Alion's Mortgage Reduction Diary

Alion

A momentous occasion - have just paid this month's overpayment and our mortgage is now £10k less than where we started almost 18 months ago. If we hadn't made any overpayments, we would have reached this stage in April 2009!!!

AND we've already saved £4.5k in interest over the term of the mortgage (assuming no change in rates from the deal we got last year so the saving's probably even higher than that)

AND it feels GOOD

setmefree2

Well Done :j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j

Keep up da good work:T:T:T:T:T

Alion

Mistake in my calculations - we've saved £8.1k in interest!!!

Blimey!

evab_2

excellent progress well done

Ev x

Alion

Another £500 paid off mortgage has now reduced below £190k. We'd be £3.5k off that if we hadn't overpaid at all (oooh I love my spreadsheet).

Have also decided that we're going to put the interest we're getting on some savings into the massive overpayment in January as well as the money we've saved which'll top it all up slightly and reduce the overpayments we'll have to do to get to £125k in 5 years (1.5 years in at the mo)

We can do this

evab_2

Fantastic, well done that's great!

Alion

All ready to pay our next overpayment tomorrow - then only one more to go this year. The bulk we're planning to put in in January is ready to go and money's been going towards a holiday in November that we're both really excited about. We've set our targets well and we've achieved them without sacrificing much and now it's habit and we aren't really thinking about it . Both hoping for pay rises in the new year (fingers crossed) and hopefully that'll mean we can move onto the next stage of overpaying every month rather than every other month.

One question for you lot - how much difference will a couple of marks on a credit record make when we remortgage? OH's just realised he may be late paying his credit card bill this month and he went a few pennies overdrawn in the summer by accident. I've heard stuff in the papers that non-perfect credit records are being used against people - is it hype or realistic?

evab_2

Well done Alion excellent progress.

r.e. late payments, I think (but not 100%) that they do show up on your report as number of times you were late - shown as 1, 2, 3 or whatever next to the company. There should be a key at the bottom. I'm not sure how this would affect your rating other than if you have loads of late payments then a company might be more cautious but 1 or 2 shouldn't matter - I've got a few late payments recorded on my file but didn't cause any problems.

gallygirl

Alion wrote: »

One question for you lot - how much difference will a couple of marks on a credit record make when we remortgage? OH's just realised he may be late paying his credit card bill this month and he went a few pennies overdrawn in the summer by accident. I've heard stuff in the papers that non-perfect credit records are being used against people - is it hype or realistic?

Is that because he's forgotten or dates wrong etc? Is it possible to make a minimum payment by phone so it doesn't appear as late? If not I'd phone them up & beg them not to put a flag against the account - but then I have no pride .

shopgirl2512

Hey Alion!

Just read your diary...it sounds like you're doing great! You have made a fabulous start. Where are you off to on your holiday? Good luck with your challenge:j

Shopgirl