Our Journey to Mortgage Freedom by 2030 🏡💪

MoneySavvyMum

Happy Easter,

Got the chicken sizzling in the oven with vegetable roast. It's been a really lovely bank holiday weekend spent with family. At the back of my head wondering when on earth the bank is going to take their next payment, looks like it will be Tuesday.

In the meantime just enjoying my time with my toddler who is growing so tall now. Having the first scan last week just made me very excited that we'll be welcoming a second to the world soon and LO will have a baby brother / sister. I think its going to be a brother just going off of my symptoms.

Tomorrow LO has a playdate at the trip to the zoo. Should be fun. Very much keeping an eye on the spending, but also strike the balance as what's the point in all hard work and no fun!

MoneySavvyMum

£308,620, cannot wait to drop the loan amount under 300k, will take a few months but will be one hell of a milestone as it will be on par with our BTL interest only loan amount. The BTL has been quiet over the last few months (thankfully) and just paying for itself. We would need to extend the lease in due course but we decided to wait a few years and see if Labour will make any changes with the leasehold reform. It does seem to be moving really slow though but its hopefully one expense we can delay in the hopes it doesn't later bite us.

Received a lovely bonus but the tax man took almost 50% of it. I would have normally just lumped it in my pension but we need as much extra income as possible right about now. DH has almost finished the plan for our bathroom upstairs we spoke about last night, I think its going to look great and maximises the space in the house ultimately not losing a bedroom. Not losing a bedroom also means we can delay extension to the loft until another decade or so as the kids will have a room for themselves when they get older. Once all the details are added to the plan we will hand over to the builder for some quotes. I think I'll get a mood board going of what designs we'd like… thinking a roman theme would look great with large matte clay coloured tiles and black bathroom taps / decor to give it a modern feel but we also think pastel green glazed vertical tiles would look more inviting. How exciting.

MoneySavvyMum

so I ran our finished plan through ChatGPT and told it what we were after. It came up with the following we absolutely love.

I’ve since been calculating costs for all the material and it will come up to roughly £1.7k to have the finishes we want. That’s including everything in the image. What it doesn’t include is the labour cost to knock down walls, plumbing, electric, and feeding the waste pipe to, well wherever it is - that will probably be the most eye watering spend. I’ll leave the later with DH and focus on the interior design. Having sample tiles come in next week to see if I can find the concrete looking grey tiles and, more challenging is the matte beige / brown tiles that match the design. It’s very hard to find matte most of the tiles have a shine to them which defeats the Roman look we’re after.

Getting there!

Today I’ll whip up a lovely English and cuppa to start our Sunday. Maybe a stroll through the park as it’s looking lovely this morning

MoneySavvyMum

£304,627

Well, not much of an update on the bathroom. DH has been hit with consultation unfortunately so we’re just managing the wave period. Also with other unexpected life events getting in the way, it's looking like June is hopeful. I did however get some sample materials and we picked out the ones we wanted that match very nicely with the planned design. I absolutely love that we’re always on the same page when it comes to design, makes deciding on materials so very easy.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to clear some space for storing newborn items, a lot of which will be hand-me-down’s where ever possible and where not will be bought brand new. Need to do a full-on spring clean when DH is not around, have booked some annual leave where LO will be in nursery and I will have some time to do a very much needed clear out and nest! Will probably kindly request family to avoid wasting money on cute, non-functional items, and rather (if they offer), gift towards essentials like nappies, wipes, etc. That would save us both the hassle and expense.

MoneySavvyMum

£299,887

Its starting to feel real now! I cannot believe we're in the 200's, such a milestone. We've managed to pay of 100k in just under 4 years!

My income is going to come to a halt come April 2027 which means we'll probably stop the excessive overpayments for a short while until I'm able to return to work… and I'm not sure when that will be… probably in the new year of 2028. But for now, the plan is to carry on as is, which means we'll realistically target to have around a £250k loan to remortgage. The mortgage rates for renewal aren't looking great at all, but one can only hope they go down in a years time.

Meanwhile the stock market is performing really well, so we'll keep with our investments tied in as long as possible for a long term gain.

MoneySavvyMum

So I was also thinking that we should make a 'mortgage repayment' tracker feel more real in our household. I have this dairy to track the progress but OH doesn't know it exists and hasn't got access to the mortgage account to check. I think he prefers it that way, out of sight out of mind. But I'd like him to be kept in the loop on progress so we can find additional opportunities on savings along the way and encourage him through our journey, as this isn't just a one man band and I could not have gotten this far without him!

I'm not sure whether to create a lego tower, a lego for every month payment made, but I wont be able to keep it away from my toddler so maybe just a simple mortgage tracker sheet we can hang somewhere private.

beanielou

Great milestone.

South_coast

I think I've heard of people having a printout on the inside of their wardrobe door/back of the wardrobe, so it's somewhere you see it every day, but no-one but you is likely to see it?

MoneySavvyMum

£295,538

Well this month has been a bit chaotic with spending as the materials for the bathroom have all come through, putting a dent in our wallets. We’ve stopped shopping at Ocado and have started shopping at Lidl as Ocado were coming up at £90 per week! Now it’s more like £120 for two weeks worth of groceries. Food is becoming a huge expenditure, more than our house bills so one to keep an eye on.

We just need to be disciplined as with young kids you’ll find you have to have the essentials at all times so going out for small bits eventually do add up.

A little anxious this month as quite a lot going on. Bathroom starting on 10th and I’m not feeling confident builders will get it all done in time although they said they would… I am mentally preparing for the worst case scenario of having a builders site 8 months into my pregnancy. Also my in-laws are moving further out of town with their paper work finalising this month so we will need to support them with that and at the same time lose the little community we had. My husband had a milestone birthday and we just did something small as I was hit with noravirus. It’s been a heavy month but hopefully things will pick back up again.

MoneySavvyMum

£291,200

It looks like something exploded upstairs. Walls knocked down, dust everywhere. The builders I must say are doing a great job to clean up as much as they can and so far are progressing very quickly whilst we are mostly living downstairs at the moment.

This might have not been the best time to do the works but it’s probably the only time given how busy we’ll soon be.

Juggling work life and home life has been a challenge to prepare for newborn whilst having a busy toddler. Also I am working until the very end as so to have more time off during Matt leave.

But will plough on!