Mortgage Free by 53!!

crunchy_time

Good morning all,

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

I bought a book on Saturday called I will Teach you to be rich by Ramit Sethi,  I have heard him on podcasts and watched a couple of you tube videos.  Anyway, husband has now taken over the book and we had a very productive money meeting yesterday.  Yay!

We now have some new direction with our savings and investments, talked how we are going to be able to afford things coming up in the future.

So he is looking into all our accounts and whether we are getting the best deals.  He is also investigating reward credit cards for the future.  My role is to look at how we save up for all the household expenses over the year.

We have a plan to pay off the credit cards.  He wanted to use our savings to pay off the balances but I said now as there is a lot that needs to be refunded and we need a month where we get back on an even keel.

We have decided to up our monthly contributions to S&S ISAS to £200 each a month so £400 each.

I have also been debating about our emergency fund for a while.  If I lost my job, we would be ok as nothing major comes out of my salary, mainly savings and child expenses.  If husband lost his job (extremely unlikely)  We would need about £5000 a month to cover expenses.  So we need about £15k for a 3 month emergency fund.  At the moment we be able to cover this if we cashed in our ISAs and used our travel fund but ultimately we want to save up to have a separate EF from our investments.  

We have £7k in a high interest savings account and then £2719 in our instant access saver.  To get this up to £15k we will need to save another £5281.

Another thing is at the moment we are not paying any car payments - woohoo!  We have a 9 year old and an 8 year old car so need to start saving for a new car/car down payment for the future.  I want to feel motivated to not have a car payment so I have decided to save £300 a month (average of our last car payments) into a separate pot which will either go towards a new car or the garden office/gym extension which is the last part of the big additions to this house.  Husband has agreed to add his annual bonus to this pot, less buying himself a large ticket item.  Last year it was a sound bar he had wanted for about 6 years that cost £500.  His bonus was £5000.  We then bought a kitchen island for £3000 and the rest went on paying off the credit card overspend from December.  We have vowed that we won't be doing that this year as we are going to get super savvy with our money.


Savings:

£400 S&S ISA
£50 kids ISAs - looking to up this as soon as possible.
£300 - car/office pot
£600 holiday pot


Next steps

 - work out household costs over year so can save up for insurances and maintenance costs
- sort out increasing payments into my pension at work and reducing payments into my private pension for now.
- then work out savings for the emergency fund vs overpayments to the mortgage.

Thats quite a lot to do so I had better get cracking.  I feel a nice shift in direction now with new goals so starting to feel very motivated again.

Crunch xx

ohdearhowdidthathappen

All good thanks. Been a bit slack at visiting these boards, trying to get back in the budgeting mindset. Easter hols though, not the best time to be thrifty 

crunchy_time

ohdearhowdidthathappen said:

All good thanks. Been a bit slack at visiting these boards, trying to get back in the budgeting mindset. Easter hols though, not the best time to be thrifty 

Agreed! Although we agreed that we cba to go to nearest town (45 mins) to watch kung fu panda 4 at cinema so just nipped to supermarket for a pick and mix and are doing the cinema exp at home. Pick and mix was £6 and film is free so saved lots of money there!! Ha ha! Sometimes I surprise myself!

Looking forward to hearing a proper update!!

crunch xx

LadyWithAPlan

Great news you are both on board with the finances... I like ramit 'rich life' and you defining what it is for yourself...
Indeed  buying large ticket items whilst having cc debt would be a big nono for me personally - just adds stress. 
Glad you have a plan that is working for you both.

Have you tried YNAB? It has really tightened my budget in a way I didnt expec, made me see where my extra cash was going and accelerated my savings rate. You both can have access so you can see where the over spends happens as they occur. There is a 34 day free trial then an annual cost but I can only say I wish I had started earlier with it despite my decades of budgeting /ssheets and virtual pots

crunchy_time

Afternoon,

I have this week off to look after the kids. Now that I no longer work in education we have to use our holiday for childcare. I tell you what, I def appreciate it more. 

We have been relaxing mainly, there are some loose plans to go swimming but we are waiting for swimming costume to arrive for DD from Vinted first. Today it was DIY cinema and rearranging DDs room. 

I have ordered some things from Vinted for the children for our holiday at half term - two swimming costumes, two pairs trunks, two pairs sandals, a rash vest and a playsuit for about £40 incl p and packing. All of that new would have cost nearly £100 even if I bought supermarket stuff. I’m going to use it to get as much as I can. I’m not having much luck selling though.

Good news is the mortgage min payment went out today leaving the balance as £243,525.58. I rounded it down to £243,500 which is a nice even number!! Cannot wait for it to be in the 30s. 

My spreadsheet says that we are not going to get there until November but I really hope we can get our act together, be a bit more frugal and make some snowflake payments which will all add up.

We pay off roughly £550 a month at the moment so will be in the £242,xxx for beginning of May.  I’d like to get there by August as then we would have paid off £10k in a year which wouldn’t be too shabby.

