If you are mortgage free...

[DarthVader]

how did you achieve this?

The new 18%cgt flat rate has not yet been given the royal assent. there is ferocious resistance to it from various sectors of the business community. i doubt that it will come in next april as they propose.

Minty - if you intend to die in your house, how will it fund your retirement?

ha ha ha iota
quite right.
I don't expect I'll actually need it to fund my retirement but its nice to know it can
Anyway I plan on dying somewhere MUCH warmer, so perhaps it will in the end

christ no washerwoman, no relation WHATSOEVER

yes if something awful happened financially I'd be bird happy to flog this place and buy something small and sensible. I've always told DH that. its only a house FGS.

Swedes

business assets get preferential treatment atm so if there is tinkering to be done I'd guess it would be only on those.

I used to be a scrimper and a saver. But then I married a man who thought the 'leverage' way. Everytime we have a money concern my instant re-action is to look at how we can cut down on what we spend but his is always to work out how we can make lots more money so we don't have to bother.

I must admit his method is much more effective if a little bit nerve wracking at times!

In the early 90s, my PILs forced a small loan for the deposit for a flat on us (we were living in London and hadn't even thought of buying) just before the bog boom in prices. Flat more than doubled, next house more than doubled, this house has more than doubled. We are planning to move to a slightly smaller house next year (from detached to semi) and we should then be mortgage free. Sorry, I cannot claim to be very thrifty - just blessed to have very sensible PILs who got the ball rolling for us at a good time.

See I don't understand the idea of going without so severely, just to pay off your mortgage.

If you have extra cash to overpay, or come into a lump sum to pay off a chunk, then fair enough. But I really don't get why people would deny themselves the things that make life so pleasurable (eg holidays, meals out, the odd new bit of clothing) just to clear a mortgage. There is more to life than paying a mortgage.

After all you might get squashed by a bus tomorrow having gone without for so many years. What a shame!

BBC News says average first-timers spend 20.4% of monthly income on mortgage.

My first thought - that little??

We got a 120k mortgage in 2000 for 25 years on a 4 bed townhouse when our joint income was about £55k. In 2004, we decided to start monthly overpayments plus we paid paid off 10% of the mortgage in full at the end of each calender year.

Our mortgage is now less than 50k and we are overpaying £800 per month. Building society reckons we will be mortgage free in 2-3 years so we would have paid off our mortgage in 10 years or less.

We do this even though we pay £1000 per month for nursery fees for two children and I work part-time.

We holiday in the UK
We have no debts other than mortgage (we even bought our last car brand new for cash - £18k using a combination of trade in, discounts and some savings)
We decorated house 4 years after we moved in and we still have the same kitchen and bathroom
We eat out once every 4 months
We don't buy the lastest gadgets
We clothes shop only when we need to
We shop at Aldi, butchers, greengrocers
We don't fritter cash away on non-essentials
We save between us about £1000 per month and some of that is used to pay off a chunk of the mortgage at the end of each calender year.

DH and I are from poor working class backgrounds, went to large comprehensives, went to university and have ended up with good careers. We have kept our feet firmly on the ground and are very thankful with what we have been blessed.

we're mortgage free due to a huge stroke of luck really.
Dh was working for some guys who decided to make him the Technical Director of their little dotcom venture and gave him a fine slice of the pie. We didn't get even a fifth of what had been expected initially as the lastminute bust-up happened just before flotation, but we did get enough to buy our house outright (worth 650K) and fritter away a bit (sadly all gone - young and stupid! ).

I know we should do something with the capital, but tbh I am inexperienced in such matters and terribly cautious, as well as rather emotionally attached to this house (we are planning to sell it when the children are grown up, it's far too big for 2, but until then I am very attached ). I wouldn't even know where to start really.

I dont think going without to pay off your mortgage is necessarily a bad thing. We could not get the house we live in now (on two counts - quality of house/ lifestyle for raising family ie no materials but things like a big enought to accomodate teenagers/ secondly (fingers crossed a pension fund)) if we did not scrimp as we did. we could get a property two thirds of the size of house and probably a quarter of the size of garden for more than triple what we paid. before I met dh I live for the now basically on credit and I have to say it was not all it cracked up to be for me. Each month I was in the red before I had even finished the first week.

SenoraP - Of course you will be dead when it comes time for your personal IHT bill to be settled. But those were assets you might like to have passed down to your children? Worrying about IHT is an altruistic act.

worrying about IHT is altruistic is it? why don't you bequeath your worldy goods to charity then?

Cat64 - I agree, living within your means is sensible. I am astonished at how many people I know live their whole lives in the red and everything is on credit.

I was referring more to a couple of posters who seem (in my opinion) to live VERY frugally. I would rather enjoy my money to a sensible degree day by day rather than chasing a mortgage free existence (but that's just me).

Mind you I think I am in a different income league to many posters on this thread - we are doing most of the thrifty things posted on here yet have virtually no surplus income available to save or overpay our (not-huge) mortgage A mortgage free life is a long way off for us.

SenoraP - I already give to charity (both time and money) and intend to leave something in my will for a couple of my favourite charities. I was being ironic about IHT planning being altruistic. However, planning within the framework of the law is surely sensible (whatever you decide to to with the money) - just daft to say: "It doesn't matter about IHT because you will be dead".

Does anyone who lives quite or even very frugally think that it is because of their own upbringing that they can llive like this and still be happy ?

We had very little money "when I were a lass" and I do find that even being relatively frugal by choice now is still being more extravagant than my parents could have afforded to be. I know from my childhood however that possessions and the latest new clothes etc are not the things that I have the fondest memories of so I figure that sometimes saying no to my dcs won't harm them in the long run.

well, Fedup, my parents earned a lot more than we do now. Their house was about 4 times as big as mine now. But I don't mind the "step down" at all. In fact, I would not want to have a big house as that. I am not interested in my mum's posh clothes and jewelery etc etc.

fedupwasherwoman - I think people react differently to their childhoods. I am one of four girls. We had strict upbringing with very few fripperies, we were not allowed make-up and no fashion items - we had home-made dresses made out of Tana Lawn fabric. We did however, have books, holidays and days out as a family. I think my parents got it right (after a fashion - eek) as does one of my other sisters - but another sister feels deeply affected by her experience in Liberty print and t-bars (at 15) and has decided to give her daughter every possession she ever asks for and some that she doesn't ask for. My niece, currently at Uni, is not a happy girl, interstingly.

I think one of the reasons I hate debt (other than my job ) and live very carefully is that my mother was wildly extravagant and refused to work - this caused my father untold stress and worry.

Even so, we do have a better lifestyle than my parents or dh's parents.

When I bought my first flat in the early 80s, I saved up for a year before I could afford a sofa (I sat on the floor or on hard chairs which were given to me by an aunt). A huge contrast to my nephew who has just moved into his first flat and bought thousands of pounds worth of furniture (credit card or store card financed) so he can have it right now. Instant gratification.

cat64 - I used to bin the school trip letters (I knew it was absolutely out of the question) because I did not want to embarass my parents into having to say no.