One step at a time

sunshineli · 15 February at 6:36PM

Today I made my first mortgage overpayment of the year! Just £30 but every little helps. This saved me £72.86 in interest. At the beginning of the year I was feeling quite unmotivated by overpaying the mortgage. The mortgage is just so huge and I don’t have loads of money that I am able to throw at OPs (especially since I reduced my working hours last year). I’ve reminded myself that even small OPs do make an impact over a long period of time. My focus is not to become mortgage free as that goal feels insurmountable right now, but rather to just reduce my mortgage as much as possible to make it feel more manageable. I feel that the more financially resilient I am, the less stressed I will feel in general (about my health, work etc).

I’ve had a nice weekend. Yesterday we celebrated Valentines Day and went out for lunch. We had a £30 gift card for a local independent restaurant that we got for Christmas, so lunch cost us just £10 each. After this we went for a drink in a pub, and then went home to relax and watch a film. Being out in the sunshine was wonderful after weeks of grey, gloom and rain. Yesterday cost £25 each which included the train, lunch, a drink at the pub, and some dog chews from the pet shop, so not too bad. The dog chews were worth their weight in gold as they allowed us to sit and enjoy the film undisturbed whilst the pup enjoyed her new chew! 😂

Today has been a NSD and I have done some life admin. I updated my mortgage overpayment tracker and also updated my zero based budget which I loosely followed previously. I’ve also made an expenses tracker which I am going to update consistently so I can gain further insight into my spending patterns and see if I can make any further savings allowing me to make some more mortgage OPs.

sunshineli · 17 February at 10:31PM

A little update on the week so far. Monday was a much needed NSD, and today I have spent £60.83 on this weeks food shop. The grocery budget resets on Friday so it looks like we are coming in under budget this month for groceries by about £4. I’m determined not to do any top up shops this week.

This week I also started my new immunosuppressant medication. So far I’m feeling a bit fatigued, dizzy and nauseous but I hope this subsides once I get used to it.

I’ve now completed my personal zero based budget, and after planned payments to savings pots it’s showing I have a monthly surplus of £70.68 which I could theoretically use to overpay on the mortgage. This is in addition to the £100 DH and I are planning to try and overpay monthly. I’m quite pleasantly surprised by this as I have already allocated payments towards pots for socialising and hobbies, clothing, gifts etc. I’m sure I must have forgotten about some outgoings so I am going to track all of my outgoings over the next month, and see if there is anything I regularly pay for that I’ve forgotten about.

One more working day for me, then I have Thursday off. Back in work on Friday then off again for a 3 day weekend. Looking forward to having a rest on Thursday as I feel this week has been a bit full on!