Anyway, very much starting to get back into this journey and making snowflake payments again and building ourselves up to make regular chunks of overpayments without compromising on our other goals.

Crunch xx

crunchy_time

Hello all, it's been a few months since I was last on here and a lot has happened.

April and May we just seemed to bleed money - my husband needed a filling, and the dog went to the vet 3 times!  We accidentally booked a Travelodge and then couldn't cancel it for some reason.  The emergency fund went down quite a bit as a result.

We had a lovely holiday abroad and have come back refreshed.  I felt very overwhelmed by life before we went and just felt like I was existing - working and cleaning, working and cleaning.  I gave myself a good talking to when we were away and have started to implement some changes so I don't go back there.  I'm only cleaning during the week now and not leaving it till the weekend and it is making a world of difference.  I feel like I am gradually becoming more aligned with my goals, myself and wear I want to be in life.

I also had an accident and sprained my knee and ankle.  I am on the mend now but it was a huge eye opener with regards to who my support network are.  I also realised how much I love to keep fit so that is going to be a big part of my life going forward.

Financially things are ticking on but we don't feel like we are making any progress towards are goals.  So we are getting really clear on what those goals actually are.

We have decided to chuck all our spare money into the EF to get it up to £5k.  It is currently about £1700.

Once we get there we might up our ISAs by another £50 to £100 a month and then start slowly saving up another £3k to get to the magic £15k of EF which will be 3 months of bills in case husband lost his job.

So no overpaying the mortgage for the moment and not focusing on anything else until its done.

I'm going to update my signature accordingly.  Mortgage is currently £242,324.84 - I want to take the £24.84 off I just need to check what is in my account tomorrow after some things have cleared.

So, apart from the occasional slushing to round it down.  The focus is on saving that EF so we feel secure and then moving onto the next goal.

Crunchy xx

crunchy_time

Morning all!

Just having a coffee with the dog on my lap before I start my workout.

It was our pay days yesterday and June was a better month financially than May.

I have added a little bit to our emergency fund to start us off.

We have about £700 left which is more than enough to pay for 2 BBQs, some picture frames we need and a few things we need for the house. 

What ever is left at the end of the month goes in the emergency fund and I am determined to be resourceful.

 It much planned for this weekend. I have got to get a birthday present for a party (£20) and we also need to do a food shop.

Teacher presents will need to be paid for as well. I can’t believe it’s nearly the end of term!!

oh and I did chuck the extra £24.84 or whatever it was at the mortgage to round it down.

It will drop down to £241 xxx next week which is exciting! Very close to the 30s.

Crunchy x

crunchy_time

Morning all!

Currently on holiday (UK cottage break followed by a few days of camping) and having a lovely time!

The last time I updated was end of June and a few money things have happened in that time.

- Husband got a 10% pay rise which is a nice substantial amount extra per month.
- I got a 3% pay rise which was about £30 per month extra - laughable due to husbands but not to be sniffed at!
- We received a big car bill of £2k for fixing the air conditioning (after putting it off for about 4 years) and changing the cam belt. 

- I received a £1k rebate from the student loans company.

We need to pay the car bill off (£1400 to go) before we start upping the emergency fund so that will be the priority when we get back.

Mortgage is now £241,140. Can’t wait to get into the 30s!! 

We invested in a few bits for this holiday - new blow up beds, body boards and wetsuits so that has taken some money in the last few months. We do want to do this sort of holiday every year though so it is a good investment.

We are also trying to be resourceful whilst we are here and sticking to our weekly food budget and not eating out until the camping part of the trip when we will have to.

I love summer but I also love the back to school feeling that comes at the beginning of September. 

I really want to get the emergency fund up to £5k so we can focus on the next part of the plan and be making snowflake payments to the mortgage again from 2025.

Crunchy xx

crunchy_time

LadyWithAPlan said:

Great news you are both on board with the finances... I like ramit 'rich life' and you defining what it is for yourself...
Indeed  buying large ticket items whilst having cc debt would be a big nono for me personally - just adds stress. 
Glad you have a plan that is working for you both.

Have you tried YNAB? It has really tightened my budget in a way I didnt expec, made me see where my extra cash was going and accelerated my savings rate. You both can have access so you can see where the over spends happens as they occur. There is a 34 day free trial then an annual cost but I can only say I wish I had started earlier with it despite my decades of budgeting /ssheets and virtual pots

I’m so sorry @lad@LadyWithAPlan that I never responded to you comment.

Yes we tried YNAB probably about 8 years ago and didn’t get on with it. We have used Monzo pots as well. We use a zero based budget though just on a trusty spreadsheet. I found YNAB to be too complicated.

thanks though!x

Mortgage_Minimiser

Hi

I’ve just come across your diary and read it all. Not sure how I’ve not read it it before! I see so many similarities in your approach to mine (I don’t have a diary). 

I’ve been following Ramit Sethi since last January - love his approach and his Netflix show / YouTube show. Implemented it in my goals too. 

Are you still on IG - would love to follow you 

MM
xx