Busy Mee's Last Leg

Busy_Mee1 · 2 April 2018 at 12:22PM

Our Story
We are me, Mr Mee and two grown up children ( one daughter living at home and one son who moved out last year). Mr Mee and I have been married for around a hundred years :rotfl:

On the whole we have been quite good with money, having periods of our marriage when we have been very poor. We started with nothing and a mortgage interest rate of 13%, we then had little Mee's and had expensive child care costs ( no family nearby) and then supported them both through 7 years of university.

We have also had very good years financially, Mr Mee and I both work in the public sector and over the years have both worked our way up to senior positions. We have always stretched ourselves to buy the most expensive house we could afford and added value where we could.

However aound 9 years ago we decided to build our own house...cue the most stressful and scary financial period of our lives :eek: You have all watched the programmes on the TV and know how this goes, the plans get bigger, the bills get bigger, we mortgaged up to the hilt and borrowed as much money as we could on 0% credit cards and a bank loan. We even borrowed the kids savings.

Thankfully we managed to get all the debt paid off and we now just have our mortgage which currently stands at a still eye watering £238,491.35.

We are lucky in that we have a great mortgage product and pay just 1.19% (0.69% lifetime tracker). We have been therefore saving hard in higher interest savings accounts to offset the mortgage. We currently have £65k saved ( I love round numbers

We feel very fortunate in that we have a house we love, built to our specification and our children are both doing well and financially independent.

Mr Mee will retire in 2 years time ( he will be 60) and I would like the choice to retire too ( I will be 56).

This diary will hopefully help me to focus over the next 2 years, and save as much as we can to offset the mortgage, along with some of our pension lump sums. We would like to keep the house, although downsizing is an option.

We also love to travel ( we couldn't afford to when we were young) and don't want to wait until we retire. We therefore live very frugally on a day to day basis to be able to afford trips away, in addition to saving

So......24 months until retirement.......that is a scary, yet exciting prospect so better better get started :T

bexster1975 · 2 April 2018 at 12:33PM

That is exciting! Very good luck. Offsetting is an excellent way to go as it means you can be flexible. Don't blame you for wanting to stay when you built it yourself. I'd be gutted to leave it!

Bexster

shangaijimmy · 2 April 2018 at 12:55PM

Shiny new dairy... 24 months to retirement, now that is worthy of a countdown!

pinknsparkly · 2 April 2018 at 2:28PM

Wow, that's quite a life story! I have a dream of building my own house, or completely gutting and redoing a wreck but that's almost certainly going to remain a pipedream for life I think!! You have an incredible goal, I'd love to come along for the ride

We're in the process of saving all our possible pennies in order to buy our first house, but living down in Surrey makes for some rather expensive property!!!

try_harder · 2 April 2018 at 6:02PM

Im so excited to tag along with you Busy Mee1 , i know you will do brilliant things over the next 24 months and i shall love being here to watch you do them . Heres to retirement

wishingthemortgaheaway · 2 April 2018 at 7:22PM

I'm going to tag along too, I'm on a similar timescale (I want to be mortgage neutral in 28 more months) but in a very different stage of life with a significantly different target. But that doesn't mean our outlooks and approaches are different, you've just got an extra 0 or two on your amounts.

All the very best.
Wish.

GoingOn30 · 2 April 2018 at 7:47PM

I can't even begin to imagine being able to retire at 56! Will you continue to work a reduced number of hours afterwards? This could enable some more fabulous travel plans!
Good luck with your journey to mortgage freedom.

Busy_Mee1 · 2 April 2018 at 8:33PM

Gosh so many visitors already:hello: welcome everyone. It is lovely to see some new friends and old friends

I just thought I would set out the financial stuff to give you the context of what we are aiming for:

We currently have a mortgage in two parts:

A repayment mortgage £69,402.35 that has 6 years 1 month to run ( my 60th Birthday :eek:)

An interest only mortgage of £169,000 ( what were we thinking !) This runs for the same term.

The interest on both parts of the mortgage is 1.19%

We currently have £65k in 11 accounts (ahem) gaining interest ranging from 1.85%-5%. We are limited to earning £1000 per year in interest ( both high rate tax payers )in ordinary savings accounts and the excess capital is either in S&S ISAs, fixed rate cash ISAs or the offset pot of the mortgage.

The plan is to have built up savings of at least £100k over the next 24 months, which along with some of our pensions lump sum will cover the interest only part of the mortgage.

Unless the mortgage base rate changes we do not intend to pay off the mortgage until the end of the term as we can earn more in interest on the capital. Unusually we will continue to pay our mortgage for the first four years of retirement.

Pinknsparkly - don't give up your dream of building your own house. We started life in a two up two down house with no central heating and no one would have predicted that we would one day build our own house (least if all us:rotfl:)

GoingOn30- I always imagined I would work until I was 60 but I am now starting to imagine a life that doesn't involve a stressful full time job. There is definitely more to life than work. I do have an option for partial retirement but I am not sure my job would lend itself to that. This is all about giving myself choices though and I will see how I feel nearer the time.

beanielou · 2 April 2018 at 9:05PM

Happy shiny new diary

pinkypig · 2 April 2018 at 10:10PM

Hellooooo :wave:. Your journey sounds terribly exciting so I'll invite myself along if I may?:)
I'm aiming for FI by 55 so 72 months to be mortgage neutral (mine is offset) and boost my pension with avc contributions so I'll be jogging a long a bit behind you:p

Living frugally to indulge a love of travelling sounds perfect to me - love me holibobs:)

The very best of luck to you :T:T

PP xx

themadvix · 3 April 2018 at 10:31AM

Found you! Looking forward to the next instalment

(I think I've just said pretty much the same on the previous thread... hmm.... it's true though!

Busy Mee's Last Leg

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