The Long Journey Begins

Owen1991

Hello Everyone!

2024 has been a pretty crazy year for us - we got married...we bought a new build house...We completed just before Christmas and are kicking off 2025 in our new home together...and hopefully a diary we can stay on top of. 

A bit about us: We’re both in our mid-30s, no kids yet, but we do have a very clingy little dachshund who keeps us on our toes! We are both basic rate tax payers but both earn decent salaries for South West Wales.

Financially we're in a good starting place, my OH has roughly £30k in savings, I have £16k. 

Neither of us have any credit card debt. My car is paid off but my OH has a PCP car at £250 a month.

I have a military DB pension worth £6kpa (inflation linked) at SPA, a SIPP currently worth £30k and a small DC work place pension from my new employer. My OH has £70k in her DC work place pension.

Our new home came with a 30-year mortgage of £188k, fixed for 5 years at 4.44% (property value £250k), which works out at roughly £940 a month. While I’d love to think this is our forever home, my partner’s a little more on the fence about that!

One thing we both agree on, though, is that we don’t want to be paying off a mortgage into our 60s. Our goal is to overpay enough to bring it down to below 20 years and, fingers crossed, become mortgage-free sooner rather than later.

Neither of us are smokers or big drinkers, my spare time is mainly spent training for long distance triathlons, all though I've spent a lot in the past on kit, I have everything I need and all my events for this year have been paid for (Ironman's ain't cheap).

We both enjoy some big holidays which is the main expense we will hopefully be able to maintain while also paying down the mortgage.

So, here we are, starting our mortgage-free wannabe journey! We’d love to hear your tips, experiences, or just some encouragement as we work through the next couple of months seeing what's affordable and realistic for overpayments whilst still enjoying the present and saving in pensions.

We're looking forward to being part of the community and hopefully this will keep us motivated!

MFWannabe

First tip: Go on the overpayment calculator on this site  and put your numbers jn to see if what a difference overpayments make; it’s eye opening! Personally I’d round your payment up to £1000 a month to start (if that’s doable) 

Owen1991

MFWannabe said:

First tip: Go on the overpayment calculator on this site  and put your numbers jn to see if what a difference overpayments make; it’s eye opening! Personally I’d round your payment up to £1000 a month to start (if that’s doable) 

Thanks! Just waiting on the first slightly larger payment to be made in Jan and that’ll be the next port of call from Feb onwards, along with any other overpayments when possible.

seventh88

Happy new diary! Congratulations on your marriage and new home, it sounds like you had a great year.
one thing that helps me on my MFW journey is thinking about the long term benefit of how I spend my money.
whenever I'm going to spend money on something (whether it’s house-related, or something else - day out, clothes, tech, anything etc), I ask myself if I will still get joy from it in the long-term. This helps curb any impulse spending or ideas that I ‘must’ have something. This includes certain experiences too, it really helps me hone in on what brings me value and what is just a passing fancy.
all the best on your journey ahead. 

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary. 

eat_that_frog

Happy new diary! Will be following your progress! 

A couple of things which I've learned along the way on my MF journey for the past 4 and a half years: 
1. Set mini goals and give yourselves a (frugal!) reward for meeting them.
2. You can't overpay money that you don't have. That means different things for different people. For us, our outgoings were already pretty frugal, so we looked at how we could increase our incomings (career progression, selling things etc) in order to have money spare to overpay.

Good luck on your MFW journey!

Owen1991

Just had all my online and mobile banking stuff through. Logged in and updated my monthly Direct Debit to £1000 starting in Feb.

Works out as a £53 overpayment, nothing major but thought it was a good idea to start at the beginning.


Lots of snagging being fixed on the new house this week, all the little purchases we need moving into a bigger new build house add up pretty quickly!

Giving ourselves till the end of Feb before starting any real overpayments.

March is my car insurance month and hopefully a bonus/pay rise at the end of the month too. 🤞🏼