The Mortgage Free in Three - Take 2 challenge (MFiT-T2)

curlygirl1971

Morning all! (just bumping from pg 3)

chickadee

Good Morning everyone! I have popped in to update my numbers on the chart. Somehow I always seem to miss the deadline for updating . I have been plodding away with the regular OPs but nothing major to report recently. I haven't been bothered about updating my finance spreadsheet recently so last night DH was out at a stag do and DS is still away with school so I took the opportunity, with the house being quiet, to update my finances which went back to the start of May. :eek: I don't know how I let it get so out of hand, I'm normally on it at least every week. Anyway, the upshot is that saving up for our holiday in Florida this summer (roll on!), paying for a school trip to Poland in Feb and a school trip to France in July have taken their toll on my current account!

The mortgage stands at £12,994 as at 12/6/11 and was £12,493 at the end of June, after the June mortgage payment had gone out. I haven't made any extra OPs since Oct-10 but once things have settled down after the hols I expect to be making regular extra OPs from September onwards.

My work is very seasonal and we have just been through the 'silly season' with lots of weekend working, so hopefully that will settle down too so that I feel like I have a bit of space left in my life. I have been working late and resorting to take aways on quite a number of evenings and really hate giving in but have been so tired I haven't had any alternative. I am hoping to return to some normality very soon, like now!

I have a couple of birthday presents to buy today for my nephew and niece, whose birthdays are next week so I'll be popping into Matalan for something for them. I also need to take some clothes to the charity shop. DH realised that 90% of his shorts were too small just as we were packing, so I had to do a late-night dash to a retail park so that he had something to take on holiday with him. At least that should leave him sorted out for Florida so I only need to worry about my own clothes, but again I'm sure Matalan will have something for me.

Right, time to get up. Have just had a relaxed tea and toast in bed with the lappy on my own.

gerbiljo

ooh lovely have fun in florida chickadee:j

abouttimetoo

Hi all, just stopping by to catch-up with everyones progress as I've not been on the boards for a couple of week.

You're all doing brilliant and once again FB has done a fab job with our beeeeeeeautiful spreadsheet. I should be making my OP next week but I'm going away for a few days so I've just set internet banking to make an OP of £549.21; for all of you with OCD re rounding numbers up the odd number is actually to make the outstanding balance a round number

PS, this bumps us back to page 1
Regards
ATT

VickyA_2

Hi all,

I'm so sorry for not responding sooner, but I haven't been on the forums in aaaaaaaaaaaages. I'll have to bow out of the challenge for now. We are overpaying each month, but there's no way that we'll achieve the target which I set back in Dec 2009!

I wish everyone the very best of luck in the challenge.

VickyA

RosieTiger

VickyA wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm so sorry for not responding sooner, but I haven't been on the forums in aaaaaaaaaaaages. I'll have to bow out of the challenge for now. We are overpaying each month, but there's no way that we'll achieve the target which I set back in Dec 2009!

I wish everyone the very best of luck in the challenge.

VickyA

Could you not just adjust your target?

cha97michelle

I'm quite happy as I have gone below £25k balance, which is where I need to be on the 12/12/11 to be on target for this challenge, so I make that 5 months ahead at this stage.

Now to keep it up eh?

Trying_to_be_good

Well done everyone for all the overpayments, large and small.

I've fixed our gas and electric prices for the next couple of years, so in theory should know the outgoing - but I hadn't expected a cold spell mid-July!

What money saving summer plans do you all have?

curlygirl1971

Trying_to_be_good wrote: »

Well done everyone for all the overpayments, large and small.

I've fixed our gas and electric prices for the next couple of years, so in theory should know the outgoing - but I hadn't expected a cold spell mid-July!

What money saving summer plans do you all have?

I've done the same (12 month fix)....first time ever that I've fixed but I spent A LOT of time looking at it and decided it was the best for me. I'm a low/average user according to BG and based on their new prices and comparing the fix I've moved to I should save upto £142 in the next year. £70 cashback has also tracked. Ding Dong.

I'm in the process of moving one of my Current Accounts to Santander - £55 cashback has tracked plus I should get £100 direct from Santander when its complete

I've also moved some savings around to get best interest rates - just fixed an ISA at 3.65% for 2 years - thought that was a pretty good rate.

Am in the process of renewing my House Insurance - for some reason my renewal seems to be the lowest price on the market. I can barely believe it. I'm gutted to not get the opportunity to go elsewhere and get cashback.

On the downside I'm considering buying an Xbox Kinect :rotfl:Never owned a games console before, never been interested. But enjoy my sisters Wii and when I was on a conference a couple of months ago there was a Kinect in the bar - it was brilliant. Fancy some of the fitness/Zumba games. Got to do something to get up off the sofa - I've put over 2 stone on in the last 2 years and I look and feel dreadful. Best price I've seen so far for the bundle (see, I've been doing my research and learning the lingo) is Best Buys £199 for new. Will keep looking and if I decide to do it then I would also consider a re-conditioned one. Don't worry - I would buy it on my Clubcard Credit Card and earn points. I figure that if I spend that £199 plus game cost I should actually break-even as I won't have to buy anymore large waisted items but can use the wardrobe bursting full of clothes in smaller sizes.

Overall my OP's have slightly reduced and this trend is likely to continue - this is down to my monthly budget being squeezed, increases in prices and a new monthly bill - however OP'ing is still very much on my agenda.

gerbiljo

All this gas electric price thing has confused me, I recently switched to BG and now I'm not sure what to do, I need a couple of hours to go through it all but I really struggling for time lately.