The MFW diary of a procrastinator

mbbetter

Last week I was driving like an old granny just to see if it improved my fuel consumption. Wow, what a result - I managed to get 50.01 mpg out a full tank of fuel. This is pretty impressive as the car is rated at 38 mpg.

This difference will save me at least £60 a month in fuel.
I wasn't actually driving ridiculously slowly as I was frequently passing other slower drivers. I'm going to try an max it out even more this week

In other news signed up with mysupermarket and tracked £5.50 cashback. That will be chomped off the mortgage when it clears...
Good luck all,

mbbetter

On to a new week and it has already got off to a good start.

Exchanged a bit of travel money back into sterling +£29

Sold a gift voucher (leaving present) for +£70

Had a bit of cash leftover from the weekly budget (driving like a
granny, meal planning, and making lunches) +£70

Also found a very old unused lastminute.com gift voucher that we can use to offset a gift for someone. This frees funds from the pressie budget to overpay +£50

Pretty pleased I have stopped procrastinating and totted up a rather pleasing overpayment of around £219...

Gotta ebay a bit more junk this week and keep chipping away.

Good luck all.

mbbetter

This post pretty much rounds off 1 years worth of diary.

Looking back over the past year its been a pretty interesting challenge. On of the few projects that has managed to maintain my focus for a full 12 months. I think this is the most surprising thing for me. Having started many blogs that now lie dormant, I'm just surprised that we kept this thing going. So here are the results:

Mortgage Sept 2010: £173,205
Mortgage Sept 2011: £152,745
Mortgage reduced by: £20,406
Total overpayments: £10,269
Average monthly OP: £855

I'm very happy with what we managed to achieve in a year. Sure we set out to overpay £1,000 a month, but we got pretty close. We also had a major DIY project part way through the year which probably accounted for most of the shortfall.

I also said I was hoping to get below £150k by the end of 2011 - this is very much on target.
I think what I have learned over the year is that what seem like small things really do add up. Some months are little more than; a bit of cashback, selling a few things on ebay, switching for cheaper insurance, finding some change in the house, it all adds up!

Moving into the 2nd year of the diary - no targets yet, I'll have a little think.

Cheers all!

mbbetter

Ok - back onto the diary - its been a while, so this is pretty much onto year 2! My how time flies when you are having fun overpaying...

Been chipping away quite nicely over the past 3 months and as a result the Mortgage now stands at £145,029. We did pretty well to get it below the £150k mark before the end of 2011.
Tasks we've undertaken this week:

Finally I have taken out the 0% credit card. I have been procrastinating over this for nearly 12 months. The plan is to slow stooze this card, which has a £10k limit with a minimum 1% payback. By most calculations this should save around +£200 in interest payments over 15 months. £13 a month tax free, just for filling in a few forms and changing my approach to how I spend.

Had a nice bit of cashback from house insurance payment +£45 (5 months to track!)

OH spotted the Asda +£5 off when you spend £40 and compare prices. Did this over the weekend also an extra +£1.60 for some reason (price difference?)

AA quote came through - not happy with the £114, so hope to shop around and save around +£40

Did a bit of major cleaning over the weekend, firstly I now realise we have sooooo much crap that we need to sell / give away. I also found +£3.20 around the house whilst cleaning.

I now have a longer commute - using this to listen to financial podcasts to keep me motivated. Cheers all and good luck!

mbbetter

A good weekend, out on Saturday but it was a pretty cheap one. Sunday was a no spend day! My first in a long time, mainly as I decided not to go out and buy a few beers for the evening. I currently drink far too much and it really is time to kick what has become a bit of a habit.

Also petrol is really starting to annoy me and filling up the car each week of around £40 is becoming a bit annoying. I've already started driving much more slowly, but need to look into ways other ways to claw back even a fraction of this. May consider some kind of loyalty card as I don't have one, not sure its really worth it though

Phoned the AA to cancel my membership to move to the cheaper RAC. After being put through to the "retention department" they offered to cut my quote from £114 to £69 for the year. A good result, but disappointing I had to get to the point of asking to cancel (after 9 years of membership).

The OH also chipped in another +£200 overpayment so pretty please with that result!

On to another MFW week.

mbbetter

Ok its been a little while since a post, but the mortage is stil taking a bit of abeating from us.

