Staying focused on this…

leads to this….

leads to living here…hopefully!

I’m feeling very under the weather today but wanted to blog, so I’m saying it with pictures. Further budget posts to follow

Focus is a post from: Move to Portugal

Our goal is to achieve Financial Freedom by December 2020; being mortgage free (as soon as possible), is part of that goal and every month I track our progress.

May 1st 2012 Mortgage Stats:

• Original Mortgage: £138,485 (April 2006)
• Original term: 300 months (March 2031)
• Outstanding Balance: £95,527.36
• Reduction from last month: 2,220.47
• Paid off to date: £42,957.64
• Monthly payment: £542.34
• March over payment £1,757.66*
• Actual payments left: 218
• Months until goal date: 67 (31st Dec 2017)
• Months until stretch goal date: 43 (31st Dec 2015)

Us vs. Bank: 31% vs. 69%

Mortgage Goals:

• Mortgage neutral (mortgage – savings) by December 2015
• Mortgage fully paid off by December 2017

Stretch Goal:

• Mortgage fully paid off by December 2015

Another month and another mortgage payment……they seem to come around very quickly!

I made just over £277 of extra income in April - just short of my £300 target - so we made a slight adjustment to our budget to keep the mortgage payment at £2,300. We need to stay aggressive with over payments if we hope to get below £80,000 by the end of the year.

Mortgage Freedom: May 2012 Report is a post from: Move to Portugal

Our goal is to achieve Financial Freedom by December 2020; being mortgage free (as soon as possible), is part of that goal and every month I track our progress.

April 1st 2012 Mortgage Stats:

• Original Mortgage: £138,485 (April 2006)
• Original term: 300 months (March 2031)
• Outstanding Balance: £97,747.83
• Reduction from last month: 2,215.94
• Paid off to date: £40,737.17
• Monthly payment: £542.34
• March over payment £1,757.66*
• Actual payments left: 219
• Months until goal date: 68 (31st Dec 2017)
• Months until stretch goal date: 44 (31st Dec 2015)

Us vs. Bank: 29.4% vs. 70.6%

Mortgage Goals:

• Mortgage neutral (mortgage – savings) by December 2015
• Mortgage fully paid off by December 2017

Stretch Goal:

• Mortgage fully paid off by December 2015

Getting below six figures last month was a big thing for us (and still remains one), and now, because five figures is a long way off, we’re targeting £90k as our next big milestone. If we continue to accumulate snowflakes and manage to keep the payment at £2,300, then we expect to reach that goal in August.

On your way to big goals do you set interim targets?

Mortgage Freedom: April 2012 Report is a post from: Move to Portugal

Our current mortgage balance is £99,963.77 and to achieve our extended goal of £80,000 by the end of the year we need to at least £2,600 in snowflakes to our current over payments.

I set my target for March at £300 and here’s how I did:

• £39.87 eBay. I listed a few things on eBay after de-cluttering the box room. Everything else will be going to the car boot sale, which I’m hoping to do next weekend. I haven’t listed on eBay for ages and I’m not sure that I’ll be back there any time soon – I had 6 buyers and got messed around by 2 of them! So annoying.
• £72.00 Work overtime. Two of my co-workers turned down the hours and so I picked them up instead.
• £1.20 Cash back payment. A very small payment from something bought ages ago..every little help!
• £15.79 Amazon book selling. I listed a few books and this is my profit after postage – I prefer Amazon to eBay for books selling.
• £174.63 Site income. This month has been a little slow compared to others but I’m still very happy to make this amount. This amount is after taxes and blog expenses.

(photo credit)

Mortgage Snowflakes: March 2012 is a post from: Move to Portugal

It pretty easy to tell where all my focus is at the moment – I can’t seem to stop talking about it. I’m obsessed with gaining freedom from mortgage debt and I’m planning all the little ways that I can pay down that beast as soon as possible, while trying to keep balance in our everyday life. I’m also trying to keep it fun and interesting, which is where the snowflakes come in.

Having a monthly snowflake (extra payment) target makes the whole debt payoff thing fun (for me!) – it was how I kept my motivation going when I was paying of my huge amount of consumer debt.

Here’s how I work out what I need to do to get the mortgage debt below £80,000 by the end of the year.

Step 1. Treat our mortgage like any other debt and work out the debt snowball using What’s The Cost:

Snapshot of 2012 with snowball payments included. As you can see we are at least £2,567.58 short of hitting £80k.

Step 2. Play around with the figures, adding in extra payments to see what is needed to achieve a balance below £80k

Step 3. Create a spreadsheet to track monthly snowflakes, starting with the target figure, which for us is £300

Step 4. The hardest step: finding the extra money! As I said in my previous post I look for snowflakes everywhere. If I reduce my grocery spending by £10 this month, then that’s a snowflake. If I sell a book, then the money made from that, minus the postage, is a snowflake.

Step 5: Debt freedom!!!

Wow lot’s of spreadsheets. Let me know if you have any questions?

Mortgage Snowballs and Snowflakes – A Follow Up is a post from: Move to Portugal