Total mortgage overpayments in 2021

Back in July I looked at the mortgage overpayments me and my husband had made in the first half of the year. 

In that post I mentioned that our aim was to overpay £1000 a year. In the past few years we have missed this target.

It was a bit easier when I was claiming expenses through my work as I just paid the reclaimed money into the mortgage. But I no longer have a job that requires me to purchase office supplies, hence no more expenses.

I also dedicate more money to specific savings nowadays. I'm saving for maternity leave, a new car, and a few other things which I'll discuss in a future blog post. All this means the mortgage has less of a focus.

The Reality

So, how did we do for 2021? Did we hit the £1000 target? Here are the monthly overpayments we made in 2021:

• January - £72.15
• February - £109.86
• March - £41.15
• April - £71.64
• May - £50.51
• June - £59.09
• July - £63.51
• August - £124.95
• September - £63.00
• October - £64.20
• November - £81.42
• December - £99.80

Total - £901.28

Thoughts

No, we didn't hit the target. But we did manage to overpay just over £900 which is still a decent amount. I know I could have found £99 from somewhere to tip that over the £1000 mark. But in the end I didn't want to sacrifice something out of one of my other savings pots. I'm happy to overpay the mortgage but I can't do it at the expense of the rest of my savings. 

On the other hand, since our first overpayment in January 2017 we've overpaid an incredible £4537.72. 

Our new mortgage deal has now started and we're paying £100 a month less than we were! We've already decided to continue to pay our original rate to help bring it down. This time we have a two year deal, last year was five years, and we might be looking at moving towards the end of that time so we'd like to have a solid chunk paid off before we start house hunting.

The best thing about remortgaging has been reducing our interest rate. We're now down to 1.71%, when before we were on 2.74%. This means that our daily interest has dropped from £10.25 in December, to £6.39 in January!

I might give myself a future challenge to try and earn that £6 a day in side hustles in one month, just so I can have the satisfaction of knowing I've overpaid a whole month's interest, but we'll see if I ever have the motivation to do so.