Mortgage free by 2021?!

Finally listed something on eb@y that has been sitting around the house for months. Got £27.14 for it after fees, so made a corresponding OP to the mortgage (still need to ship it, but that'll come out of our misc expenses fund).

Santander's also been paying our interest before the end of the month, so that's £29.76 available to OP.

Can't wait until Thursday when the budget tidying can go in - looking at £64.90 (DH bought some groceries this weekend after all , which I'm sure I'll appreciate next week when I'm home from work).

Energy switch completed today - E0n says they won't start our DD until Nov 1, so perhaps no payment at all in October?! :j Will have to see what BG comes up with for a final amount.

Our contract with BG ended in August and we were waiting until mid-Sept to switch so that we could get their free smart meter install. Pulled the plug on that as the smart meters look crap at the moment (thought they'd be universal rather than supplier-specific). The same day I started our MSE switch, I swapped our tariff with BG to a fixed price one that included a £50 Amazon gift card. No requirements on the gift card, so was pleased to see that come through today! DH says he feels guilty getting it since we were only on the tariff 2 weeks, but I'm happy to get something for free from them. We certainly paid enough over the last 2 years between energy and boiler/home cover, I think we've still been a profitable customer for them.

Cashback for life insurance switch has already tracked. No sign of cashback for boiler cover or recent pet food order, hoping those show up at some point (at least the pet food itself arrived today, otherwise the kitties would be very mad at us!).

Single and joint account applications in to Nationwide, and single account for TSB. Once we've got 3 accounts on each we should be at 5% interest on £13.5k - woo! Will need to see how the funds work out as far as maintaining the 3k in our 123 account on top of that. :cool: Pity the Nationwide interest is only a year, but better than nothing.

MOP day tomorrow!

Sundaysgirl wrote: »

Wow you've been busy - well done! You've reminded me that I need to look at switching energy providers, haven't done so for a while but last time I checked it wasn't worth it for us, so thank you.

I think our calculation was a savings of £210ish per year - our DD has gone down by £22, so possibly even more!

And presumably you'll be saving the voucher to use on Christmas pressies?! :money:

Already earmarked in the "Gifts" budget category. :T Not sure if it'll be used for/by my birthday (in November) or at Christmas, but either way it has a job. (Still debating sending a corresponding MOP but our Gifts budget was down to £4.38 prior to this, so it could use the boost. Thankfully we're about 1/3 done with Christmas shopping already.)

Bit muddled today. Got an e-mail about solar panels, so decided to get some quotes. Seems reasonable enough, if only from an environmental standpoint.

Only one quote in so far (2 others pending), £5,900 all-in to install a 4kW set of 16 panels on the roof. Calculators estimate this should save us £515/year (if we install before the end of the year).

So break-even point is in ~11 years. We'll (ideally) be MF in 5-6, and likely to move within a year or 2 of that (though it depends on when we get sick of our commute, as that would be the main reason to leave).

If we assume 7 years, then we're still out £2,295 (with £6,695 left in future savings), but presumably the house would be worth 6-10k more than if it didn't have solar panels installed. ??

Called up an estate agent to get their take on it and they'd only handled one place in the area with solar panels and its sale (18 months ago) got delayed by 9 months due to paperwork issue between the solar panel company and the mortgage lender. Called our lender and they have no objection (or input) if we buy the panels out-right, but they do have concerns if we lease them (fair enough). (As we're only likely to sell once we're MF, a delay in selling isn't that big a deal, but would be nice to know if it were likely to be a hassle.)

So...not really clear-cut. On the one hand, I like the idea of the environmental impact. And, if we don't follow-up on our cash-in plan, then £4,400 profit over the next 20 years sounds nice (though I suppose not really when you compare the value of £5,900 saved for 20 years). Even if we do cash-in, we shouldn't be any worse off as the house would ideally increase in value by a corresponding amount.

Part of me thinks we should just wait until we've sold up and found our forever home and then install solar panels there and be environmentally friendly then. Another part of me thinks it's a shame to waste the nice government money that's being guaranteed now.

Off to do more research...