Mortgage Free by 50???

hatch_five

Hi, long time lurker but first time poster! I am trying to get my finances in order and stop lurching from paycheque to paycheque- only taken me until the age of 40 to think this would be a good idea…hopefully keeping a diary here will help me on the straight and narrow!

A bit about me, married with two children- boy aged 12 and girl aged 9. I am the sole wage earner in the family as my wife has health problems and I tend to do most of the cooking, shopping (its too heavy for my better half to carry home normally) and all the practical things like DIY, chopping firewood etc. I have had some debt (overdraft etc) all my adult life and like many I have paid it off for it to creep back on again, but this year its gotten a lot worse- I have started working from home 99% of the time and so paid out to have a lovely 10x8 shed in the back garden as an office (an my model railway room but the office is the reason I gave my wife for building it and I am sticking to it)- I did all the work myself and I love it, but it has left me with just shy of £7k debt on my credit card (not all the office as I haven't exactly been responsible either). I don’t know if turning 40 has led to a re-evaluation of my life, but I have decided I cannot continue to live like this so I have set myself some goals:

·       Pay off the debt (cleared the overdraft this month and now working on the credit cards) and keep it clear

·       Build up some emergency savings and some long term savings

·       Overpay the mortgage so we are mortgage free by the time I am 50 at the latest

·       Then shove extra money into my pension so I can retire at 60- I don’t qualify for my state pension until I am 68, but I really don’t want to work that long (my Mum has Parkinsons and was diagnosed at 70 so it has been a wake up call about how much I want to be able to enjoy retirement whilst I have my health)

I have set up a Help to Save account as we are on UC and last month I put my first £50 in (which felt great!) and I put £50 in emergency savings and paid £500 out the debts which was also great. Unfortunately on Monday I went to the dentist and came out with a bill for a new crown (£319!) so next month’s budget has had to be rearranged and is not looking good! I earn around £2000 a month and my wife receives about £900 UC, but as I am due a pay rise in this month’s pay packet I am not sure exactly what my wage will be. My wife tends to pay for groceries, going out, kids activities, presents for her side of the family etc. out of her money (plus saving a bit for spending money on our summer holiday next year) and I pay the bills and the rest so for the payday at the end of the month my budget is currently:

Incoming

Wage- £2000

Outgoing

Joint account for bills- £750

Holiday- £300

Wife- £30

Capital One Credit Card- £220

PayPal Credit Card- £154

Help to Save- £50

Kids Pocket Money- £30

Transport to Work for a couple of days- £20

Transport to go to Mum and Dad’s for Christmas- £30

House Insurance- £20

Amazon (rabbit supplies and a Christmas present for my brother)- £55

Monthly big shop- £120

Balance owing to Dentist- £250

Christmas stocking fillers for son- £10

Total- £2039

 

Hopefully my pay increase will be more than £40 or will have to do some trimming! I am hoping that once this month is out of the way, I can prioritise paying off the debts and bringing them down- I just need to get this next month out of the way!

 

I am trying to reset my brain to be grateful for the things I have, I have a lovely family, interesting hobbies and I don’t need to spend a ton of money on things I haven’t time to use- I calculated I have around ten years of books unread in the house so the aim is to fall back on my resources and enjoy what I already have and hopefully things will get better before too long…there are many far worse off than us! I am trying to reduce my time on the tablet (no more Facebook is wonderful!), enjoy the moment, help my friends, family and community more and generally try and be the person I should be rather than the one I had become.

 

Sorry for the length of this ramble, but it actually feels good to put this down on paper at last (even if its slightly terrifying)

Changemylife

It sounds like you have a plan and a mindset change which is fantastic. And the Help to Save account sounds like a winner too. Is your wife on board with the plan? A joint budget would help to work out where you could make some savings - it's often the extra shopping, or a blow the budget day out that cause the bumps in the road.

I'd also look at the ways you can boost your income - it can be little things like signing up for Quidco, selling some of those books (equally guilty of the unread book stash), signing up for paid market research, Vinted for buying and selling which all make the difference. 

It becomes quite addictive to make payments instead of buying things - dopamine comes in the strangest ways! 

Good luck on your journey - I'm aiming for mortgage free in seven years and it feels like freedom is the goal!

Sarahwithlove

Does your wife work? I agree you need to look at having a joint budget so you can see that you are living within your means as a couple. Especially as your income is the main source of money into your household you need to look at ways you can save money. 

