We’re on track to be mortgage free in 8 years – and here’s how you could do it too

A SAVVY saver has revealed how she's on track to pay her mortgage off in eight years - and she's already paid £30,000 in early repayments.

Charlotte Jessop, 33, from Norwich, is planning on paying off the remaining £80,000 of her mortgage by 2029 at the latest.

Along with her husband Dan, 35, she started making overpayments in 2018, and is aiming to be mortgage-free in five to eight years.

So far, they have paid off a total of £50,000 on their mortgage - including the £30,000 in overpayments.

When you take out a mortgage to buy a house, you agree to a minimum amount to pay back to your lender each month. 

If you overpay on your mortgage, it means that you pay more than the minimum amount, either regularly every month or as a lump sum.

Paying off your mortgage could save you thousands of pounds in interest in the long-run.

According to lender Habito, homeowners could save an average of up to £16,000 if they overpay their mortgage by £200 each month.

But while there are big savings to be had, life insurance broker LifeSearch said just 7% of UK homeowners have overpaid their mortgage in the first six months of 2021.

Charlotte and Dan, who run the money saving blog , have a joint income of £55,000 a year and have two children, Emily, 6, and Alice, 4.

They have had to sell their car, slash their food bill and regularly flog their unwanted household items to keep their savings goals on track.

Charlotte shared her money saving tips with The Sun - and explains how you can be mortgage-free at a faster rate too.

Charlotte and Dan bought their £144,000 three-bed home back in 2012 and took out a mortgage of £129,600 over 30 years at a five year fixed rate of 4.5% for it.

Their monthly mortgage repayments at the time were £680.

In 2015, the couple started to think about upsizing so started to save up for a new house, putting away a minimum of £250 a month into their savings.

This would go up depending on whether money was good and if Dan had worked more hours - at this point, he was working in retail, while Charlotte was a teacher.

When they started looking for more homes in 2018, they had saved a total £15,000 extra for a new place. 

"House hunting was a nightmare," Charlotte said. "We couldn’t find anything we liked in our budget, and decided we didn’t want the hassle of moving after all. 

"Plus, bills and council tax would be more on a bigger house anyway - and we didn’t want to have to pay more on this."

They decided to stick with their house and instead pile their savings into paying off their mortgage early - and be debt-free more quickly.

They put the £15,000 they had saved up for a new house into paying off a big chunk of their mortgage.

Usually, you'll have to pay an early repayment charge if you overpay more than 10% of the outstanding balance on your mortgage per year.

But Charlotte and Dan made sure to split up their overpayments to avoid this charge.

"Our mortgage provider allows us to overpay by 10% of the balance a year," Charlotte said. "Fortunately, when we decided to overpay with a lump sum, we were near the end of the year. 

"We paid around £11,000 in 2018, and then waited a few weeks to pay the rest in 2019."

Their next step was to switch to a lower rate mortgage deal from 4.5% down to 1.7% to save even more on interest, but they still kept the same mortgage term of 30 years. 

While this new deal lowered their monthly repayments from £680 to £450, the couple worked out how much more they could afford to overpay each month.

"We decided to pay at least £250 extra every month - which we're still doing," Charlotte said.

"Up until this point, we have now paid £50,000 in total off our mortgage - £30,000 of which has been from overpayments."

We have to be really strict

Charlotte and Dan decided to be "really strict" with their spending money ever since 2015, when they were initially saving for another home.

"Me and Dan sat down and created a budget for all of our outgoings and expenses, so we could see where we could cut money and save," Charlotte said.

A lot of their cash was going on expensive energy bills. At the time, in 2015, they were paying £110 a month on gas and electricity.

So they switched providers and paid £70 a month instead, saving £40 a month or £480 a year.

"I make sure to never pay more than this, keeping an eye on rates and making plans to switch again if I need to," Charlotte said.

They also got rid of one of their cars, as their petrol and insurance bill was a lot of money, Charlotte added.

Each month, they would be spending up to £400 on petrol, £30 on car insurance, £15 on car tax, and £1,500 per year on MOTs on their main car.

";After ditching it, we’re saving £2,800 a year - and we also made £2,000 from selling it too," Charlotte said.

"Now, we bike everywhere, and our other car is only used if we need to take the kids long distances."

They also slimmed down their food bill too.

"Previously, we didn’t keep track of how much we were spending on groceries - we just bought whatever we wanted," Charlotte said.

"Our food bill was huge at £700 per month. We managed to shave this down to £320 a month, saving us £380 by planning meals and getting groceries ordered to our door - instead of going shopping whenever we wanted."

Charlotte shops at Tesco and uses her Clubcard vouchers to get money off her shopping too after she's saved up enough points.

As well as saving money, the couple also looked at ways they could make it too.

A great way of making extra cash is to sell your unwanted items online.

In 2018, they did a massive clear out of the house, selling game consoles, TVs, old laptops and baby toys, making £800 in just a matter of months. 

"Now, we’ve made decluttering a habit,"; Charlotte said. "We put a load of our old stuff on eBay every three months or so, making up to £300."