Anyone trying to pay down a large mortgage?

setmefree2

Hi Fm,

Kids are expensive no doubt about it - we have 2...but being chidless is dear too! All that going out enjoying yourself:rotfl:costs a small fortune:rolleyes:

silvercar

If you think kids are expensive, wait until they grow.

Teenager commented yesterday that our mortgage is so big that it wouldn't notice if we diverted a few grand to buy him a decent first car!

setmefree2

LOL :rotfl:- ummmm yes.....it would be nice to help my kids when they get older - not sure we'd buy them a car though, maybe a bus pass:p

Primrose

Our mortgage is now cleared thankfully, but after one redundancy when we really worried about keeping the roof over our heads, we swore we would try and clear the mortgage asap in case it ever happened again. And it did, when my OH was in that "difficult age" to try and find another job. By that stage, we had just cleared the mortgage. So to all you folks are trying hard to reach that goal I can only say "Keep at it and don't resent the sacrifices". The peace of mind you will get from being mortgage free could coincide with a crisis in your later-life earning capacity, and then all the sacrifices will have proved worthwhile.

Kaz2904

I have just worked out that what we pay to our mortgage each month is the same amount as it would have cost us to get a £225000 mortgage for 25 years.
Borrowing that amount of money is out of our league- we struggled to get a mortgage for £90000 but we changed our lifestyle to get the mortgage and it has enabled us to overpay it.
Once it's gone the children will be older and I can come off nights. Finally.

Free_Mike

I think most of us also see paying the mortgage down as a way of releasing us from the 9-5. For me the aim is to pay mine down in the next 5 years so that I can work less and spend more time (school holidays) with the wife and kids - for me this is more important than simply not having a mortgage. A few years of really hard work now will hopefully mean a better quality of life in a few years.

homer_J123

I couldn't agree more.

I am looking into both clearing my mortgage early and also setting up additional funds for the future (i.e. savings, penions etc etc etc).

This is very much a personal view (especially as a first post) but I believe if you really want to clear your mortgage early, you need to not just save money (which this site really helps with) but you need to 'make' money.

Unless you are very high up in a big company you won't be earning really really good money, therefore the only way to go is to own your own business and use this as your vehicle to clear your mortgage early.

Be it 'on the side' or 'full time' this additional (not 2nd as the new venture can often earn good, good money) income will make a substantial difference to clearing your mortgage.

This is my aim - a full time job, a business venture on the side and away we go. So far, so good.

Remember though - making money is only a game, you can't take it with you.

setmefree2

Hi Homer,

Agree that you can't take it with you, so to that extent it doesn't matter. However, until we ended up with a large mortgage (6 years ago in June) I never "over" thought about money. Waking up with a £250k mortgage was a real shock to me:eek:. I couldn't believe I owed a quarter of a million pounds:eek:. I was terrified:o. Paying down the mortgage has become an obsession because I was so scared of owing soooo much money and I also couldn't believe that I had to pay £850 in interest every month:rolleyes:. Just rolling along not really thinking about money is a sure way to fritter...I never used to be sure if I could afford something or not, if I was getting it at a good price, etc, etc. At the point were we owed sooo much money I believed (and still do) that the only way we were ever going to pay it back was to make better use of the money we had rather than drifting along thinking that someday I would be rich and everything was going to be Ok....does that make sense? We needed to take control and change our spending habits to get rid of the debt using what the income that we have. I believe it is possible to "find" money from your existing money....

homer_J123

setmefree2 wrote: »

I believe it is possible to "find" money from your existing money....

Oh, I agree absolutely on that one - you can indeed change spending habits etc. and make your money go further.

What interested me about FM's post was that with a 'larger' mortgage (not sure these days what constitutes a large mortgage!) was it can't simlpy be about saving money, you have to, somehow, 'make' more of it. (Actually it goes for small or large mortgages but certainly more important for large mortgages).

That's where I'm coming from, large mortgage that I want to pay off quickly whilst not neglecting longer term investments for retirement etc. In order to achieve this I can make my existing money go further (this site is great for that!) but I need to 'make' more money as well, it's the only option (for me at least).

There are some great stories on here of people who have cleared early and I fully support them!!!!

Free_Mike

I feel the last couple of posts are getting to the crux of my thinking.

I would say a large mortgage is something over £200k or perhaps more than £1000 per month in interest. Above this level of borrowing/payment I think most people would find it hard to make overpayments as others are doing elsewhere on MFW. To make the over payments I'd think you'd need to be earning £50k+ a year - not many of us are in that bracket.

I therefore think a small short term investment (1-2years/£5-10k) in a business on the side could be the way to make much larger gains in the medium term (5 years) which would pay down the mortgage. Invested this way you give yourself at least a chance of clearing the mortgage. Use that £5-10k as overpayments and all you have is a very slightly smaller mortgage - back to risk vs reward I guess. . . .