Shaving off the years at Sleepy Hollow

CreditCardJunkie

Finally after YEARS of talking about moving DH and I have done the big move. We've significantly increased our mortgage and started off on a 34 year term to give us some breathing space for a larger mortgage payment.

We're aiming to reduce our term to 20 by making regular overpayments. Interested to read along and see what everyone else is doing to pay off their mortgages early! 

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary 

redofromstart

Happy new diary and the best of luck with your plans. 

We did a lot of visual stuff - a graph of the house in bricks (£25/£100 etc) which worked well in the takeaway or overpay £25 and colour in a brick sense. 

CreditCardJunkie

redofromstart said:

Happy new diary and the best of luck with your plans. 

We did a lot of visual stuff - a graph of the house in bricks (£25/£100 etc) which worked well in the takeaway or overpay £25 and colour in a brick sense. 

Thank you!! Ohh how did you create this??

CreditCardJunkie

Toying with lots of different ideas of overpaying on the mortgage.

We're in our 30s with 2 young children. We want to enjoy life but also not still be paying our mortgage in our late 60s. How do you all find the balance for this? A family member paid of their mortgage early but lived very very frugally for 30 years.

We're also trying to work out if we're better to build savings for the children (for their own house deposit one day) or overpay that off our mortgage so we will be in a better position to help when they are nearing that stage?

redofromstart

We did ours in excel, different colour bricks for different amounts and a vague approximation of the house. It really worked for us. 

The joy of overpaying for us was paying lower rates later on as the LTV dropped and we got the better rates. 

CreditCardJunkie

redofromstart said:

We did ours in excel, different colour bricks for different amounts and a vague approximation of the house. It really worked for us. 

The joy of overpaying for us was paying lower rates later on as the LTV dropped and we got the better rates. 

Thanks I will need to work this out but I love the visual representation!!

CreditCardJunkie

DH has been paid and has made our first EVER overpayment!! We never made any overpayments on our previous mortgage because we were young, naive and didn't see the point 🙈

I will make another overpayment at the end of the month as I haven't been paid yet.

LadyWithAPlan

Good luck on your journey 

I just drew with a ruler and pencil a drawing of 2 floors of the flat I want in saving for my house deposit with £500 squares but think having smaller bricks is more motivating 
I also do a little celebratory dance every time I fill a brick in 

You will be paying cheaper rates as redofromstart says as your LTV goes down so I’d focus on that first. 

If you could get a regular saver of 7% eg Coventry you could do that for a year as well then lump sum that each year as well - and any additional bits could go into OPs 

depending on your income any income at HR tax is best directed to your pension due to %% savings but it’s always a balance 

CreditCardJunkie

LadyWithAPlan said:

Good luck on your journey 

I just drew with a ruler and pencil a drawing of 2 floors of the flat I want in saving for my house deposit with £500 squares but think having smaller bricks is more motivating 
I also do a little celebratory dance every time I fill a brick in 

You will be paying cheaper rates as redofromstart says as your LTV goes down so I’d focus on that first. 

If you could get a regular saver of 7% eg Coventry you could do that for a year as well then lump sum that each year as well - and any additional bits could go into OPs 

depending on your income any income at HR tax is best directed to your pension due to %% savings but it’s always a balance 

Thank you! So how does the regular saver work? Is the money locked in for a certain time frame? We have never used savings accounts just current account and are definitely missing a trick with this just because we don't understand it!

Zerforax

CreditCardJunkie said:

Toying with lots of different ideas of overpaying on the mortgage.

We're in our 30s with 2 young children. We want to enjoy life but also not still be paying our mortgage in our late 60s. How do you all find the balance for this? A family member paid of their mortgage early but lived very very frugally for 30 years.

We're also trying to work out if we're better to build savings for the children (for their own house deposit one day) or overpay that off our mortgage so we will be in a better position to help when they are nearing that stage?

We're struggling with this.. on one hand it would be great to pay off the mortgage quick but then you want to create some memories with the kids and let them do fun stuff.

I think you pay off your own house before worrying about helping kids with their own house deposit etc. You may find they're still living at home in their 20s!