Up for a laugh? A 23 year old's guide on how (not) to be mortgage free

Blibble · 30 December 2017 at 11:34AM

Thanks Watty1 - I feel the pension is the most savvy thing to do, even if it's on the more dull side of MSEing (for now, anyway!). It'd be foolish to shy away from it just because it's less exciting, so provision has to be made for it

.

Only a quickie today £5.41 tilly tidied over to the mortgage. OH is out for a coffee with her friend this morning, so I'll be having an easy one doing some laundry and cleaning around the house. We spent last night watching Victoria Wood on Channel 5 and drinking too much sherry, so the living room's a state!

Over 'n' out

michelle09 · 30 December 2017 at 11:41PM

B&M! One of the things I miss about living in the NW. Well done on the early OPs.

Blibble · 1 January 2018 at 2:02PM

Love a bit of B&M michelle09! One of the few branded things we're a sucker for is Walkers' crisps, and they do a selection box of 40 for £4.29 which is as good value as the own brand products in ASDA

.

Last 2 days have been fab at OH's aunt and uncle's - lots of free drink and good company. Woke up (bleary-eyed) this morning to see I'd won £27.80 on freebirthdaylotto.com (about time too!) so that'll go to the mortgage once received. :j

Happy New Year everyone!

Blibble · 2 January 2018 at 7:44AM

Howdy!

Back to work for me today - don't mind too much as I'm just about done with festivities now and am looking forward to a return to normality. We're aiming to put £3000 away in OPs this year, however the majority of our savings is going towards our wedding fund so this figure needs to come from extra income sources only :eek: So it's in work at 8:00am today, leaving at 18:00, and will be for the majority of the year for an extra couple of grand in overtime which should go a long way towards the target :j

£27.80 payment received from freebirthdaylotto.com, which I thought was wonderfully quick for New Years' Day :T Thanks to my (modest!) darts winnings last week which will cover my social budget for the week, £20 further has been moved over as I've already got the cash for the social budget, so another £47.80 moved over.

We're square out of groceries for dinners now, so will be off to ASDA after work (no biggie, as I work across the road). Will go in the evening and see if anything YS is lurking there for me. We've got a £40 p/w groceries budget, which given this started on Christmas day (double-week due to Christmas / NY) is currently being smashed around £22; the extra £18 needs to last to Saturday with any excess going towards the mortgage as well as a tilly tidy.

Onwards and upwards

wishingthemortgaheaway · 2 January 2018 at 8:05AM

Just found your diary. Welcome to the new world. We bought our house at a similar ad to you and really wish we knew about overpaying at the time. I think we would be mortgage free by now if we did. (We had a huge amount more cash in those days which we obviously just wasted) ho hum such is life. To save £1000 a month from your income is just brilliant. When's the wedding?

Have a good day at work.
Wish.

Blibble · 2 January 2018 at 8:59PM

wishingthemortgaheaway wrote: »

Just found your diary. Welcome to the new world. We bought our house at a similar ad to you and really wish we knew about overpaying at the time. I think we would be mortgage free by now if we did. (We had a huge amount more cash in those days which we obviously just wasted) ho hum such is life. To save £1000 a month from your income is just brilliant. When's the wedding?

Have a good day at work.
Wish.

It's a lovely part of the world in the north west, I think

. I'm a soft southerner originally, but wouldn't consider going back now - the price of houses you get here compared to south of Birmingham is astonishing (and was the only way we could consider owning anything!).

Wedding is set for 04 November 2019 - we do everything on 4th November as that's the day we first met in 2012. It's partly done on the same day for romance, and partly for convenience :rotfl:

sofarbehind · 2 January 2018 at 9:38PM

Good luck on your journey. I wish I had your good sense at your age....good on you!

wishingthemortgaheaway · 3 January 2018 at 8:04AM

Blibble wrote: »

It's a lovely part of the world in the north west, I think . I'm a soft southerner originally, but wouldn't consider going back now - the price of houses you get here compared to south of Birmingham is astonishing (and was the only way we could consider owning anything!).

Wedding is set for 04 November 2019 - we do everything on 4th November as that's the day we first met in 2012. It's partly done on the same day for romance, and partly for convenience :rotfl:

What a lovely idea, and no excuse for forgetting anniversaries.

Have a great day.

Blibble · 4 January 2018 at 7:46AM

Last couple of days haven't quite gone as planned - the £18 food budget to last until Saturday didn't quite work out :eek:. We're up to about £50 for the 2-week period (£40 budgeted), and need to buy cat food today for another £9 (although that will last for a month). OH loves these Lenor scent boosters in the laundry - https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/294025620 - which cost a bomb and have killed the budget, although they last a while. Gives me an incentive to do more laundry though, as I don't put them in and she doesn't notice the difference (until she reads this over my shoulder :A).

No other unnecessary spends though over the past couple of days, and was quite proud of us resisting the urge for a Chinese takeaway Tuesday evening! Been trying to get into Swagbucks over the past few days to add to the extra income required for OPs - has anybody any tips how to get the most out of it as I only seem to earn 1 or 2 a time?

bugslet · 4 January 2018 at 9:10AM

Happier_Me wrote: »

It's not advice you often see of the mortgage free wannabe board but it is advice you will get repeatedly on the pensions board. And coming from someone that values being mortgage free it is sound advice. It's very tax efficient to pay into a pension so I aim to do a mix of both.

There is always a bigger picture though and even more so at 23: wedding, children, house, job security etc. At 42 I can tick several of those things off. I would suggest you don't lose sight of your pension savings, maybe revisit these when you've had your wedding and you have £1,000 spare a month! Your future self will thank you big time if you direct some of this spare cash towards your pension.

There are a couple of financial things that I regret NOT doing in my twenties and they all relate to pensions:

1. Not increasing my husband's pension contributions when he was your age. For the price of a couple of takeaways a month we would be sitting on a healthy nest egg. 20 years later we are playing an expensive game of catch up
2. Not joining my own pension scheme for two years. I really could kick myself!

You, however, are young enough and clearly switch on enough to learn from the mistakes that others have made on this board;)

Another NWer here, please don't tell too many Southerners how good it is up here, keep telling thme it's grim up North, would ya?:rotfl:

Good advice from Happier Me.

I started my pension at 25, never had a company pension, so started my own. I also overpay my mortgage - my Dad went bankrupt and the worry about being homeless has meant that the security of home ownership has been important to me.

I've never thought you have to do one thing to the exclusion of the other. I overpay a bit and I pay into a pension as well. At your age though, I'd think about shoring up your pension, all that lovely compound interest in the future years, really counts. And I'd be looking to fix for as long as you can for as cheap as you can when your deal comes to an end - I am one of those people who can remember 15% mortgages

Well done on your financial savvy!

Up for a laugh? A 23 year old's guide on how (not) to be mortgage free

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