Mortgage Free by 55

VDOT47 · 27 November 2017 at 11:33AM

Combo of payrise and other bits of money saved in various accounts this month, have allowed a £400 overpayment today, which makes a total of £420.98 in November.

VDOT47 · 29 November 2017 at 1:50PM

Have had an email from Nationwide confirming the account has been approved and should be getting stuff in the post shortly to allow me to get it fully open, and transfer in the £2500.

Also had letters from Santander confirming our new monthly DD and that all overpayments are to go towards reducing the term.

Think it is about time to start setting myself mini targets along the way to mortgage freedom. Currently I think our balance will get into the 250ks in April/May, and I have set myself the aim to get there by the end of March.

greent · 29 November 2017 at 2:05PM

Targets are always good - when you get into the next £10k down, when your daily interest equals £x, when you can knock another month off the end date - all little things to keep you motivated along the journey

VDOT47 · 4 December 2017 at 11:57AM

Thanks Greent - had a letter from Santander over the weekend confirming the application of the overpayments to date, and showing the estimated end date for the mortgage. The date hasn't moved yet, but it shows the estimated final payment being £5xx rather than £1169, so I can see that by overpaying £420 last month it has reduced the final payment by over £600. Good to see the theory in practice!

Probably won't be able to overpay quite as much this month (what with extra Christmas spends) but hoping that our overpayment at the end of December will actually knock the first month off the end date!

Weekend was relatively low spend.

Nationwide account open, but can't seem to get registered for online banking and don't want to send the £2500 to the account until I can get this set up. Will need a call to them I think.

VDOT47 · 5 December 2017 at 5:19PM

Received a letter yesterday from Nationwide enclosing internet banking login details, but I still cannot get it set up as you need to either input Memorable Data (which I haven't chosen yet I don't think) or use a card reader (which they haven't sent me)! Hopefully they will send this to me shortly. WHY do they have to make everything so bloody difficult these days!!!

In moneysaving news, we have a pretty quiet week planned so fingers crossed for a reasonable overpayment this month!

VDOT47 · 6 December 2017 at 3:17PM

Still no card reader. Will have to call or go into branch later this week to establish what the problem is and how I manage to register for online banking. Also need to investigate how we go about getting the £100 bonus for recommending a friend, by getting OH to open an account too.

Yesterday was a NSD (apart from petrol to get to work and back). Only 77p spent today on snacks to supplement lunch brought from home. Tonight we are eating pasta with a sauce that we made a batch of a couple of weeks ago, so freezer dinner which will be very cheap. Quite a good money saving couple of days I think!

VDOT47 · 7 December 2017 at 2:30PM

Nothing to report, except for a low spend day (£1.11 at lunch), but I have been having some ideas around setting myself mini targets for the end of each year of the mortgage term for the next 5 years.

So:

Year Balance if no overpayments Actual balance at year end

1 (to Feb '18) £261,789 £259,000

2 (to Feb '19) £253,402 £243,500

3 (to Feb '20) £244,830 £227,000

4 (to Feb '21) £236,068 £208,000

5 (to Feb '22) £227,113 £187,000

This is calculated on the basis that each year I would hope to be able to overpay a little more than the last, due to payrises and the effect of the compound interest reduction starting to make a little more of an impact.

This therefore predicts overpayments of basically £40,000 over 4 and a bit years (as I didn't overpay anything in the first 8 months of the term) or about £9000 a year! Sounds a lot when I write it down like that!!

shangaijimmy · 7 December 2017 at 3:08PM

I agree it sounds a lot!! Still it helps to get the mind focussed to the task at hand!

greent · 7 December 2017 at 6:44PM

It sounds a lot, yes - but it's surprising what you can achieve once you set your mind to it

phillw · 7 December 2017 at 6:59PM

VDOT47 wrote: »

This therefore predicts overpayments of basically £40,000 over 4 and a bit years (as I didn't overpay anything in the first 8 months of the term) or about £9000 a year! Sounds a lot when I write it down like that!!

It is a lot.

What I found at the beginning was that the debt was so large that it was unreal and not worth worrying about. When you have 270K in debt then spending 2K on a holiday doesn't seem like much. When you get down to 2K mortgage, going on a 2K holiday will be the choice between being mortgage free or not.

I keep a balance sheet with everything on it. Whether it's a current account, mortgage, utility accounts, contents of my wallet, euros I have left over, amazon vouchers etc etc. That way I know month on month what the position is and I don't forget to spend vouchers etc. Every month I fight to get the number lower.

Mortgage Free by 55

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