Hiw to live mortgage free. Anyone watching?

[NapQueen]

Im sceptical. Surely this is all people who have made masses of equity on moving out if London or inheritances?

I think I may pay the mortgage off next year. We will have 15 years left but it's 25k....I've inherited some money so am thinking about clearing the mortgage off. It's not like having the money sat in the bank is earning me much interest.

What channel was this on please? Sounds interesting.

The reality of living on a boat is that it's cold, damp, hard work and very difficult to find somewhere to moor for longer than a night. Local councils hate 'boat people' so you're forced to literally become a traveller.

I agree user, I know a few people who live on boats and it's not easy or that cheap. There's also the possibility of something like this happening:

Fundraiser launched to help heartbroken couple whose boat sank into Regent’s Canal

Wasn't there a minor controversy a couple of years ago about the issues that families had living on boats (possibly in the west country). Some families with cruising licences were struggling to get moorings and were unable to get their children to school.

I recorded this to watch later, we've notionally paid ours off (have the mortgages amount sitting in savings until our fixed rate ends in the summer).
We didn't do anything mega frugal, but we do live in the North in suburbs and have been overpaying pretty much since the start.
Took 10 years off the original mortgage (though our first mortgage was only £40k with student loans as a deposit!). Upsized, extended, (mortgage got much bigger than £40k before we got on top of it again), kept overpaying whatever we could as rates fell.
It is doable, though probably not starting out in London now as prices are crazy.

The boat woman just seems like shes in a vulnerable position. Alone, remote, not exactly the most secure structure, nowhere to hide onboard if anyone did break in.

I will have my mortgage paid off before I'm 40. I haven't done anything spectacular to get to that point, just bought a flat at 21 with a near 100% mortgage and kept the payments the same when the fixed rate ended rather than dropping the payments. No desire to upsize because the children will be adults doing their own thing at that point so we won't need more space.

@purplehonesty I think you can overpay up to 10% of outstanding balance each year

Depending on the type of mortgage you have

VERY MUCH depending on the type of mortgage you have! Dangerous to quote figures like that when the penalties for (even accidental) over-overpaying can be quite high.

If I'd taken your advice a few years ago, I'd have been doubling the permitted overpayments allowed and would have faced penalties for doing so. But now I can make unlimited overpayments (same mortgage, T&C changed) and could pay the lot off tomorrow if I wanted to, penalty-free. That's with several years still remaining on the agreed initial term too.

Mortgage overpayment calculators are an amazing motivator when you see how radically the term can decrease with even a small overpayment.

We used the changeover between fixed rates to pay lumps off without penalty, which is a way to get round restrictive overpayment limits.

So do you pay council tax etc if you are on a cruising mooring?

I did meet people who lived on a boat. In one case a couple had done dramatic decluttering and sold up in their 50s - it was a house in West London, so they might regret that a bit now! Another was a student who had left/run away from her parents at about 18 and sailed all the way around England. I also knew an ex military couple who lived in a boat - but they had a house in Tuscany too... A few years later I saw on the local news that their London mooring had been sold off for development.

I think the lifestyle is a bit precarious and ideally needs someone or somewhere to fall back on.

We have been overpaying our mortgage for the past 4 years. After a while you get used to not having that money and we will be mortgage free hopefully in another year. I can't wait as that is our only debt.

We overpay our mortgage as much as we can too. We've always "rounded it up" - so say your payment is £637, you set up a payment for £700 (assuming your mortgage allows it, we have always chosen one which allows this). If we have spare cash, that goes on mortgage too.

Every time we overpay they try to get us to reduce the monthly payments - we always refuse. We keep the monthly payments the same and reduce the term which will save more money in the long run.

Macho lumberjack FGS. Nasty.

How to be mortgage free - don't get one

@TinfoilHattie Every time we overpay they try to get us to reduce the monthly payments - we always refuse

I had that too. It doesn't even make sense to do that, why would you overpay one month and then underpay the next? I got a bit shirty with my lender after having to call several months in a row to make them change the term not the payment; and they finally managed to find the button which set it to permanently reduce the term.

I lived on a boat until recently. Originally just me and then DP joined me. We sold it as I got thoroughly sick of having no space. LOVE being in a house now.

Overpaid on mine and reduced term by 10 years and also used some inheritance to pay the remaining off. But it was a small cheap house!

We're going for mortgage free by 45. Which gives us another 12-13 years. We're just getting a new mortgage for our "forever" home this year.

Idea being to save save save then pay off chunks of it each year. We've done this with out existing one and for a mortgage of close to £300k we're down to £120k in 7 years.

We overpaid and got rid of our first mortgage after 4 years. We lived on one wage and put the whole of the other wage as an overpayment. We figured if we had children we would be living on one wage so might as well get used to it.

4 years after being mortgage free we had children and moved. We took on a 120k mortgage for a 400k house. We lived frugally, holidays in Devon, a caravan in Poole rather than pre-children Oz, Mexico, Bali etc. We used the library rather than Waterstones, used Tesco vouchers for days out and always took a picnic and a flask of coffee. I went back to work and we again managed on one wage and poured the whole of one wage into the mortgage. We were mortgage free in 8 years. The children are now teens and we holiday in Thailand, NY and this year South Africa. House now worth 800k.

No houseboats, just a few lean years to gain so much more in the long run.

Shots fired - I know you believe it makes no sense to reduce the monthly payment but this is exactly what I do.

I overpay each month and alongside overall mortgage my monthly commitment reduces. Me and my partner are both public sector workers and I feel more secure having a fall back of a really small monthly mortgage if we ended up redundant. Our actual monthly must pay is hardly anything now which is a nice feeling the month you need new tyres mot or something similar

They need to show more normal folk clearing mortgages like the family in week one. This week 2 young people living mortgage free, both given land/property by their parents. The lads caraven thing should've been on George Clarks's amazing spaces, not this.

*caravan

Yes, dh and I commented similarly, it's relatively easy to find ways to live mortgage-free as a single person or young couple with no children.

Overpaying your mortgage isn't always financially sensible. Many have very low interest rates so can profit by putting the money in savings instead. Ours is about 0.6% pa so while we can put money into savings at 3-5% that's what we're doing and the money will be available to pay it off it things change, otherwise it will be paid off anyway in 10 years time all being well.