Alion's Mortgage Reduction Diary

DawnW

Good luck x

Alion

thank you

Alion

I thought I'd pop in to update. The simple chain hasn't been so simple with problems at both ends, but we finally seem to be moving and I'm hoping we'll exchange this week (fourth time lucky?)

We've been saving like mad people since we decided to move over 18 months ago, and combining that with our proper savings and the money we have in stocks ISAs I think we may be close to being mortgage-neutral before we move! That would be amazing if we could be. We'll do the sums before we move and see where we're at.

Alion

3 weeks exactly until we move!

It feels really strange that we haven't overpaid now in 6 months. We are on a 10%PA maximum overpayment running August-August and we completed that 10% in April. But as we've got a lot of work to do on the house haven't overpaid so far in this overpayment year. We've been saving like anything as well and think we'll be able to afford to do all the work (windows, heating, electrics, insulation, decoration, etc) without having to use any loans.

But still I feel sad opening my overpayment spreadsheet to not see any overpayments in such a long time.

One day soon, my friends, one day soon.

KolaKube

Just popping in to say hi! :T Congratulations on the new house, hopefully its plain sailing from here!

Kola xx

Alion

11 days till our moving date.

We've hit a massive milestone. This weekend we sat down and counted up our money (current accounts, savings accounts, cash and shares ISAs) and I can say that before we move house we have achieved a point where we are effectively 'mortgage neutral'.

Our savings are more than our borrowings!

It's going to change in a few days when we take on a higher mortgage again and that money starts to get ploughed into the renovations, but I am so proud to say that in less than 6 years in our first home we have got to this stage.

I feel blown away by it all.

Alion

Hello MFW'ers I'm sitting in my NEW HOUSE!!!

Every brick of this house is testament to the work we put in to our mortgage in the first 6 years. We could never ever ever have bought this without that work and although it's still going to be quite a journey doing up somewhere that needs this much work, we have loads of savings as well to do that.

Every time I look round this house I can't believe we have managed to buy this house in this area. We're not even 30!!! It's a proper forever house and it's so full of opportunity and hope.

So we now have a mortgage of £271k on a house we bought at £427k. The maths all change but I'm making a new spreadsheet to keep track of it all. I can't believe I'm writing that at all - it's an amazing thing to me. I can't believe how much we've achieved!!!

Alion

PS I guess we're now MFW'ers - before we wanted to reduce it to buy the forever house, but we're there now!

Alion

Just a little update. We've been in for 3 months today and although we haven't managed to overpay yet, we've been working hard around the house stripping off what's been there for years and getting it ready for the works to start.

We have shiny new double glazing (which makes an incredible difference in a house with no heating) and we are moving out in about 6 weeks to have the heating and electrics done. We've decided to go with solar PV and solar thermal as although it's a lot up front, it's worth doing while we have everything up. We're quite excited being involved in designing the system.

The house felt like home within a few days and we're already really happy there, although I'm sure we'll get sick of the DIY soon...

Alion

Update time again. Still no overpayments but lots of work on the house and it's almost ready for us to move back in. The works are a little over budget (I missed a few essentials off my budget) but we've still been able to do all the work out of our savings.

Our end date is a bit compressed as well with our first little one due in the autumn so we're very excited about the changes that'll make (although that may also have an impact on our overpayments as I'm not planning to return to work).

So there's a lot going on and it's very exciting here at the moment.