Category Archives: mortgage

Another Mortgage Milestone!

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Good news! We’ve hit another mortgage milestone today on our mortgage amoratisation table.

Our current balance is $105,297.  This takes us to the end of Year 19 balance, and we’re almost 5 years into this mortgage.

I’m not sure if we will be able to hit $100,000 before the end of the year as we have the new air/conditioner heating to be paid for and a few other big bills expected, but it feels good to be this close.
We had our 37th wedding anniversary this week – goodness time goes by so fast! So we went our for coffee and cake after work which was lovely. I’m not really one for parties but I do enjoy a coffee date now and again.
I did have a surprise for DH though. I asked him how much he thought we had increased our retirement savings by this year – his guess was $40,000. While he’s aware of what I’m doing with finances, its me who does the day to day money management. I was thrilled to be able to say our retirement saving have increased this year by $100,000!  Way over what I had set as a goal for the year – thanks to a good stock market and compound interest started to really build.
So its been a bit of a good news week here financially.
I’m looking forward to having a big clean up around the house and bit more decluttering this weekend.Time to get on top of the housework and get rid of a bit more ‘stuff’.

Another Mortgage Milestone!

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Last week we got our finally got our tax refund paid into our account. After paying a few bills I’ve just made a nice big extra payment off the mortgage to bring it down to $112,558 – the end of year 18 balance on the Amoratisation table.

It feels so good to cross out another line!

So with 15 weeks left until the end of 2019 I need to pay $837.20/week to reach our goal of $100,000 mortgage balance by end of the year. I also have to replace our heater/air conditioner which will be $5000 at the end of October so we need to keep our spending down.

The last few months I’ve been really tired and I am looking forward to next year when I am just doing my day job. I have also been reading ‘How to Retire Happy, Wild & Free’ which was recommended on the MMM forums. Its been really helpful to me, as someone who has really invested a lot of my identity in my career. I will write more on this a bit later, but overall I have really come to accept its time to slow down and smell the roses.

I have only a few weeks until holidays – New Zealand here we come! – can’t wait!

Retirement savings & hard to find good tradies!

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I check our retirement accounts each fortnight after the payments have gone through. I was happy to see that we have now reached our goal for 2019 which was $420,000!  … and its only 3 months into the year.  Of course the market fluctuates and its been up lately, but its a good feeling being able to cross off one of my goals so early.

The mortgage is now down to $124,287. next goal is end of Year 17 balance – $119,519.

No painting got done again this weekend – DH wants to do a bit more prep work and it will need undercoating in one area. I just want it done asap but I’ll have to be patient – he’s not the most enthusiastic handyman but he’ll get there eventually.

We’ve been having problems with our tap in the kitchen for a while and with a banging water pipe in the bathroom.  We had a plumber organised to come and fix on the weekend but he was a no show and no notification he wasn’t coming – its very frustrating.This is the second plumber we’ve arranged to fix it and the first one did the same thing. Why is it so hard to get a tradesperson to just turn up!  So we’ll have to try a third one now.

On a good note we had a second solar heating company come and measure up. They have a really good system that would see us change to gas hot water and any excess KW gets used to heat water first, then excess over that goes to the grid. It does a cost a bit more and we’re waiting on quotes. They also commented on how low our electricity use is which was nice as we do try and not waste it, without being misers. It will be interesting to see both quotes and the savings projections.

Well its 5.45am here and its raining steadily. The sound of it is lovely. We need the rain and the cooler change is great.  I have only about a month to work and then I’m having some more time off which I’m looking forward to. Time to do a few chores before work.