Roll on October 2025!

Archerychick

It is time for our July update.

We have

• 15 payments left 
• Balance on mortgage is £26835, which cost us £34 in interest for the past month
• Amount in savings allocated to mortgage is £19189 and we gained around £82 in interest this last month on that
• Effective balance £7646

Nothing major to happen now until November time when one of the savings accounts will be at the end of it's fixed term so may have some funds to move around - about £6k worth which is sheltered in an ISA at the moment.

Archerychick

It's been a while since the last update, so thought December update would be an idea.

Everything is still on track for us. We now have - 

• 10 payments left
• Mortgage balance is £24800
• £19607 saved allocated to the mortgage
• Since July we have earned £418 in interest and been charged £164 in interest 
• Effective balance is £5194

Now we have less than 12 months left, as money is coming out of fixes its trying to put those funds somewhere sensible to maximise the interest we get. Some is being sheltered from tax in a flexible ISA at 4.9%. The next fixes end in March, one is a ISA fix and the other is not. At that point I think we might see what 6 month fixes are on offer as that'll be about £8500 ish, although leaving the funds in the ISA until after the start of the new tax year might make sense too as I can then put it back in later in the tax year & not loose the tax free status on that amount. 

We have managed our savings well this year using various ISAs to make sure no tax is paid on interest, next year we'll definitely be ok with the mortgage being paid off. 

On top of that we've increased our credit card stoozing, December we have some significant bills to pay for the car, and various insurances. So January we tend to take out a 0% no fee balance transfer card & then put the money into savings & earn interest off it for the year, paying it off before the deal ends. The card from last year wasn't ending until March 2025 but I didn't want to take money out of a ISA that near to end of the financial year & then not be able to get money back in before 5th April. So I have just taken out a new CC which is 0% no fee for 9 months. They gave me a nice £12500 limit, so have moved the £5000 ish from the one expiring in March, and transferred our December card bill to it, and then I may as well move our January card bill to it as well. The money to pay this off in August is all in one of our ISA's. Based on my forecasting I should be able to leave this inside the ISA & pay the card with taxable savings - but we'll see closer to the time. 

Most of the forecasting I did for 2024 was solid, I hadn't factored in some house projects which is completely fine & more than accounts for the end of year difference to plan. Over Christmas I will update my forecasting to reset everything, Before end of the tax year we still have another £3600 ISA allowance to use, so I'd like to find that from somewhere!

Archerychick

Well we are now six months to the end! Sitting here this evening reflecting on how strange it feels to have done what we have. 

Mortgage balance is currently £23k, and we have just shy of £20k in various savings. Once the monthly payments are done it equals zero! 

At the weekend we spent a bit of time checking where this £20k is, because I wanted us to maximise the interest from it it’s all over the place, but logged clearly.

Before then we have a 0% credit card deal ending in September which has £11k stoozed. I’m hoping that we can get another deal to transfer that to, so then those funds can stay in an ISA for another year. We have lots of regular savers, some is general savings, and some is mortgage savings. We have one fix left for our ISAs which ends in July, priority will be transferring that to a flexible isa so that we make sure we can replace what we take out for the mortgage payment in October.

Sensiblesaver

wow, that's really exciting to know only 6 months to go and mortgage will be gone, congratulations!

Archerychick

Sensiblesaver said:

wow, that's really exciting to know only 6 months to go and mortgage will be gone, congratulations!

Very much so! I’m also looking forward to my letter from FD to tell me what they’re offering at the end of the fixed rate 😆

Archerychick

A little over 11 weeks now to go until my fix ends and I can pay off the mortgage without penalty. We have been accruing interest nicely on the £20k ish sat in various accounts. 

Last week we received my text and email from mortgage company to contact them to discuss the fix rate ending. It was satisfying to delete those!

I’ll contact them in September and get a redemption statement (as I think that’s the next step)