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setmefree2

chirpchirp wrote: »

Gosh you all make me feel so bad. I never used to turn the heating off it was always set to keep the house at 21 degrees. Now I've taken it off that and set it to manual but once it gets below 19 degrees I feel really cold even with the extra layer. It's mainly my fingers and nose which feel it! However, it's at 17.4 at the moment and has warmed up from 17.2 which it had dropped to when I finally went to bed.

I really don't know how you can bear to let it get to 14 degrees!

Ours is set for 19 degrees - might boost to 20 in winter.....It's warm here in London.....don't think our heatings been on for weeks and weeks...

chirpchirp

Seems a while since I've updated. Money is dripping out of my account all over the place!

When I was reading the utilities thread a while ago I found out about imeasure where you can put your weekly readings and it makes graphs of your usuage. These are my figures which I'm really pleased with:

14 Jun 2009112£0.32116£0.593015£4.695223£5.60
7 Jun 2009327£0.97137£0.693719£5.798233£7.45
31 May 2009439£1.30126£0.643216£5.008731£6.94
24 May 20096513£1.95147£0.754322£6.7312242£9.43
17 May 20096513£1.95137£0.693618£5.6311438£8.27
10 May 20098918£2.66136£0.674322£6.7414546£10.07
3 May 20095211£1.56116£0.614321£6.7110638£8.88
26 Apr 200927457£8.235025£2.6513568£21.16459150£32.04
19 Apr 200927457£8.235025£2.6513568£21.18459150£32.06
12 Apr 200927457£8.235025£2.6513568£21.16459150£32.04

However, the costings are incorrect as I can't set it properly for my tariffs but they aren't that far out! I feel like I've slipped a bit this week though as I used my tumble dryer but not on the night rate!

setmefree2

:T well done on the energy savings. Come and join on the Green Board on this thread here

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=980757&page=70

if you want some extra encouragement

chirpchirp

Hmmm..... Interesting stuff in the post! My mortgage company would like me to swap from my tracker to a fixed rate. They are offering different rates based on the LTV and I think mine is about 74%. They are offering 4.59% upto 60% LTV, 4.79% between 60.01% -75% and 75.01 to 90% is 4.99%. Currently paying 1.49%. Whilst for the short term I am obviously best at 1.49% these rates would mean paying approx £700 more a month which I could be paying as overpayments.

The tricky bit, and the great selling point is they are offering this fixed rate for the lifetime of the mortgage upto 20 years!

Now this says to me that they don't expect rates to rise too much in the forthcoming years or else they wouldn't be offering such a long tie in.

My dilemma is do I stay at my tracker rate and hope that the peaks and troughs even out overtime or do I gamle on interest rates rising. I'm presuming my lender is more experienced than me and is gambling on interest rates staying low for quite a while to be offering such a good rate for such a long time.

I'm thinking that the amount of extra money the tracker will allow me to throw at the mortgage at the moment may overtime outweigh the extra I will pay when interest rates go up. If I go onto the fixed rate they are offering I will only be able to pay a very small capital payment of possibly £150 -£600 a month. Whilst interest rates are low I may be able to pay upto £1300 pounds. Obviously the latter will start having a greater affect on the amount of interest I will pay on a daily basis.

My plan at the moment is to continue to pay £1000 on my mortgage making an approx overpayment of £700 a month. Once I have some spare cash from paying off my solictor and for paying for my son's instrument I will then fill my cash ISA with the £500 or so this should free up, each month. Following that I will fill my Stocks and Shares ISA and then depending on interest rates I will then pay the money into a savings account earmarked for overpayments or straight at the mortgage.

chirpchirp

My gut reaction is to stay on the tracker despite this being an excellent deal. Does anyone else agree that this is what I should do?

I'm basing this decision on the fact that I think that mortgage rates will stay the same for the next six months and I think it may take 2 years for the rates to be upto 5% Obviously this is all guess work. I'm inclined to only look at the past 12 years interest rates as the BOE rate is now governed by the bank as opposed to the government. I may be naive but I don't think they have been using interest rates for political gain as the governments use to.

Hopefully when rates start to move I can get a fixed rate which may not be as good as the one offered and may only be short term but hopefully the capital amount will be smaller by then and hence the monthly payment may be the same.

My current mortgage is very flexible and allows me to pay off as much as I wish each month and this would continue with the other mortgage but I'm loathed to pay 4.79% when I've been on a fixed rate and missed out on the current low interest rates.

chirpchirp

Decided to take Stuart's advice about having little treats and splashed out on a Papa John's pizza. The bloke told me there may be a 50p charge for using my card but he wasn't sure as it only happened with some cards. Unfortunately mine was one of them! Has anyone else ever had this happen to them? I was spending over £15 so it wasn't like it was less than a fiver!

chirpchirp

Just been online and seen my new gas bills but I'm confused - perhaps someone can help. How can 4 units be converted to so much more than 23units? The cost of Kwh looks less the second time but seems to work out to so much more!
Meter Serial Number Meter readings Gas Used Present Previous Calorific Value Mj/m3 100's Cubic Feet Cubic Metres Tariff Rate kWh Pence per kWh Cost of Gas Used £ 09911 4364 C 4341 A 4368 C 4364 C 39.40000 23 4 345 7.191 24.81 510 2.915 14.87 Total Cost of Gas Used: £39

I'm really confused as the electric bill looks strange. The credit at the end isn't equivalent to the balance - am I missing something?
This quarter's activity In Out Balance Previous Balance £0.00 Payment 02 June 2009 £48.00 £48.00 CR Direct debit discount 29 June 2009 £2.10 £50.10 CR Electricity charge 29 June 2009 £48.74 £1.36 CR Current balance £0.93 Here's hoping this makes sense to someone!

StuartGMC

ChirpChirp
Not sure what the charge was for on your card? Speak to your card company to learn more and for them to advise main retaillers charging you - if there are a lot, think about changing cards?

Fixed vs variable tracker - you're in the gambling zone I'm afraid. Historical base rate data you can get from BoE web site but needless to say the rate fell rapidly and can rise as rapidly. Your decision I think is "at what rate will I really struggle to pay" then decide on the trigger point lower than that so you have time to get fixed in place.

BoE will have to use interest rates to control inflation; I've seen some pundits suggest BoE base rate of 5% by end of 2012. So, mortgages would then be, say 8-9% variable rates? That is, just where they were in 1994 and for some years thereafter and, wait for it, 1994 was a point where we were just coming through the tail end of the previous recession (we know it hurt us job wise but helped get us on the housing ladder too).

You sound like you've got a good residual income on top of the OP; consider OPing more and back of the ISAs for now? You would then have lower capital owing when rates rise whilst benefiting from low SVR now?

Best wshes in your decision

chirpchirp

New signature required!

Just paid £700.80 - lovely to be on the tracker rate at last.:T

setmefree2

chirpchirp wrote: »

New signature required!

Just paid £700.80 - lovely to be on the tracker rate at last.:T

well done :T:T