickly. Following along if you don't mind another ☺️ 

Talking of proms I am off with my DD tomorrow to find shoes and bag for hers. She has the dress but no accessories or shoes yet. Hoping it doesn't break the bank 😁

Tiredbutdetermined

I feel like I am here posting but feeling guilty as the money management is leaving a lot to desired at the moment. I know I can be too harsh on myself and the last few months have just been a lot!

My emergency fund has totally disappeared so I am trying to rebuild when I can. It isn't a true emergency fund and is supposed to fund the non-regular things that come up such as insurance, special events and car stuff so it has just been doing its job I guess.

I have used the EF for my daughter's prom dress and it has just had to pay for my son's (surprisingly expensive) prom suit. I had looked at hire but that was fairly expensive and seemed a false economy, especially as it will double up for events/interviews for the coming years! I loved the kilt suggestions but we have absolutely no Scottish heritage
I had a flat tyre so bit the bullet and replaced all 4 tyres as they would have needed doing within the fortnight anyway. At least that should be it with the car related expenses until next year's dreaded MOT.
Right in the midst of GCSE revision my daughter's ipad died. I tried giving her mine but it is older and it just didn't have the same accessibility for her visual impairment so I bit the bullet and we went and got her a new one so it din't impact on her revision.

All the above meant I felt very poor by the end of May and the £0 balance in my emergency fund makes me feel very panicked but it is nice typing that out and being able to feel proud that my EF actually managed to get me through all that without having to dip into my true savings.


The part of my finances I feel a little grumpy about is that my work laptop was beyond ridiculous. It is ancient, bits fall off it, it weighs a ton, it takes ages to power up and then it started not wanting to connect to the internet. I spoke to our IT manager about when school might be refreshing staff laptops as mine must be 8-10 years old and was a little stunned to be told that they weren't going to be replaced and we would either have to use our own or not work from home! I wish I could get away with the latter but that isn't realistic as a teacher with significant extra responsibility so I have 'bought' a little 2 in 1 thing, which is fab and lovely and light but I do feel a little annoyed that I have had to do that. Obviously my EF had nothing left to give so I have had to put it on a credit agreement, which isn't ideal but it is interest free for 9 months so the aim is to pay it off well before then.

I have wiggled my strategy with savings so I now split the money I save three ways rather than two. 1/3 goes to my proper savings, 1/3 to my emergency fund and 1/3 to the laptop credit. I have already paid off a big chunk of the credit and it should help to speed up my exam marking this summer too. I will add it to my signature for accountability.

I feel like my update is quite negative but July should be a pretty fab month. Next month's mortgage payment brings me under £150,000 owed so that feels like a milestone. Hopefully my savings pot next month should hit the value of my balloon payment for my car, which is due in March 2026. That will feel like another big milestone as my savings will then feel more like being about paying off my car early, rather than saving for the balloon payment.

My 7.5% interest account matures on 28th June so I need to decide whether to put that in an ISA or buy more premium bonds. I had been thinking it would go into a savings account but I may have to do some projections and get a settlement figure as I feel like I could have the full balance around a year from now so I might not want to have funds in 1 year locked accounts.