Could your wife maybe do some surveys, sell some items on Ebay or vinted for example. 

hatch_five

Thanks, trying to work out where my wife is can be challenging...she was reluctant to start with and every so often says 'I'm fed up of being broke', however she did get on board when she realised that in nine years the kids will both have hit 18 and UC will drop accordingly- she realised it made sense to try and become financially secure now before that happened and we potentially had a sudden drop in income. Its very strange as I grew up with well paid parents, but they are avid savers (pity I wasn't) so we lived a very frugal life. In contrast her mother was disabled and didn't have a bean to her name, but always bought the branded items, lavished the kids with expensive presents, paid for a cleaner etc. so she never grew up in that mindset of making do, finding solutions that don't cost anything etc. She is much better now, but I don't think it comes naturally! My wife suffers from anxiety so she does panic about money, but that does mean she budgets everything and is far better with her side of things than I am. I am being very open with our finances and although that does mean dealing with an initial panic attack, once the dust has settled she is open to discussing things and dealing with it together- I just need to be mindful that our priorities don't always align on what is important and we need to discuss things! 

To be honest, I have to keep reminding myself that in this day and age we are doing remarkably well to bring up a family and own a house on a single, below average, wage! I looked at the Joseph Rowntree calculator for a comfortable income and according to that, for my household we would need to be earning more than double what I actually do!

hatch_five

Sarahwithlove said:

Does your wife work? I agree you need to look at having a joint budget so you can see that you are living within your means as a couple. Especially as your income is the main source of money into your household you need to look at ways you can save money. 

Could your wife maybe do some surveys, sell some items on Ebay or vinted for example. 

My wife worked intermittently up until our eldest was born, always minimum wage type jobs in care so it made financial sense for her to look after the kids when they came along as nursery fees would have been more than she earnt. Since then she has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome (plus other things such as the anxiety, damaged liver and kidneys, arthritis etc.) so when she had the meeting with UC when they moved us off working families tax credits, the advisor immediately put her down as being unable to work (we hadn't been claiming anything before that so the move actually ended up giving us a lot more than we had been receiving up until that point). Some days she has the energy to do things, others she gets back from taking the youngest to school and is so exhausted she needs to sleep for three hours on the sofa to recover

The surveys, Ebay, Vinted etc. would be a great idea, however I know full well it would never happen and I would end up having to do them... I must confess I do get a little frustrated sometimes as I feel I end up carrying the family most of the time, but then I feel guilty as I know my wife is unwell and part of me feels as the man of the house it is my duty to look after everyone- sorry that sounds a bit confused but I lurch from one feeling to the other sometimes!

hatch_five

Bit of an end of the week check in. Monday was the dentists- I was convinced I would need a broken tooth pulled and budgeted accordingly. Happily they can put a crown on and save the tooth, unfortunately this moved it from a £70 bill to a £320 bill! I don’t need to pay until the treatment is over, but I paid off the £70 I had budgeted now (old me would have splurged that and then had to find the full bill at the end!). I took my first afternoon off since August to go into town for the dentist- it was actually really nice to get out of the village for once. Cost me £2 each way on the bus and I picked up some bits for the Christmas larder for £5, although £2.50 was in Nectar points. I also picked up a Christmas card for my better half in C@rd Factory- not sure if I will get another chance before Christmas and it was 99p as compared to nearly £3 for the limited selection in the village. I was a little naughty and went round the charity shops and spent the princely sum of £4.50 on three books, two military vehicle magazines and a DVD- I think I can forgive myself this treat!

Tuesday I splurged a whole pound on a stocking filler for my daughter in the village charity shop- she is massively into Harry Potter at the moment and her favourite house is Hufflepuff, so when I saw a Hufflepuff keyring brand new for £1 I knew she would love it in her stocking on Christmas morning.

Wednesday was great fun- I do living history so in the evening I went round in WW1 uniform to my daughter’s Cub Pack and talked to them about World War One, showed them what a Tommy carried and used in the trenches and then had them marching round the village hall with broom handles as rifles. They really enjoyed it (so did I) and learnt a lot.

This weekend we are staying in (no money and my wife is usually exhausted by Friday) so my plan is:

-          Feed the Christmas cake I made two weeks ago with rum

-          Make two more Christmas cakes for family

-          Big batch of baking for after tea next week

-          Refelt the workshop roof if the weather holds

-          Build a free cardboard kit of Arkwright’s shop from Open All Hours I downloaded- this will be a Christmas present for my best mate and his son for their model railway and I will thoroughly enjoy the process of building it!

