howskints journey begins!!

howskint?

Well I've finally decided to start my bid for freedom! Inspired by all you MFWs!!!:beer: We've been accepted for a new mortgage which should complete on Tuesday! So my aim is to try to reduce the term of the mortgage by as much as possible.

We're going to build an extension - starting in May so have had to up our mortgage to 207000 (sorry pound sign doesn't work!). We've got an offset mortgage fixed for 2 years so hopefully the money will save us some interest while we're waiting to pay builders etc. We've also rounded our mortgage payment up to the next 100 so we'll be overpaying by approx 70 a month.

Tryiing to rack my brains now for other ways to speed up the payments! - Any hints gratefully received!! Would love to pay the mortgage off before I'm 45 (12 years away) but don't know if this is asking too much. We also have an endowment that will pay out in 12 years (Not linked to the mortgage) for approx 33000 so that would enable us to pay off a big chunk!

Right my first aim is to get the mortgage below 200k by the end of the year!

howskint? x

george_jetson

The first thing I'd do is have a look at my endowment and consider whether it's worth paying into for the next 12 years. Considering that most endowments have fairly high charges, you might be better off cashing it in and having the money go straight into your offset account, thus driving down the interest you pay each month

JonnyBravo

howskint? wrote: »

Right my first aim is to get the mortgage below 200k by the end of the year!

Best of luck!

It is of course harder to get the capital down at the start and a cursory glance at a claculator shows youll need to be paying c. £1650/month on a £207000 mortgage at 5.5% to end up owing just under £200k in one year. That is without any offsetting though so it'll be lower in all depending on the amount youll be offsetting and for how long.

setmefree2

Good Luck:T:T:T:T:T

howskint?

thanks for the posts!
Well today's the day the huge mortgage starts!:j Was planning on over paying ASAP but had a bit of a set back yesterday. Had an emergency meeting and the boss announced between 2 and 5 redundancies by the summer! Quite a lot for a staff of only 30!! Decided that any spare cash would be better put in the offset savings account so if I'm one of the unlucky ones we can access it again to pay bills til I find something else.
First job re the mortgage is to contact the bank to set up internet banking - I'm a bit addicted to checking my balances!!
howskint?

Move_To_Portugal

hi howskint. Good luck with your MFW challenge

mtp

LouiseJ

Hello Howskint?

Always lovely to see a new diary.

Good luck!

howskint?

Hadn't realised I'd left it so long without posting. Well a lot has happened since my last post. I found out last week that I have still got a job - they managed to cover the majority of the job losses through voluntary redundancies!! So that has left me feeling very relieved!

Secondly - which will slow down our MFW plans slightly - I'm PREGNANT!! We're both really pleased about this as we had a miscarriage at Xmas. I'm only 10 weeks at the moment but we've had a scan and seen the heartbeat so are starting to feel a bit more relaxed about it. This will be No 3 so I'm hoping not to have to buy too much stuff!

On the mortgage front the builders should be starting work on the extension today so we've still got all the money sitting in the offset savings account. This means that so far we've knocked 94 days off the term of the mortgage and saved over £1000 in interest, so not a bad start.

Off to try to catch up on reading some posts!

howskint?

evab_2

HI, good news about the job and even better news about the pregnancy - congratulations! Fingers crossed it goes well for you xx

Well done on starting the over payments every little bit helps. Will be reading your thread with interest.

Ev x