Alion's Mortgage Reduction Diary

setmefree2

You're doing great - Keep it up

allIcouldwishfor

Glad to hear you are feeling more positive today. Our 2year fixed comes to an end next month and we'll go onto SVR too until some better deals come along. Just trying to persuade OH to keep our payments the same as they are now so we can overpay each month in the meantime.

setmefree2

allIcouldwishfor wrote: »

Just trying to persuade OH to keep our payments the same as they are now so we can overpay each month in the meantime.

with that

overlykeensaver

just read your thread - it is very inspirational; well done on making your overpayments.
We overpay by £499 a month (the max allowed without triggering a fee and instantly lower mortgage payments). I was just wondering if you could tell us how you have managed to save your money? what are your plans for saving more money in the future?

Alion

To be brutally honest, most of our saving from overpayments comes from the fact we got our mortgage very early on in our careers while we were both on graduate salaries and that means that once we got promoted out of that we weren't as pushed as we had been.

Apart from that, we're pretty anal about money on a day to day basis. We subscribe to a cookery magazine and plan our weekly meals around that, only buying what we need.

We have converted our tiny garden so that a third of it is vegetables and grow as much as humanly possible over the summer months. That makes a huge difference.

I make all my own clothes and sell some that I make in the evenings and at weekends to pay for that hobby. It's not a big earner, but it pays for itself.

But mainly we live well within our means. WE're not hard up, but we have made decisions about what we want that other people we socialise with don't seem to have made. Want a new game for the Wii? Wait till your birthday. Want a new computer monitor? Do you really need it or do you just want it? So don't get it! Want to eat well and drink nice wine? Do it at home and make an evening of it - cook together and have fun.

I think what I've written sounds patronising, it isn't meant to be. Just how we try to live our lives. OH says it's like dieting - you can crash diet and binge without getting anywhere, or you can make a lifestyle change and stay healthy - that's what we try to do with our finances.

MoneyQueen

Hi Alion,

Have read your complete diary... You have been doing great.. Hope you get a good deal soon..

SmlSave

OH says it's like dieting - you can crash diet and binge without getting anywhere, or you can make a lifestyle change and stay healthy - that's what we try to do with our finances

Sound like a good philosphy(sp?) to me!

overlykeensaver

Alion -it doesn't sound patronising at all; you sound very like me and my DH apart from the fact taht we didn't get a house until our late 20's/early 30's!

Alion

Well, the £20k went in on Monday (should have got there by now ) and we decided to put in the £500 interest as well for good measure. Counting that towards our overpayment target of £4k this year.

Car plans are on hold as jobs aren't as secure as we'd like, but we've found out that anything we put into this mortgage can come back out again if we need it and it's worth more interest-wise than our savings are so we're thinking of putting some of our slush fund in there as well (not all of it, but a proportion) - is that foolish?

Alion

Oh my word according to my spreadsheet we have removed 5 years from our term (taking it from 25 years to 20 years) and saved (at an average rate of 5%) almost £45k in interest

Blimey