-          Saturday night movie night with the kids- microwave popcorn in the cupboard for the children and my wife (I hate the stuff!)

hatch_five

Had a fun, productive and frugal weekend! Got Christmas cakes made for Mum and Dad and they are in the cupboard maturing, cleaned the living room windows which were disgusting- took two hours on Saturday morning, but I did remove all the Sellotape that was stuck to the frames from holding up Christmas lights, Halloween decorations etc- lots of scrubbing with surgical spirit to remove the residue and they are looking clean for the first time in about ten years! Managed to put new felt on the workshop roof- the felt was from the village free site and I had the nails and felt tar compound left over from the office project. It was very much a case of scraping every last brush full off the inside of the can, but I just about made it stretch and it didn’t cost a penny and hopefully the workshop will stand up to the weather for another few years.

Did a load of baking yesterday for the week ahead- that incurred my only expense of the weekend as I needed some more eggs, but luckily found a tray of fifteen in the chuck out in one of the supermarkets in the village for £1.29 and used up a couple of rolls of pastry I had lurking in the freezer for a pie and some tarts- not as nice as my home made pastry but they were yellow stickered at 38p each and that’s cheaper than I can make the pastry for! Also got the model of Arkwright’s shop started for my friend, unfortunately he popped round whilst I was halfway through making it so now he knows what he is getting for Christmas, but he was very happy with it…

It wasn’t all busy-busy though, we had Saturday movie night with the kids and my daughter chose Moana (much to son’s disgust)- haven’t seen it in ages and I really enjoyed it. Also watched The Railway Children Return which was okay, but stretched believability and not a patch on the original. Sat in the office now and its freezing- got my sleeping bag with hot water bottle on my legs and my snoody on my top half, together with my Bob Cratchett gloves, luckily my boss and colleagues are used to seeing me like this on Teams now, although if I am dealing with anyone outside the organisation I will have to try and look professional and hope the call doesn’t last too long or I will turn into the human icicle!

hatch_five

End of the week check-in- Its been a very frugal week...I don’t have any money so I can’t spend what I don’t have! It has been productive though, as I have made a start on writing my next book (number 5!) and we had our first planning meeting for my Scout group’s 100th anniversary celebrations next year. I volunteered to write the history (book No 6) so had a trip up to the local archives this morning which was a lot of fun. I am usually a military historian so researching/writing this is turning into a very fun diversion as it is something a little different to the usual. OH was less than impressed that I was out at the planning meeting on Tuesday night- I’m not sure why she doesn’t like me volunteering for anything?? I left the house at 7.30 after making sure the stove was loaded up with fuel and she had a hot water bottle and I was back by 9 to make supper and a cup of tea so apart from getting DD to bed, it didn’t inconvenience her in any way… she has never been keen on me doing things away from the house with friends etc. but I was only gone 1.5 hours and I was 200 yards away in the church hall so not sure why I was in the doghouse for that…

Payday on Thursday and although every penny is spoken for, I am looking forward to getting paid, even if its only to see the balance on the credit cards go down a little bit. Dentist on Monday to prepare for the crown which I am not looking forward to, but my boss has said I can take a long lunch to go (its in the town 6 miles away and I don’t drive) so at least I don’t have to use any holiday up. Will confess my boss is very good- he was very happy to agree when I asked if I could take a late lunch in December for DD’s carol concert at school. I have my probation meeting at work in two weeks, so fingers crossed I get it all signed off (not really worried, but they are doing a round of VSS at the moment so it’s a little bit of a worry in the back of my mind!)

[Deleted User]

This is all most impressive! You are truly living a full and productive life. Your family are very lucky to have you!

Sarahwithlove

Does your wife get PIP? 

Good news you can take a long lunch will be better then needing to use leave. 

hatch_five

Sarahwithlove said:

Does your wife get PIP? 

Good news you can take a long lunch will be better then needing to use leave. 

No, she applied twice as she really struggles, but because she can walk 100 yards with a stick and make a simple meal without assistance she was rejected both times and at that point we had had enough of the whole palaver. Its frustrating because we know people who are in far better health who were entitled to it, but of course I don't know what answers they gave to PIP to get approved...