bitbybit's road to freedom

bit_by_bit · 5 March 2018 at 11:11AM

Hi all,

Welcome to my shiney new diary. I am a 52 year old nurse with a DH and 4 children all over 18. DD, the youngest is at uni and two of the 3 DS's are living at home for various reasons.

I have been watching you all over the years beavering away at clearing your mortgage. I have been following your strategies, but never had the courage to post my own diary. Now I am three years from retirement and I have a mortgage that I can finish in three years if I work at it.

I have two targets really. First is to pay of what is left of my mortgage. I am lucky. I am on husband no 2. When we met I had my own house whiich I sold at a loss in the late '90s. He still had a house so he rented it out and I bought a 3 bedroomed detached for us and the kids for £55000. it was an enormous sum at the time. Over the years we have extended it along with the mortgage. At it's highest it was £75000. I carried on just paying off the basic mortgage until I had a light bulb moment.

About 5 years ago I looked at my life and decided the thing I really wanted to do and never had the chance was to travel.I started looking around at how to pay for it. At this point I didn't even have emergency savings, My husband did but since the first husband I have been fiercely independent financially. Anyway, a quick search of the web directed me to good old MSE and eventually I found the forums. I had no idea I could overpay. I had no idea about savings.

Well all that changed. I have 6 months of wages in the bank, loads of regular savers and I am a bank account tart. I have been overpaying for five years and knocked £25000 or so off the mortgage, mostly with my money and the odd boost from my husband; it took him until last year to get on board.

We had hoped to travel from September 2019 for a year out but our plans were interrupted by treatment for cancer and we decided we would wait. You have no idea how much the savings were a comfort blanket.

So my second target is early retirement. Lucky for me I am in the NHS and on the old pension offer which means I can retire at 55. I would like my mortgage cleared by then, all 31000 of it.

I want to finish in March or April 2021. My DH is a year younger than me and we are aiming for him to retire a year after. He has a mortgage on a house he rents out and he is now overpaying that.

After we have paid my mortgage off we will be downsizing. In the mean time we are doing up the house with a view to selling it in the future. It will take that long with all my clutter.

So that's it for now. I am looking forward to travelling with you lovely people while I complete my mission for freedom.

Busy_Mee1 · 5 March 2018 at 12:42PM

Hello bit by bit and welcome to our little MF community.

You are in a very similar position to us, I am working towards early retirement in April 2020. We also enjoy travel but decided not to wait for retirement so have started doing some trips. We live very frugally on a day to day basis to save towards the mortgage and travel

I look forward to seeing how you get on

therocket_2 · 5 March 2018 at 12:59PM

Welcome! Look forward to reading how you get on!

I too am NHS but on the new pension so unfortunately am not lucky enough to retire at 55! Good luck, this is a fabulous and inspiring community!

Kittenkirst · 5 March 2018 at 3:11PM

Welcome to your new shiny diary! Looking forward to cheering you on as you go.

Feel free to tell me if its too personal but Im hoping the cancer treatment went well?

Good luck with the decluttering- we made a small little fortune ebaying/gumtreeing/facebooking & carbooting lots of my clutter- I still have plenty to get rid of but it!!!8217;s a work in progress

bit_by_bit · 5 March 2018 at 5:06PM

Hi everyone. Thanks for the warm welcome.

I do hope to get some money together from ebay/gumtree etc. I often get given things people don't want and I then try find a home. it makes them feel better but my house is a bit of a hoarders paradise. I am just about to start photographing a pile of books and bitsnbobs for gumtree now. If that fails I will go onto the facebook groups then ebay.

Not too personal kittenkirst. The cancer treatment finished a little under two years ago. As far as can be told it has been sucessful. Ask me again in 5 years time

Hi Busy Mee1 Your point is well taken. I realised very early on that you can wait for something and never do it. we are travelling as often as we can afford. Just we are doing small trips for the time being. I forgot to mention that one of the main reasons we can't take a year off now is that DH moved jobs a year ago. He had been working like a madman for years and our family life wasn't great. Now he is happier and we see more of him. He has energy for stuff again. I think it is a small price to pay for his health and well being.

Sorry to hear you are on the newer contract therocket. They offered me the new contract but the pension arrangements were so bad that I would have been a fool to take it. I have this discussion at work a lot as I talk about retirement to colleagues. We are programmed to think that we can't retire until we have a pension. this is incorrect as we can retire when we want as long as we have enough in the bank to cover our lifestyle. DH is hoping to retire in 4 years but he won't get his work pension for another five years then the state pension seven years after that. We are stashing cash in the expectation that in 4 years time he has his mortgage paid off and 5 years of wages in the bank.

I do worry about a lot of the NHS staff who are already complaining of back and other injuries in their 20s and are expected to carry on working unbtil 67. I certainly will be medically retired if that was the case for me.

beanielou · 5 March 2018 at 6:06PM

Welcome

Happy shiny new diary.

greent · 5 March 2018 at 9:24PM

Hello and welcome!

When you are getting rid of items, a quick and easy solution for books/ dvds/ cds can be to scan them (with phone app - much quicker than typing barcodes in) to Ziffit (or music magpie) You don't tend to get much per item but you can get rid of lots in one go (worth scanning those rejected by one into the other) - can also get cashback as well

Good luck with your journey!

x

bit_by_bit · 6 March 2018 at 7:21PM

Thanks greent. i will look at that . i have some course books that we could get rid of that way. Very heavy.

bit_by_bit · 25 March 2018 at 12:09AM

Blimey, doesn't time fly when you are working your rocks off?

So my decluttering plans have been almost on hold. Not getting enough sleep is killing me slowly.
I am managing essentials like work and eating, fitting in training for the Moonwalk, but that is about all I have had energy for. According to F*tb*t I have had between two and four hours sleep every night apart from last night when I got a solid 7.5.

Despite this I have been thinking and plotting my early retirement and paying off the mortgage.

I am lucky to be able to retire at 55 but don't want to leave the job suddenly so I rang up to see how much I would lose if I went half time in the last year. I will lose some pension but overall not enough to stop me.

I have pust somethings on ebay this week to boost the coffers. No takes but lots of watchers. Been working at the surveys too, althugh so tired I am falling asleep on Swagbucks and the like.

I am looking forward to paying off another chunk of my mortgage at the end of the month. Roll on payday. The next payment and overpayment will take me well below £31000 :j

bit_by_bit · 26 March 2018 at 9:39PM

Lucky me. my nephew works in a restauraunt kitchen and has bought home 4 dozen eggs, discarded because there wasn't a date stamp on them. A half kg block of cheese, opened but wouldn't be used up. A load of apples, celery, aubergines and a duck breast, a piece pork and some beef. all in small amounts but as chief eker in my house I can make these ingredients into tasty stews and stirfrys. He also bought home 5 2litre cartons of UHT cream close to use by date and a 4 pinter of double cream. This has been used or frozen with a bit left for a leek and potatoe bake plus a cheesecake I am going to make.

I reckon it has knocked a good £15.00 off the food bill for this month. We have three men in our house and they are piling through the eggs. Gave some to MiL too as she loves baking.

I have put the £15.00 towards my overpayment which i hope to send off on Wednesday.

beanielou · 27 March 2018 at 8:08AM

Good news on the grub.

bitbybit's road to freedom

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