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

Aless

Hi All

This year is proving to be expensive and it has only just begun! After our expensive bed we have decided to redo the bathroom and that is £4k for a very small room. I think bathroom furniture has always been expensive and it has not really got cheaper. We are going for high end to try to make a small room look much better and we have always hated the way it is. Also we are getting rid of the 9.5kw electric shower which is responsible for a good part of our electricity usage even though there are only two of us and I only have very quick showers. But I guess it might take millions of showers to save the £4k!

I get very annoyed when the tax people get your tax wrong when you are on PAYE. I often get sent 4 or 5 different tax codes per year and I am a very straight forward case. The £6k must be mortifying!

Kaz2904 I too shop at Waitrose. I think some branded goods can have a high mark up there but we generally only buy fresh stuff like meat and veg with very few other things so it does not matter much to us. It may sound strange but one of the things I like is that their food does go off properly rather than Mr S's fruit and veg which doesn't have any mold on it even if after 3 months. There is something very alarming about that! Its important to me that they try to source their products from the UK and they work with farmers for better welfare of animals and things like leaving 10% of the land for wildlife. You pay your money and take your choice.

Superfast_Gran

RosieTiger wrote: »

It never ceases to amaze me that HMRC and employers can make a mistake when your on PAYE but they then insist on instant payments back to rectify the situation. We are not the experts in this they are.

We had this problem last year when hubby claimed back his mileage! There we were expecting a cheque for £1200 only to be told he'd underpaid £1000. It really is quite amazing isn't it?

Jock_Tight

Our January overpayment has just came off so we are now down to £10,765 and have started counting down the days (see updated sig) till we become mortgage free.......280 days at the moment :cool:

diadeb

Thanks folks, for your sympathies re the taxman.
My hubby tried to look on the bright side and say well at least we've had the money for the year instead of the taxman, but can't say it's brought us a great deal, interest rates being as low as they are!

Trying_to_be_good

Strangely the tax people sent both OH and I cheques this year. In fact, they paid the money straight into our accounts. You never can tell where you are with them...

shala_moo

Hi all...

Some great news with a few people paying off their mortgages.. oh to be there one day

Sorry to hear about your tax problems Diadeb.. so annoying when you've done everything correctly and someone else has messed up!!

I have a dilemma.... I'm not sure what to do about this challenge as i've moved into a new house (hence not having much internet time!) and took out double the mortgage and more that we had previously :eek: therefore, my old challenge numbers don't count anymore.

I've also had to borrow money from the family (which i still class as part of the mortgage) to be able to move, it was mainly to get under the 75% LTV without having to sell our previous house first.

So... can I change my targets/start amount and just carry on or do I need to drop out of the challenge?

Superfast_Gran

Trying_to_be_good wrote: »

Strangely the tax people sent both OH and I cheques this year. In fact, they paid the money straight into our accounts. You never can tell where you are with them...

OH got a cheque too but I checked their figures and they were wrong so rather than get a shocker somewhere down the road when we'd spent the money we wrote and told them - and they want the money back as I was right enough!!:mad:

TheBees

Hi everyone
Challenges for theBees in 2012
Save as much loose change as possible so that we can use it to make a capital repayment.
Save money for DS who may go to uni in October and will need pocket money each week in order to survive!
Save up for a newer car for me!
Keep to the grocery challenge of £400 per month and not a penny more.
Get off our high fixed rate in April and look forward to overpaying more.
Stop wasting money!

abouttimetoo

diadeb wrote: »

Thanks folks, for your sympathies re the taxman.
My hubby tried to look on the bright side and say well at least we've had the money for the year instead of the taxman, but can't say it's brought us a great deal, interest rates being as low as they are!

Hi Diadeb, really sorry to hear about your tax woes, I've just come to the end of 12 months of hell with them, it started with a demand for £5k to be paid within 3 weeks then quickly escalated to £8k. Many recalculations later it came out around £6k but with an amazing amount of incorrect information and administration nightmares along the way. This month I got my correct pay for the first time in 13 months....

As the others have said, it just adds to the frustration when you have done nothing wrong and they want the money back immediately, in my case they were nearly three years behind on their paperwork...

Chin up, you're doing really well on other fronts

Regards
ATT

curlygirl1971

Out of nosey interest.....does anyone leave money in ISA's or add to their ISA pots as well as OP'ing? And if so, why? What's your reasoning if any?

For the record I have about £15k in ISA's and this includes a little that I've put in recently. Now and again I do get tempted to dip in and use some as an OP but i never go through with it :rotfl: I feel like I worked too hard to put it there in the first place. I can't afford to fill my ISA pots and OP so most of the time I OP as I don't really need any more savings......but there again we only get that one chance every tax year to build up that pot for the future. I know many don't have much savings and plough everything into OP's but I'm just not that brave!