Bufgers Diary (Slow start, explosive finish?!)

Bufger

I'm a 29 year old married Dad of 2 boys (2 years and 5 months). My Wife and I have a combined income of £65k when shes not on maternity leave! our circumstances have changed so much since purchasing the house. We've gone from 2 adults on very disposible incomes to 2 married parents with a budget and lots of outgoings! At the time of editing this (Feb 2013) my wife is going back to work part time in a couple of weeks which will see a small rise in income. Once the boys are in school she will go back to full time which will bring us back to a big saving potential. Thats if all goes to plan!

Now we feel like all of the big things are out of the way we can start getting into a money routine and overpaying. We have a good idea how much we have left after each month to save. Based on my current income in 2014 I will have paid off my student loan, car and the sofa. Car is £201 per month, Student loan is £165 per month and Sofa is £44 per month.


Starting Mortgage: £127,000 (Nov 2009)
House bought for: £142,000

Current Mortgage: £121,000 (Nov 2012)
House Value (Zoopla): £140,000

5 Year fixed at 5.99% ending in 2014. As long as I can get the same rate or better by then with my current overpaying schedule planned I will be Mortgage Free on my 40th Birthday in May 2024. I'm currently planning on overpaying £100 per month until mid 2014 and then when I free up the extra £400 per month from paying off my other debt I will do a DD for £500 per month straight against the mortgage

Forgot to say. I get an annual bonus from work based on performance. Part of it is in a lump sum (anything from £0-£3k) and the other part goes on base salary (anything from 0%-6% base increase!). Any lump sum I get will go on that years holiday fund and the base increase will go against the mortgage - unless inflation rises massively in that particular year or we're feeling the squeeze too much.

Please join me in my journey, whether you're lurking or taking part!

THRIFTY_GIRL

Welcome to the thread Bufger!!!

Good luck with your quest. It is definitely a good idea to do a budget as it is the only way to really calculate what savings can be made.

If you want to go your separate ways, perhaps do one for household, one each for personal spending and a target for savings.

The 10% rule for overpayments tends to be on an annual basis.

Look forward to reading your diary.

Bufger

Does anyone else have a mortgage with natwest? Im wondering how you go about overpaying, do you set it up as part of your DD or do you transfer into an account as and when you want to? I want to overpay at the end of each month after ive sorted out my monthly savings but im not sure if i can set something up online or whether i call them each time etc.

Any advice is appreciated! cheers

Creditcardkid

Hello, I have a mortgage with Natwest. I rang them today for the first time and tried to make the overpayment via my Natwest Current Account. She told me I could not do this but could do it by credit card which I did.

Interestingly, it takes Capital One four minutes to ring to check that you authorised it! On the plus side, if you are very organised with finances this can help a lot. I will make a payment the day after my credit card statement is created and keep the money in a savings account for 58 days plus 1% cashback.

I am not sure why you cannot pay directly from your CA but this seems odd. Maybe that I did not get through to one of the better customer services people though - they have been very hit and miss from my pre-completion dealings with them.

Hope that helps.

Steve

Creditcardkid

Sorry, just realised that I could have paid with my debit card for my irregular overpayment.

Bufger

Creditcardkid wrote: »

Sorry, just realised that I could have paid with my debit card for my irregular overpayment.

Thats good news to me as i havent got a credit card! lol

Thanks for the info, i'll be doing it this way then

dimbo61

Creditcardkid !please make sure that if you pay by credit card its not seen as a cash advance !!! with all the charges that comes with.

HarveyGal

Hallo Bufger. I have a NatWest mortgage and make occasional additional payments: I always phone and pay from my NatWest current account, using my debit card. It usually takes a couple of days to appear on my on-line statement but they say they backdate the calcuations to the date I phoned.
I am fairly new to MSE and am learning a lot reading the threads. On the Debt Free Wannabee threads, folk post a Statement of Accounts - bit like a budget really, showing where their money goes. The Info you gave about monthly costs seems a bit odd - £394 for monthly bills including shopping allowance. I just wondered if you had included everything...is your council tax in there? Apologies, maybe just that my bills are so high!!
Good Luck with your task and look forward to reading your thread.

Bufger

HarveyGal wrote: »

Hallo Bufger. I have a NatWest mortgage and make occasional additional payments: I always phone and pay from my NatWest current account, using my debit card. It usually takes a couple of days to appear on my on-line statement but they say they backdate the calcuations to the date I phoned.
I am fairly new to MSE and am learning a lot reading the threads. On the Debt Free Wannabee threads, folk post a Statement of Accounts - bit like a budget really, showing where their money goes. The Info you gave about monthly costs seems a bit odd - £394 for monthly bills including shopping allowance. I just wondered if you had included everything...is your council tax in there? Apologies, maybe just that my bills are so high!!
Good Luck with your task and look forward to reading your thread.

Yep its all in there, i'll break it down for you as i dont have my SoA on this computer:

Water 36.73
BT 34.50
Gas 55
Elec 27
shopping 50
Home Ins 25.37
Council Tax 462.15/3 (quarterly bill)
Tv licence 36.89/3 (quarterly bill)

I havent broken down my car tax or insurance into this as i pay them in a lump sum out of my savings each time.

alfiesmum

Hiya, £50 a month for shopping is fantastic. I notice theres no broadband or sky tv type thingy. Also do you have mobile phones at all?

Bufger

alfiesmum wrote: »

Hiya, £50 a month for shopping is fantastic. I notice theres no broadband or sky tv type thingy. Also do you have mobile phones at all?

I bought a freesat box instead of having Sky, it runs straight from the satellite dish and gives me 70 channels for the 1 off payment it was to buy the box (£60). I do have broadband and thats included in the BT price quoted above, its quite a high speed one so i pay a little extra because i play the Xbox online and for gaming you need a good connection.

Mobile phones come out of our personal budget, that was our joint account outgoings. They are £15 each, the cheapest i believe you can get. I was on a £45 per month contract with an expensive phone but i realised how much money i was wasting. I sold the phone for £130 on Mazuma, bought a £20 cheap one and then took all the additions off the contract and asked them to reduce it each month, it eventually got down to £15 .

We're trying harder to batch cook food, we now have mealplans for 3 weeks on rotation so when i cook say an enchillada i know the quantity needed to get 2 meals out of it, we do this with stir fry, risotto, all mexican food, chilli con carne, home made curry, home made soups etc etc! the only things we indulge in is a posh meal cooked at home once a week, this week we had some lovely but expensive salmon steaks with wild mushroom salad and i did a chocolate spread filled pancake with fresh cream for desert! YUM

We used to be rubbish at planning ahead but it helps you save alot of money.