The 46 weeks debt free challenge

Philliggi

Morning. Its been a really hard week for me this week, mentally. A few altercations  at work have brought clarity and made me set a plan in motion to face up to my problems. Nothing has actually happened yet but ive got a meeting with the boss on monday and hopefully its that fist positive step i need. Hoping ive bottomed out. 

On the finance front ive not actually got round to playing the finance game yet this week, shuffling my pieces around the board after pay day so in the interests of clarity the weigh in is accurate, although its going to ne a bumper one next week now instead of this, as previously promised. 

Again ive managed to meet the £45.50 payment ive promised to make to myself, and i got a promotional offer through the post for monopoly mansion slots online. Absolutely ridiculous what they offer.

Ive never been into gambling although i ddolike a season long bet on my team every season so thats the reason my details are registered with them. Every now and then they send through an offer to tempt.me to play of 50 free spins if you deposit £10. 

So i deposit £10 and play my 50 spins. This week i won £9 odd before my free spins run out, and i dont touch the £10. Withdrew £19. Basically free money. 

I do get that not everyone is able to have that self control when it comes to gambling but its definitely a loophole im happy to rob the bookies with. 

Onwards and debt downwards. See you next week

Philliggi

£545.50 gone this week. Another mortgage borrowback of £500 + the additional £45.50 makes for a satisfying update.  £5601.56 left in total now. Its going down slowly. 

In other news had the meeting with the boss on monday to level a few things. Put the cards on the table but hes very results driven and dont actually think i got anywhere with him. Took the wife out for a meal on friday though and she was a bit more understanding and saw where im voming from. Ill get there. Dunno how or when, or even where 'there' is but i will. 

Mliz

Hi Philliggi - pulling up a chair and wishing you all the best. It will be amazing to be debt free in March.

Philliggi

Ok so ive messed this up somewhere along the line. Ive paid off £264 or thereabouts this week, but that doesnt make sense. My minimum monthly payment is £298 which im sure has come out and ive also got my 45.50 weekly target payment, so to declare only £264 ive either got my maths wrong or different payments than i was expecting to come out have come out. Its a mystery, but one i cant be bothered looking into early on a sunday morning. 

Aimingforthegoodlife

Hope you work out where the money change is, you are making such good inroads!

Sarahwithlove

Did the loan company reduce your monthly payments due to the overpayment? 

Philliggi

Sorry not been on here for a while, but theres a very good reason. 

IM DEBT FREE!!!!! (except that little thing we dont talk about called a mortgage).

I managed to pay off all other debts in august last year and since then ive been living with a surplus of around £900 a month which is completely ridiculous for me and something ive not been used to in my lifetime. 

Ive used this to book a 2 week all inclusive holiday for the family in august and it feels wonderful to finally pay that off as well this month.

There was more to it than just chipping away at the debt each month. I basically clawed back all the overpayments on the mortgage to target debt instead, and played chess with some other bits of finance, but i was amazed at how looking at things differently can have such a huge impact.

Im now at a cross roads, as although im debt free, there are so many other areas of life that im way behind on, its a real mental challenge to shift from paying debt to targeting pension pots, child future savings, etc, or simply pile all my excess into mortgage overpayments. 

With the autism i get addicted to ideas and its definitely helped me get addicted to debt clearance. Not too sure getting addicted to savings goals is all that good an idea though and need to find the perfect savings/life balance. Its weird shifting mentally though fron debt to savings. 

Need to do my research and get advice from the forums before committing i think. Any specific boards i should be looking at?

Sarahwithlove said:

Did the loan company reduce your monthly payments due to the overpayment? 

Yes they did. Cant remember the specific details but they basically wanted me to see out my term but im quite focused when i get an idea in my head and stuck to my guns

Philliggi

Been over a year since ive been on here, but thought an update might be a good motivational tool for others.

So after paying off the holiday, and finding a new 'normal', I set about building an emergency fund as a good base to build on. That was over the summer last year and took me to November where I settled on £4300. This should probably be higher, but im reluctant to tie more than that up in low interest easy access accounts.

Over the summer I also decided to hit the overpayments on the mortgage hard and ended up building that particular pot to over £6000

So in November I decided to dig deeper into the best ways to put savings to work. Ive never been in a position to have the luxury of large savings pots but being debt free has been a real game changer. For the 1st time in my life I have plenty of free cash I can put to work.

I decided to look into investments and ill be honest here I was a complete novice with no real clue what I was doing. Months of research though (once again I got addicted and went down a wormhole). Set myself up with a trading212 account.

A few false starts and silly errors (didn't lose money, but didn't make any really gains either) , ive finally settled into a system that works for me. I now invest £100 a week, which is only possible as ive decided to once again drawback down the £6000 mortgage overpayments and haven't actively been paying the mortgage for the past year.

As a consequence the overpayment pot has shrunk to around £2000, but my investment account is now sitting at close to £10,000, alongside the emergency fund of £4,300 so ive got a total fluid fund of £14,000+. The investment returns of £1407 (36.9%). This is a return around 32% greater than I would see by paying off the mortgage traditionally.

I really hope by sharing this it will motivate others to continue on their own journey. 3 or 4 years ago I was probably around £20000 in the red with manageable debt, and now sit £14,000 in the green.

If i can do it anyone can. I still consider myself at the start of my journey and the next goal is a big one. I want to get to a position where ive got around 80,000 in the investment pot and have the option to at least pay off the mortgage. I want it gone by the time im 50 but if the investment plan keeps working the way it has done over the past year im truly wondering if paying off the mortgage is the best financial decision

13thlegion

This is an amazing update. So great to hear how things go once on the other side.