It feels like it has been a while since I did a little update on our journey, so I thought with a few months left to go of this year that now would be a great time to do that.
To be honest, there doesn’t seem to be much to share on our journey to write a post. Then I start to look back through everything that we have achieved and there have been so many things, that have happened that soon start to add up.
Mental shift
This has been the biggest change for us, although we are not super strict and stick to everything like some people, our mindset has shifted. When we get some spare cash, it’s not wasted, we think about what it could achieve before we spend it. This is not to say we are not treating ourselves, we are not going without.
Our goals seem more and more realistic and that gives us that little extra push to get done what we want to get done. Chat now is more about what we want to do next and where we want to get to.
Remortgaging has saved a small fortune
We have recently come to the end of our fixed term deal on our mortgage and switched with our current provider. Their deal was just as good as any other and because they are our provider already we didn’t need to go through the whole process of applying.
In total, we have saved £140 a month on our monthly payments. With our mindset change that I mentioned above though, we have thrown this straight back onto the mortgage, sticking with our current amount paid. This means we are overpaying our mortgage currently by £440 a month, reducing our mortgage term by almost 16 years!
New goals
Although we are on a mission to clear our debts as soon as possible and retire early, we are now looking at possibly moving house before then which will move the goals a little.
This year has taught us that life is a little too short to wait until we actually retire to get the home we really want and we are planning to move before we retire so we can enjoy our forever home for longer. It has been a real eye-opener that not everyone makes retirement age, so why wait to enjoy what we want!
We will focus on what we want to achieve with our new home and the goals before we move, just to make sure the numbers all stack up. The plan would still be to clear the mortgage quickly and become debt-free before retirement age to retire early still.
Increased our income
We have been working hard to increase the income in our home.
My self employed work has been paying off and we have seen this increase and hopefully, in the next few months, we will see a small pay increase from work. With all of this, rather than get used to having extra cash, we will work out the best way of putting it onto another debt so we don’t get used to having it.
This should hopefully help clear our debts even quicker!
I know we have a long way to go on our journey and we are under no illusions it is going to be an easy journey. For the first time in a while though, I am feeling optimistic as to our future. It feels as though nothing is out of reach for us and the future is looking bright. The plan is to write and update in 6 months time, by then though we should have had our pay increases and hopefully progressed even more.
