Just to recap, I bought my house with my parents. They have a one third share and I have a two third share. We have separate mortgages so that we can manage it as we see fit, making extra repayments and whatnot. My mortgage is for $262 000 (it's already down to $259 000, yay!).
I got extra on my loan so that I could pay my car off, so I now own that outright which has significantly lessened my monthly burden.
I have an offset account with $10 500 in it. This is not only my emergency fund but also my savings account. I like to save up for large purchases like insurance, registration and the like. I prefer to put a little away each pay to ensure that when those bills do roll around, I'm not trying to find the cash for it. I will be saving up for these into my offset account, that way I am helping to reduce the interest I pay.
I have chosen to pay my mortgage fortnightly so I can pay an extra month per year. My minimum fortnightly contribution is $835. I have decided to pay $900 a fortnight, at least for now. Once I am more comfortable with this new idea of living in a house, I hope to increase that. I am also getting a pay rise in October, all of which I plan to put on the mortgage.
I don't plan to go crazy, still planning to save up for things like travel. However, if say I don't spend my entire grocery budget for the week, I will put whatever is left over straight onto the mortgage because I wholeheartedly believe that every little bit counts!
Any questions? Any advice?
wow that is efficient. I really look up to this!
ReplyDeleteHow do you go with budgeting that much of your wage every fortnight? Do you still socialise/buy the little luxuries or does the end result out weight the smaller details for you?
didn't mean to make my former request anonymously but thanks for responding. So of course I've got a bunch of questions that you can use as a starting point for another post. I'm Canadian so I'm not very familiar with the Australian system. What's an offset account? Do you have a fixed rate for variable rate. If it's fixed is it for the entire term of the mortgage? Any plans to rent part of your house to others? Where I live in Vancouver it's very common to put a suite in the basement of the house and use the rent to subsidize the mortgage.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info, I always find it interesting to hear about the financial choices others are making.
I take it that you earn a fairly good wage, on my pittance of a pay packet I would never have enough to live on my own, even paying cheap rent. I do so admire you modern self sufficient Women
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