How to be mortgage free after 8 years

mrcow

whiteflag wrote:

By the way what was the purpose of your post on 3/1/2006 ?

I saw the point of the post......probably as I feel the same way about January and the mortgage statement.

I spend all year watching pennies as we are trying so hard to get rid of our millstone £130k mortgage, that when Jan rolls round and we can see how far we've come, it makes it seem so worthwhile and helps to remind us of the bigger picture of what we're trying to achieve.

Thanks to tfg for this thread, it's nice to see that we're not alone. btw, we started with a £30 overpayment, and have built it up from there with each change in circumstances. We'll hopefully be mortgage free in just over 10 years, or even less maybe, fingers crossed.



Keep grinding down that debt!

Caixta

Tonight (Thursday 5th January 2006) a new series starts on BBC2 called "Pay Off Your Mortgage in Two Years" ! It's on at 8pm.

I wonder whether that is realistic?! At the very least should stimulate some good discusssions.

Thefunkygibbons

I saw that in the newspaper

Apparently, it is extreme money saving that leads to family tensions etc

However, perhaps I should show it to the kids so that they know that that is what they should expect rather than handouts from Dad



Just kidding, in reality I expect to sell the house and split the money between us and the kids so that they can get a start on the housing slippery ladder

tony1959

Hi TFG,

Congrats on your regime of debt reduction looks good, so I guess the advice to newcomers such as myself is to pay that mortgage debt off a.s.a.p. don't stockpile cash, overpay when you can and get all debts to zero before you think of saving??
Am I right or is this oversimplistic?

Tony1959

cloud_dog

I have to say I applaude TFG for the endevours and early repayment. It may not be everyones 'cup of tea' but as TFG says it is a concious decision to repay that debt something that most people do not consider or do.

An important point to remember in these days of low inflation is that debt will remain real debt and will have a much higher impact on the value repayed in 'n' number of years than in years gone bye, i.e. when inflation was running at 7, 8, 9% etc, it actually eroded the value of the debt, in days of low inlfation the real value of the debt will be much higher. At a simplistic level when inflation is high(er) salary increases tend to be higher (relatively), etc, etc thereby increasing your ability to service the debt and reducing the real value of the debt.

(apologies for going off on one)

cloud_dog

pandas66

Hi
I overpay on my mortgage, not a huge amount but I do. I also took some advice on how to pay it and that works well for reducing the term time too. I pay weekly and over pay, it'll save me 2 years for doing nothing! I'll take it, mortgage with Yorkshire Bank.

BNU_2

pandas66 wrote:

Hi
I overpay on my mortgage, not a huge amount but I do. I also took some advice on how to pay it and that works well for reducing the term time too. I pay weekly and over pay, it'll save me 2 years for doing nothing! I'll take it, mortgage with Yorkshire Bank.

We chose the Yorkshire Bank too (after buying ourselves out of what turned out to be an awful fixed rate with Halifax - originally The Leeds) and found them to be excellent, and very clear and uncomplicated. The weekly payments effectively result in 13 months of repayments per year instead of 12, reducing the total interest paid (calculated daily) and the term - and they didn't seem to mind you paying off lump sums here and there either as you felt like it - so all good! Very clear mortgage statements from what I remember too.

Thefunkygibbons

tony1959 wrote:

Hi TFG,

Congrats on your regime of debt reduction looks good, so I guess the advice to newcomers such as myself is to pay that mortgage debt off a.s.a.p. don't stockpile cash, overpay when you can and get all debts to zero before you think of saving??
Am I right or is this oversimplistic?

Tony1959

Pretty much, although a sensible rainy day fund is a good idea

The bit missing is

Just because you can afford to keep up with the Jones, does not mean that you have to

tony1959

Thanks TFG,

Understand the Jones thing, 2 years ago got rid of my status symbol (posh car!) and put the money to overpay mortgage payments, now I'm looking to use some of my other savings to pay off mortgage entirely and so should be debt free within a couple of months (and will still have rainy day fund)

kinster_2

Jones... I never did fall for that. Who cares what people think?