Clear your Mortgage in 2 years!

Not sure if this is the correct thread,but as it's to do with mortgages.Did any one see tonights programme on BBC2 about 8 families from all walks of life who work with a financial adviser to clear their mortgage in 2 years.My understanding from tonights episode is that unless you are self employed you don't stand a chance!In the first year tonights group saved 14K sterling in 12 months...seemed pretty good.Has anyone here managed to do the same....clear your mortgage(150K) in a few years,without winning money,inheritance etc?

I started to watch it, but changed channels after 10 minutes. Very boring reality TV type rubbish. No special tips - just save like mad.
I paid off my last mortgage in 6 years by putting every interest rate decrease and salary increase into the payments.
Askaboutmoney.com inspired me to do it!

One snag though - having paid off the mortgage I wanted to rent the house out and buy a new place to live in. Then realised I would be paying tax on the full rental income as I had no debt to offset against it any more!

Hopefully you didn't switch over to C4's 20 places to buy property abroad! Yawn....

Saving like mad won't do much for the typical first time buyer here with a mortgage of 3-4 times gross salary. 2 years is impossible for most normal people.

My Bank offered to split my new mortgage by part remortgaging my existing property and the balance on the new property to avail of tax relief. Illegal but it's being done my solicitor told me However, having been advised here on this site I didn't go for it. Selling instead and investing elsewhere.

I wasn't too impressed with the ideas (i.e. they were fairly obvious, or wouldn't apply to most typical families).

It's actually cheaper for me to have my lunch at work (heavily subsidised canteen)
I gave up smoking 2 years ago
I don't drive to work
I'm funny, but not funny enough to do 2 stand up shows a week
My girlfriend is a terrible singer

I switched over after the wife did her first 'gig' in the old folks home.

I guess the idea is ok, but only if you have a 'fairly low' mortgage, i.e. I would agree with what dam099 says above. According to the paper, this show is going out for 24 episodes.

One thing that struck me-were the two of them declaring the 'cash' income from their entertainment gigs?

reality tv at its best NOT! did you all see the strain it put on the relationship.only for the guy those 2people would be seprerated.

like imagine living on 15€ per week come on live a life and enjoy

I thought it was awful that they were under so much pressure that they weren't able to relax and enjoy a couple of days hols in a mobile home - which was only costing them a couple of hundred pounds. What's it all about if you can't take some break from the pressure?

The big thing that struck me was HE is making money out of claiming he can help people to give up smoking, and SHE is unable to give up smoking!! Doh!

I was really disappointed with it. I was hoping there might be some other ways of saving money other than quitting smoking, taking the train to work, making your own sandwich and taking on a second job a couple of nights a week! As far as I could make out, they seemed to have two cars. If he was taking the train to work, could they not have sold his car? She seemed to get pretty tight money-wise and was nearly taking it to the extreme. It can't be good for any relationship. As for the guy supposedly giving advice, he was dull and boring.

If people want to discuss politically correct racial/ethnic terminology please start a new thread. I have removed posts referring to this that are not relevant to the substantive issues raised in this thread.

X-man, I thought Irishpancakes point was well made and put very politely. Your comment was unnecessary and jarring.

In relation to the programme, I wonder if there will be families in weeks to come who ( as I would imagine would be more common than last nights couple) would be unable or unwilling to have second jobs, and if so, how will they clear their mortgage early?

I thought the programme was interesting, sure it was basic, but realistically what else can be expected? After all I'm sure noone was expecting to hear a miracle way to clear their mortgage early that we havent heard of before. Therefore cutting down on spending and increasing ones income are the only possibles anyway. Well, other than the lotto.

After all I'm sure noone was expecting to hear a miracle way to clear their mortgage early that we havent heard of before. Therefore cutting down on spending and increasing ones income are the only possibles anyway.

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You think? Well for anyone interested I was thinking of getting a nice little pyramid scheme up and running, join up now - remember the early bird, catches the most worms

I was in and out of the room so didn't see it all, but was there any mention of childminding? Childminding costs? The impact on the kids of the parents' massive reduction in spending or increased time at work or increased tiredness? They didn't seem to make any allowance for a social life either - no wonder the couple nearly split up!

Saw it last night too, don't think they mentioned what the breakdown of anything they spent there money on, bar what they had to cut out like buying lunches and ciggies. Total waste of time, I thought they might come up with something that we didn't already know?? Was tempted to buy the book that coincides with the program, before I saw the program...well there's 20 euro I can pay off my own mortgage

never saw it but i think that these folks must have had maybe only a few years of normal payments left anyhow, as one starting out on a 35 year mortgage i can't see it making a difference to most buyers nowadays.

Nope they had 22 years left of repayments on it. And the repayments in total were going to double the amount that was left on their mortgage. Think it was about 85K left, and the interest would be about 70K over the 22 years repayments

I believe the question was:

"Has anyone here managed to do the same....clear your mortgage(150K) in a few years,without winning money,inheritance etc?"

And not what did you think of the sad programme.

I have'nt done it and as mentioned earlier in the thread would probably only work for low mortgage, but you could work hard to get the mortgage down so you could really reduce the term thus eating into the principle alot sooner and paying less interest to the bank. That is how I see it very hard with a large mortgage but very possible to cut the term in half.

There's another catch to pedalling hard to pay off your mortgage early. You are probably going to put all your spare cash into the mortgage - so savings are going to be nil or minimal - meaning no safety nets.
But even more crucially - you can't invest.

When I was throwing every spare penny I had into my mortgage - my mates were out investing in property. The net result was that by the time I paid off my own mortgage, they had rental property investments which increased so much in value they could clear their own mortgage if they chose to sell the investment property.
And the growth was all supplied by a rising market and their tennants rent - while the lads swanned around in nice cars.

I got a great feeling of acheivement out of paying it off - no doubt about that. It was nice to be mortgage free for a few years. But on the whole, I think it wasn't really the smart move, not in a rising property market with low interest rates. Next time round I would BORROW and INVEST rather than save and scrimp. Lesson learned!

Interesting that this prog comes out when the UK property market is sluggish, and interest rates there are high. No more mileage in making property investment reality shows - nobodys interested - so, lets make a cheap 'pay off your crippling mortgage' type reality show instead!
The property market here is still booming! Incredibly! Takes nerves of steel though.

Meccano said:

When I was throwing every spare penny I had into my mortgage - my mates were out investing in property. The net result was that by the time I paid off my own mortgage, they had rental property investments which increased so much in value they could clear their own mortgage if they chose to sell the investment property.
And the growth was all supplied by a rising market and their tennants rent - while the lads swanned around in nice cars.

I got a great feeling of acheivement out of paying it off - no doubt about that. It was nice to be mortgage free for a few years. But on the whole, I think it wasn't really the smart move, not in a rising property market with low interest rates. Next time round I would BORROW and INVEST rather than save and scrimp. Lesson learned!

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Your conclusion that they were right & you were wrong is based on hindsight. In a rising market, they may well come out better off than you. In a stagnating or falling market, you may well have come out better off than them. There is of course no reason to believe that markets will continue to keep rising for ever. You also need to factor in all the time/effort they put into finding tenants, doing their accounts, mowing the grass etc etc.