Mortgage Free by 53!!

crunchy_time

Morning all

I agreed to go back teaching for a week and then drop down to two days a week with maybe the additional day. My body is screaming no but my husbands credit card needs paying off. I’ve mad this clear to him. He wanted to order specialist flour off Amazon on his credit card earlier and I have stopped him saying I will buy it in supermarket with our budget.  

I have managed a week with minimal spend. Just £20 on coffees and snacks. This weekends a man’s are already budgeted for and paid for. 

Just the food shop for today. I realised it is a 5 week month so I need to eke it out a bit further this month. Husband has been informed of this. Luckily we have a lot of stuff left over from last week so it should be ok.

Crunchy xx

crunchy_time

Good news in Crunchy land!

After months of worry, I have secured a new mortgage deal today!

Our 3-year fix was coming to an end at the end of October this year.  I've been checking rates and entering our details in calculators and our spreadsheet.  I had estimated that we would need another £400-£500 'spare' to pay for a rate rise.  However, I have secured the following:

4.42% for 5 years for £1472.78 a month!!! 'Only' and an extra £336 a month!
Our house is now valued at £432k.  We bought it for £352 nearly 6 years ago and it has gone up £68k in value since we last remortgaged.  Our LTV is now 58.32%.
22 years left to run.

Very happy with that!  Now I just have to find a job and then we can properly start our mortgage-free project.

Husband and I have been contemplating our future recently.  Originally we bought this house as a 10-year house with the view of moving to something slightly larger in another village around our small town, by the time our children become teenagers.  Since we got the money earlier this year and have spent some of it on home projects and paid off debt, we realise that we would be crazy to do this.  We have everything we need here. 

We have decided to stay put until our daughter is 18 in 10 years' time and then we can decide what to do next for that next phase of our life.  Husband's idea is to sell up and buy a shack in Central America but of course we will see.  Ha ha!

He is very on board now with getting rid of the mortgage as soon as we can - hopefully in 10 years time so we are in the best position to make a decision.

So although a bit of a slow start to this diary, soon we will be able to start making some headway for our future plans.

Crunchy xx

crunchy_time

More good news in Crunchy land!

Husband has had a 10% pay rise and promotion which I have roughly worked out to be about £350 a month so that more than covers the mortgage increase. 

I have also quit my rubbish job but I had saved enough money to last over the summer. My salary mainly goes on childcare, fuel, Christmas and birthday pots, oil and then my ISA savings and SIPP. I have parked the pension and savings for now as well as the Christmas pot and we also not paying for any childcare or petrol to my job so this frees us this money. 

Husband got paid yesterday so money shuffle done. His credit card has gone done from around £2k to £1100. The main stuff left is about £600 food (I know) and then the rest is home and his clothes from his spree.

We have decided this month to be really conscious about the food budget as something is going wrong somewhere. Once we know then we can make a plan for going forward. 

I used to really stress about the actual figures when we are in debt but now I am focused on the reasons why the budget is not working. 

So a focus on food budget and getting a new job but also having a great summer with the children. My eldest is going to high school so I want to make lots of memories of them both being ‘little.’

Crunchy x

crunchy_time

I fixed our electricity rate today for a year! 

We were paying £180 a month. We will now be paying £158 a month.

A nice little saving. 

I have also made about £15 selling books on Ziffit!

Crunchy xx

ohdearhowdidthathappen

All sounding good Crunchy, fab news on DHs pay rise and good deals on mortgage etc

t2rry

gosh £158 sounds good to me, although to be fair £180 sounds good too!!! We're currently paying £300, our supplier keeps trying to put that up as well!  

crunchy_time

t2rry said:

gosh £158 sounds good to me, although to be fair £180 sounds good too!!! We're currently paying £300, our supplier keeps trying to put that up as well!  

Goodness me!  We have oil heating as well which I save £50 a month for and that is more than enough.  It is also a very well insulated modern house.

crunchy_time

Morning all!

I realised I hadn't updated for a while.  I have an IG account for paying off my mortgage which I have been spending more time on but neglected this account.  Sorry!

The mortgage is now down to £250,069 which is great!  We have set a target to aim to overpay on average £750 a month or £9000 a year for the next ten years and trying to do that with side hustling and round downs and then topping it up with savings we will have also made during the year.

In July I managed to pay an extra £79.09 off it!  This came from the following:

Ziffit	£12.78
Interest and round ups	£4.62
UM - Denim skirt	£15.00
UM - Swimming lessons	£39.20
Joint account leftovers	£7.49

UM stands for unexpected money.  I overbudgeted for swimming lessons and bought the skirt on eBay instead of new so I rounded up the difference.

August so far looks like this:

Another Ziffit - £7 ish
Laptops to sell somewhere when I get back from holiday
A roundup of £69 so it is an even £250,000
A few bits on ebay.
£10 voucher for completing a survey - 

I also need to start looking at surveys to complete and get really savvy with cashback sites.

I've been very good and now have reward cards for all the major supermarkets.

The money I had started to save for mortgage overpayments from the beginning of the year is now being used as spending money for our holiday.  Anything leftover will go towards the holiday but I severely doubt there will be and I think we may have to dip into savings to contribute more.  Although neither of us is drinking as much alcohol anymore so that will reduce the cost a bit!!

Anyway, lots to do before we go on Saturday.

When I get back I am severely focusing on my job situation.  I still have some money left over from what I earned but it will run out.  I mean, we do have savings but I don't want to dip into them if I can help it! so want a new job as soon as possible.

So all going slowly in the right direction!

Crunchy xx

t2rry

Ooh lovely round number to get below, how satisfying!  

I've started looking more at our mortgage now with the impending doom of our fixed rate ending (not for a few years but it's still scary!).  So many things to juggle I'm having to try and just think save, save, save to hopefully make the best of every possibility.

Are you comfortable sharing your IG?  I'd be so interested!

crunchy_time

t2rry said:

Ooh lovely round number to get below, how satisfying!  

I've started looking more at our mortgage now with the impending doom of our fixed rate ending (not for a few years but it's still scary!).  So many things to juggle I'm having to try and just think save, save, save to hopefully make the best of every possibility.

Are you comfortable sharing your IG?  I'd be so interested!

Yes! And then it will be good to get into the next £50k to pay off. 

Have you looked at a worse case scenario for how much your mortgage could be when you have to fix again? Since last year I have put £1500 into our budget spreadsheet even though it was £1136 so we got used to what that would look like. We didn’t, but you could then save the difference to go on your house projects. Have you got a huge mortgage? 

And yes, I don’t mind about IG. I’ll DM you!