The past two months have seen some fairly nice chunky overpayments and we have now chopped it below the £140k mark. Pretty pleased indeed.

In other news the 0% card arrived and is now being used for the stooze experiment. So far it seems to be working pretty well. Have £1500 offset against the mortgage and will be putting all my monthly spend on the card - clearly the key here is to keep the funds ring fenced to pay off the card in full at the end of the 15months. Feels quite nice that Halifax are paying some of my interest for me, even if its only a small amount.

Cheers
all!

mbbetter

Another update - Not much is happenig other than getting paid and chipping it off the mortgage.We have a holiday coming up at the end of next month, so time to batten down the hatches to maintain the momentum.

Have now started shopping at Aldi, boy that place is cheap. Did this weeks shopping for £28. Admittedly one of the meals was only pancakes this week, but Aldi is seriously bargainous!

Also the 2 year fixed rate is due to expire in April, so need to get to grips with the deals out there and run some numbers. I think we will stick with our existing provider (First Direct) and go again for a 2 year fixed. An ititial look at the options out there and it seems most products are pretty similar, get a lower rate and you get stung with a £2k arrangement. Over 2-3 years it works out around the same value. I think I could save a bit (£100 over 2 years), but for the hassle of moving provider we may give it a miss.

I've been considering not overpaying so much and investing in ISA's. Just not motivated by this at the moment, despit the fact it is probably the more financially astute thing to do in the long run.

Mortgage now stands at £136,970. Looking forwards to munching away to the 120k's

Sepa74

ISAs vs OPs are a hard call. I think that I will OP until I'm below the £100K mark and then divert some money into ISAs each year.

At the moment my pension is in stocks and shares, and my spare cash is going into property (paying off the mortgage or into my offset account) so it is balanced from that point of view, however the tax free income stream the ISAs will provide will be very nice to have in retirement too, so I will start building them up in a few years time.

mbbetter

Thanks Sepa,

I think thats a plan, I think I may look to stash some cash into Isas before the end of this financial year.

In other news, our 2 year fixed mortgage deal is coming to end. We have secured a further 2 year fixed rate with First Direct at 3.49%. Our current rate is 3.64% so this is a fairly minor, but welcome drop.

I appreciate that there are lower variable rates out there, but we have always fixed and prefer this approach. Also this mortgage is fee free, tehre are some great headline rates out there but many of them have a £2k fee, crunching the numbers the fee pretty much negates the lower interest. Also as we are sticking with first direct there is no need for a vlauation survey or other hassles.

Its going to be quite nice to start antother 2 year stint on the mortgage. It helps focus the mind. May will see the start of the next 2 year battle, at the back of my mind I'm hoping this will be the last mortgage we have to take out, although I think that's a bit unrealistic.

Its been a pretty cheap couple of weeks, been cutting back on the shop made sandwiches this week and making rolls.
Also managed to sell quite a lot of stuff on ebay recently which has raised around £60 in funds. There is still quite a bit to be listed, so need to crack on with that.

Extracted around £400 from my growing matched betting float into the offset, which is a nice little bit of interest saved.

I've found a few money blogs that I've found quite motivational recently which has helped focus the mind back on the task.

Good luck all!

mbbetter

Hi all,

With a slight feeling of sadness, its time to say that I may well be winding down this diary, as pretty much hinted at in my last post. Since undertaking the MFW project I have learned much about finance, investing, tax, inflation etc. Needless to say I have come around the the conclusion that throwing all my eggs into the MFW basket, may not be the best approach for me in the long term.

As I posted elsewhere:

The challenge (nice challenge really) is that if I keep punching the mortgage in the face at the maximum rate (assuming we don't upsize) is that once its paid (3.5yrs) the tax man will then punch me in the face to the tune of 40% tax (income) for our surplus cash.

So rather than paying off my mortgage in 3.5 years why not pay it in 7 and pay much less tax? That's the plan I'm formulating at least.

However the result of past 20 months of overpaying the mortgage has done more than just reduce the balance.It has taught me the long term value of each and every £1 (whether this for overpaying or investing). I've learned how to plan financially (I thought I did - but not really) and understand what motivates me to cut costs or find income.

We will still be overpaying the mortgage, just not to the extent we had previously. The long term aim is to be mortgage free of course, but its not the total focus it once was.

I may pop back to update the diary from time to time,

Cheers and good luck all.