Snug & Sorted: Our Race to Mortgage Freedom

kaycastle

South_coast said:

How is the spending diary coming along? *nudge/friendly encouragement*

I will let you off though if you still have a household of spots 😬!

Morning! Thank you for the encouragement, I definitely discovered I'm terrible at keeping a daily spending diary so It's been a while, have mostly been dealing with endless winter bugs. I have been overpaying £200 on the mortgage every month.

Lots of news, firstly I'm expected baby no 2!!! So will be going on maternity around August/September, haven't quite yet decided.

Had a clear out this week and took about 8 bags of stuff to charity shop. 

Just going to catch up on various diaries now, I think I'm going to start with a more simple diary rule of posting each day. And it can be about anything.

I feel very directionless since taking on a larger mortgage. 

South_coast

Oooh, congratulations!!! Now we know what you've really been up to this winter 🤣!

How about working out your daily interest and trying to OP a day's worth per month as a first target?

kaycastle

Thank you!!! It's been a fun winter

Working out the daily interest sounds like a good idea, I'll be able to get on laptop maybe when OH wakes. My toddler barely let's me do anything without him still/have to play constantly so my time for admin is so much lower during those years when I felt like I was on top of it all 

I am scared to know the daily interest 

kaycastle

So daily interest - so the current annualised amount is £37.19 but have calculated for each month as well.

I currently overpay £200 so just over 5 days worth of interest.

That means paying off 4 years and 7 months earlier - saving £41,000 in interest alone.

South_coast

kaycastle said:

I am scared to know the daily interest 

Knowledge is power 👍👍👍

debtfreewannabe321

Oooo congratulations on the new baby Kay!!! How exciting! 😄 

I've had flu which seems to have lasted at least a month so I've been a bit absent catching up with everyone. Lovely to see some happy news though and well done for making those overpayments! £200 is a good amount! Esp as it will save a huge amount of interest and be done 4.7 years earlier!! 

kaycastle

Thank you @south_coast and @debtfreewannabe321 !

I have to go in for an emergency scan tomorrow after some worrying symptoms. I'm trying not to be too worried but hopefully everything is alright.

I just had a lot of fun reading @eat_that_frog diary. So in the spirit of their diary I'm going to:

• Aim for no spend for rest of month - apart from on groceries that will be needed this week. I'm hoping this will be a better thing to do than my spending diary - if I'm not spending...I won't need a spending diary, right?! 
• Get my meal planning sorted - we've been terrible here, we don't have takeaways but I keep resorting to beige trays of freezer stuff - not good!! 
• I'm allowed 20% on overpayments - so £59k 
• I have 41k of savings
• I need to finish doing a budget - have been working on it in small scraps of time and its getting closer - I might then decide whether I want the security of no mortgage more than I do the savings. The budget needs to take into account how much I'll need in my maternity months...

From April we'll be saving about £250 on childcare as we'll be on 30 free hours - the charge for "food and other extras" doubles to £140 when you get 30 free hours  much the same thing all over the place but still less than now. We also will be gaining an additional £80 because had to do a massive fix on boiler when we moved in last year (joy!!) and I decided to do interest free monthly payments instead of losing a large lump sum that could be earning me interest - that ends in April - yay!

So that will be over £300 extra.

There will be a time on maternity when I'm barely paid anything - I'm really determined to take a year of maternity even if it leaves me with less financially - I went back after 6 months last time for financial reasons and don't want to lose that time again. 

ladysummerisle

Hope today goes well. Have you had any scans so far?

A year of maternity is great if you can do it. Take advantage of paid keep in touch days and check your contract - you should have bank holidays added to your annual leave allowance so that and perhaps a tax rebate will make the unpaid months easier. Unless you’ve had a clear out, second time round is cheaper as you have everything. 

kaycastle

@ladysummerisle I haven't had a scan so far so really hoping everything is alright.

I hope I can do it - last time my OH was doing teacher training so no other salary coming in so I think that made us more anxious.

I've been working on budget - I'm very almost there. Just got to finalise amounts for maternity and neaten everything up. But its time to start work now!

It looks like I have between £1000-£2000 every month extra, depending on what annual bills are coming out that time. That doesn't include the already automatic £200 overpayment on mortgage.

Currently being absolutely squandered in a very frivolous way on random food out, things and just been frittering it away more than usual!! 

I'm going to talk to OH about the non spend day and see if we can get up a streak. We've also already started to take picnics with us more and more in the past couple of weeks - even when its been so rainy we've sat in the car to eat.

I was really surprised at how much petrol is costing us - its more than what I estimated. 

kaycastle

Sadly the scan wasn't good news and is the start of a miscarriage, so we're all sad and shocked here.

I've been keeping myself busy today and will keep up with the renewed focus/will post more on finance goals in a few days.