Mortgage free in 3 (years)? Lets see!

keza

ooohh this is scary! I am an old timer on the forums which helped me get out of debt way back in 2007-2009 when I first met my husband. 

Fast forward 18 years (woah!) and here we are in our forever home and I have finally got my husband on board to aim for mortgage freedom. 

A little bit of context, we have a lovely forever home, with around 363k owing across 3 parts to our mortgage (2 from house moves and one from an extension which never materialised). We have 2 children DS13 and DD9, a dog, hamster and 2 Axolotls! 

Our plans have flip flopped for some time as we have both worked our way up our career ladders and have settled into managerial roles. One minute wanting to extend, the next minute wanting to invest, then changing our plans to invest in property. But lately, and following the passing of my twin in 2021 and my husbands bowel cancer diagnosis, I have discovered a need to live a simpler, stress free life, without the need for materialistic things. We both crave time. time with each other, time with the kids, time outside and just time in general to ourselves. 

this has been a long road to get to this point but I can now finally say that my husband is on board with the idea of mortgage freedom, the flip flopping over to extend the house or not has ceased, and we now have a firm plan to clear our mortgage in 3/4 years. It is doable, but it is also a challenge for us as we have done what everyone sensible with money advised against. We are victims of lifestyle creep! 

So here I am with a shiny diary to keep me accountable each payday with a check-in on where the money has gone (hopefully to the bank to pay off the mortgage!!)

Our first goal is for the end of this year. We aim to pay 47k off the third, and smallest loan of our mortgage. As of today, we have 11k saved in the bank and I have been evaluating some of our unnecessary spends to see where we can trim off some excess. my own personal target was amazon which I have been working on for a few months and can proudly say, I have not purchased any 'wants' since January from Amazon! I also keep a strict list of items i purchase and label them as wants or needs so I can really think about where my money goes! 

So here goes! Thank you for reading if you got this far and I am going to spend some time reading some other diaries for inspo

Brie

Well done for clearing the old debts years back and well done for having a plan to get mortgage free.  

Question:  why are you waiting to the end of the year to pay off some of the mortgage?  Wouldn't it work more in your favour to pay some each month as you have the money or is the mortgage interest too tiddly compared to what you get on savings?  

Meanwhile - if you want some "trim the budget" advice you could pop over to the debt free wannabee board and fill out the statement of accounts and see if people can give you any helpful suggestions.  Must admit I always ask if people need a tv license as lots of people think they do when they actually don't.

keza

Hey Brie - thanks for commenting  
Ah yes good point which I forgot to explain. We are fixed until October 2nd, and have paid off our 10% overpayment already. The saving of this lump sum is to pay that part off in its entirety when the fix ends on October:)