Mortgage free mayhem

South_coast

Good for you 👍 

LadyWithAPlan

Good for you indeed - also writing to somewhere like the Guardian may help as they often highlight things like this 

mathilde

Hi everyone, 

Well I did it finally--emergency fund now at £3100.  I think this the most I've ever had just sitting in a savings account. 

Mortgage now at £70631. Now that I've met the savings goal, I've set up a regular payment of £300 as a mortgage overpayment. 

Goals for the coming month:
1. Renew car insurance--see if I can find a better deal than my current insurer. 
2. Cut down the matcha latte excursions --limit it to once a week! It's not a "treat" if I get one every time I leave the house.
3. Finish and submit the coursework for my PGCE --that's a certificate that will hopefully get me promoted to senior lecturer (maybe professor?)
4. Put £300 overpayment on that mortgage.

mathilde

I'm having a really hard moment. I know I'm really lucky to be able to work, and to be healthy, but sometimes I look at my age and I'm appalled at how little I've managed to build up financially..

I was just about to start overpaying the mortgage again, and then had had two set-backs this month: first is that (see above) my monthly service charge has doubled to clear a 'surprise arrears' that Guinness has hit me with. Then my monthly electric bill has gone up £50 per month based on usage and arrears.  This eats up the budget surplus that was meant to go towards the mortgage overpayment. 

I've looked at my budget and I can't possibly work any more. I work during the day and then go teach at the gym most evenings and half-day Sunday. I'm getting an extra qualification for a promotion so there's that.

In terms of outgoings, I don't think it's horrifically extravagant for me to pay for a yoga class or a charity-shop blouse or a latte here and there, but every single month is down to the wire so ill need to scrimp more.  Having two cats is expensive so I suppose I could see about off-loading them. 

I'm 55 at the end of the year so I can do the tax-free withdrawal of some pension, but my pension is so small it will hardly make a difference in the mortgage amount.

On one hand i want to keep the thread going and keep pushing, even if its £20 per month, but on the other hand I feel foolish.

debtfreewannabe321

Sorry you're feeling this way Mathilde 🫂 I get how you're feeling I was a bit like this and didn't have any spare money and when I did I had so many goals I wanted to work towards, EF and paying down the mortgage that it becomes a bit burdensome. I started doing surveys when I came back to this site and used that money to pay towards whichever goal I was working towards. Could you sign up to a few of those? And any spare could be ear marked for mortgage. I don't think you should stop the odd few treats otherwise it feels like what is the point very quickly....
I see you have your EF goal. Could you set yourself a small OP goal? I.E I've set myself the goal of 1% of my mortgage to OP. If you did that over one year it would be just over £700 so not a massive goal to find and fund (less than £60 a month). And you could make it a game, selling things, saving money here and there and surveys etc etc. 
I hope you're feeling brighter about it all soon 💓.

mathilde

Thank you for the idea of surveys. I have looked into that but currently I have no time at all. For instance today I have annual leave, but I've worked on my coursework, did some marking, went to have blood drawn for a research project (they'll give me a £10 voucher), and now I'm about to go teach at the gym.

But I really like your idea of small goals. I mean, £3 a day for instance. It adds up!

So thank you for the boost.

mathilde

Hi everyone. Mortgage now at £69926. Oooh in the £60K zone! Exciting. 

I spent some time being anxious about money last month, but I've calmed down. I've crunched some numbers and found out that since starting this thread I've made an average overpayment of £415 each month. If I'd only paid the minimum, my outstanding mortgage would be just over £80K right now.

Savings pot holding steady at £3K so I'll leave that now.

Looking at last month's goals, I finished and submitted the coursework for the PGCHE so that's all done! Thank goodness. 

I got £400 overpayment into the mortgage this month. Made a little extra money by writing an article for a journal and picking up some extra teaching. I also sold a wool dress on Vinted!

Goals for next month:

1. I enrolled in a part-time course on Python and AI, so I'll try to get through three units of it.

2. Get £400 overpayment into the mortgage. 

3. Get the headstands (yoga). 

mathilde

Oh here's another goal: by the end of the summer (so end of August) I want to write and submit an article to a specific academic journal that's relevant to my work. 

glass_half_full

Really impressive progress. With your.regular overpayment, when will the mortgage be gone? That has to be motivating to think about.

mathilde

If all goes well I'll get the mortgage paid off by the time I'm 60 (in 5 years).