Get a grip woman!

Suffolk_lass · 30 April 2017 at 10:04AM

April 30 end-month update:

Debts

£[STRIKE]110,621[/STRIKE] £105,830 (£4,791 paid so far) - Mortgage
[STRIKE]£3,476[/STRIKE] £3,076 (£400)- DH's car (payment on 22nd)
[STRIKE]£8,755.54[/STRIKE] £7,561.62 (£1193.92) - Barclays Finance for double glazing

Total [STRIKE]£122,852.54[/STRIKE] £116,467.62 - that is £6,384.92 so far - no change since mid April - I may need to change the timing of my updates to maintain a trickle of progress here!

£8,767.59 (aiming for £10,000) Emergency fund today -£1,232.41
£12,154.43 S&S ISA with Fidelity International (original £10,000 4 years ago, no further capital added) - a reduction due to stock market fluctuations - just got to stick in there!
£5,414.98 DH's S&S ISA with Charles Stanley Direct
£3,117.81 2 year Bond with Skipton BS @ 4% Finishes in early 2018
£10,947.52 7 year bond with Skipton BS - matures Oct 20
[STRIKE]£38,630.43[/STRIKE] £40,402.33 Total actual cashable savings

Shortfall -£75,865.29 (all debts)

I have updated the shortfall to reflect the actual, against all our debts, rather than just the mortgage shortfall.

We have had DH's DC Pension annual statement and it is almost £68,000. This is good growth (about £10k) in the last year. We are considering withdrawing the permissible 25% tax free lump sum to pay down the mortgage and reduce the interest we will pay in 2017 (we paid £1050 in 2016 despite a rate of 0.74%). - no decision yet.

I still have an underwhelmed feeling about our progress on here. In other things though:

We have loads of sprouting vegetable seeds in the greenhouse
I have lost a pound this week - I am less than 2 pounds for the next half-stone display (there's still a couple more to get to two stone after that - it's just the point where the display says 7lb!) - I am particularly happy as I am just eating normally at the moment (my new normal)
I am inside my grocery challenge annual figure with just the mean-side of £1000 spent out of my annual £3000 budget but I need to pare back if there is to be anything extra for Christmas

Karmacat · 3 May 2017 at 10:26AM

So, in practice, you're debt free apart from a mortage of £75,865.29? Thats another way to look at it ... thoroughly recommend doing an update when you've paid stuff off, absolutely, by the way!

SL, have you looked at refinancing any of that debt? Onto 0% credit cards, for example? I'm not sure what your rates are, and you might already have done what you can, not sure.

Suffolk_lass · 4 May 2017 at 10:40PM

I already have DH's car on a 0% credit card that was only a one-off 1.9% fee (£76 on £4,000) - it runs until September and I have been earmarking £250 each month so far this year to be able to pay it off - it is in with the emergency fund really.

Our loan for double glazing is also on 0% for two years, finishing in November '18 I am exactly 25% through as of yesterday. We timed it so that I would still be working throughout the repayment period.

Our mortgage is a base-rate tracker at 0.49% above the BoEBR - so running at 0.74 interest at the moment. I do keep looking but I think when you look at the fee to swap I am doing OK with that at the moment (I do keep looking though...). I think the main thing for me is to keep nibbling away at it and dribbling a few more "Tilly Tidy" deposits into the savings account. I need to buy some euros for a weekend at my friend's place near Poitiers in the next week so I am looking to get a good rate for that at the moment - otherwise I would have paid an additional lump of the mortgage this month.

It sort of sits there, lurking, that mortgage debt! I am getting a better return by investing than I am paying in interest but I still did not like seeing just over £1,000 interest going out in 2016. As an amount of interest I am paying more than we are earning.

We have a big family decision to make this weekend so off to have a bit more of a think (as I did at 0400 this morning, when I could not sleep!!). I will update soon.

Another 0.2 pounds off this week!

enthusiasticsaver · 4 May 2017 at 11:28PM

Suffolk_lass wrote: »

Thanks for this. We were thinking very similarly, sort of pay some, save some. I want to get the mortgage as close to, or just below £100k as I can this year, without being too obsessive. I am expecting another lump sum when I draw my DB pension, and DH will also have one of those, albeit both with less than optimum number of years as we have both had several/many other employments. We think we can live on my anticipated pension, using my lump sum for treats and trips so the build up of savings is really a bit of hedging against a stock market dip at the wrong time.

I am interested in what your rationale for a percentage in cash and what percentage you went for, if you would be willing to share that.

We went with 40% of our total savings in cash and 60% invested in stocks and shares isas and sipps. We have no mortgage though. This is a security blanket for when I take early retirement at the end of this year as we have 8 years until spa. It sounds like you have a good plan. The calculation I did for keeping that much in cash is 8 years of our expenditure over the last year plus 10% less my DHs pension. This is to give us the option of maybe delaying taking my DB pension so early and as you say in case the stock market dips and we do not want to access our investments.

Karmacat · 5 May 2017 at 8:34AM

Oh my word, your rates are brilliant! I should have known

Though I know what you mean about the fees - my mortgage was never hugely high, at its biggest it was £52k, I got a lot of capital from buying my flat when I was so young. But what that meant was that when the fees started getting so high, I never shifted my mortgage again - it meant the real rate I was paying was almost doubled.

Suffolk_lass · 5 May 2017 at 9:54PM

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

We went with 40% of our total savings in cash and 60% invested in stocks and shares isas and sipps. We have no mortgage though. This is a security blanket for when I take early retirement at the end of this year as we have 8 years until spa. It sounds like you have a good plan. The calculation I did for keeping that much in cash is 8 years of our expenditure over the last year plus 10% less my DHs pension. This is to give us the option of maybe delaying taking my DB pension so early and as you say in case the stock market dips and we do not want to access our investments.

I know what you mean. I should have bought my euros when the pound reached a five year high a fortnight ago but I didn't and now it is 3 cents in the pound less! So I have no chance of predicting what the stock market will do!

I couldn't resist "tidying" our mortgage down to the next (£105,)000.00 figure yesterday and pushed £497.12 into the mortgage overpayment. That means I should push for £5000.01 more this year to get me just below that magic £100,000 figure.

Suffolk_lass · 6 May 2017 at 4:18PM

Well, I have no idea what is going on with my weight! Maybe the scales have broken - they are showing me 0.2lbs below the next milestone which is the x stones 7 pounds mark. I haven't been here for a while and my jeans are in danger of falling down as I walk around. Now don't be thinking sylph-like figure! My starting point remains too embarrassingly high to talk about yet. I might at some point but not yet.

And I only bought milk, fruit, salad, frozen chips, some corn, frozen lamb chops and a cheeky pack of ice lollies. I am determined to have a use-up week and reduce the european meat mountain that seems to have taken up residence in my freezer

Karmacat · 9 May 2017 at 10:45AM

Home made ice lollies from the fresh-with-bits Iceland orange juice, costs £1 a litre (or it did last month, who knows now!).

Suffolk_lass · 9 May 2017 at 6:36PM

Karmacat wrote: »

Home made ice lollies from the fresh-with-bits Iceland orange juice, costs £1 a litre (or it did last month, who knows now!).

Don't be telling me that! I can resist anything except temptation.

Cooking with meat from the freezer tonight, with freezer ingredients sauce and half an open carton of passata. Stuffed peppers or leek-lasagne I think.

Karmacat · 10 May 2017 at 10:34AM

Sorry

Better than all the carp thats in supermarket brand stuff, though :j

Get a grip woman!

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