Some sense please ... again

CathT

Hi Spiggs,

You are doing really well. Thanks for your comment. We bought our first house when I was 20 and the mortgage was tiny - £205 but we never overpaid!! We moved to our current home 3 bed detached (used to be our forever house, now not so sure!) when I was 22 and the mortgage jumped to a massive £750 yet I set up an OP of £50 automatically! This didn't last long though due to some family events which set us back a little. Am a firm believer in paying off the mortgage asap and just wish I had found this forum earlier!

I never thought of dividing mortgage balance by monthly payment to see how many months were left - seems I have 171 (14 years, 3 months!) I thought we had much longer though.

Re: your piggybank accounts - this is something I need to do to pay annual home insuarance, insure 2 cars, pay professional subscriptions etc. Are these actual bank accounts you credit monthly?

Cath

LilacPixie

Spiggs you are doing really really well. Personally I think its about striking a balance with what works for you

Spiggle

CathT wrote: »

Hi Spiggs,

You are doing really well. Thanks for your comment. We bought our first house when I was 20 and the mortgage was tiny - £205 but we never overpaid!! We moved to our current home 3 bed detached (used to be our forever house, now not so sure!) when I was 22 and the mortgage jumped to a massive £750 yet I set up an OP of £50 automatically! This didn't last long though due to some family events which set us back a little. Am a firm believer in paying off the mortgage asap and just wish I had found this forum earlier!

I never thought of dividing mortgage balance by monthly payment to see how many months were left - seems I have 171 (14 years, 3 months!) I thought we had much longer though.

Re: your piggybank accounts - this is something I need to do to pay annual home insuarance, insure 2 cars, pay professional subscriptions etc. Are these actual bank accounts you credit monthly?

Cath

Hi Cath,

Thank you, tootallulah and lilac pixie for your comments.

Yes, the piggybanks are actual easy access savings accounts with IF operated entirely online. They are savings accounts and they are not best buys as they only pay 2.49% monthly. BUT the thing I love about the account is that you can have any number of named 'jars' within the account. So I have a jar each for: Christmas; Entertainment; Clothes; Car maintenance, Car Insurance, Car tax, Building & Contents Insurance; Golden Virginia (GV) (one day I'll give up! ); and Birthdays. So the flexibility they offer me outweighs the small loss of interest if I was putting it into a best buy account. :cool:

I have set up standing orders for the amounts worked out in my budget planner (the one available on this site) to leave the current account every month. (Though you have the facility to have the money taken by Direct Debit if you prefer.) Some go out when the OH salary hits the account and others when my salary goes in.

When a bill comes up I transfer the amount by BACS from the relevant jar to the current account and it's all sorted.

I also send money every month to my and the OH ISAs which count for two things. One is a holiday and the other is as an emergency should anything come up, God forbid.

All other regular bills are paid on monthly direct debits. The only monthly bills paid by standing orders are the mortgage and the CC due to the fact that I want to OP and set the amounts myself. I also think SO give far more flexibility to the payer as I'm in control of the amount rather than megacorp inc coming and taking what they want!

Finally, my annual mortgage statements have arrived. :j So I have had a bit of a rejig of my balances to account for the variances. I have 'gained' about £45 as the balance has reduced slightly. It's all to the good provided the figure goes down and not up!

OK, I'm off to Quidco to check out Breakdown cover and house/contents insurance as both expire this month. I've rung my existing companies to say don't automatically renew me. The surprising thing is I immediately got offered a reduction of £56.70 off the House/contents premium. It just shows how these companies make so much money from people not paying attention and just letting the renewal roll on.

After that I'm off to get my haircut and then back to do some more searching for the best buys.

Have a great day all.

Take care,
Spigs

Spiggle

Hi All,

Well boggled my eyes yesterday searching out the best deal for home and contents insurance. Naturally I went through Quidco and managed to bag a deal at £12.50 less than last year with £45 cashback. So net cost after cashback is only £100.50 for the year. :dance:

My breakdown cover expires this month too. So did the same thing and got the R*C deal through Quidco getting a years cover for £28 and £20 cashback. So net cost £8 only a pound more than last year when A* were offering same price but £21 cashback. Oh I do so love getting money back for buying things.

Of course, the payments for this are made by debit card and I've transferred the relevant amount out of the piggybank account to the current account. So cost is all covered.

I also had one of those letters from nP**er so will be getting a letter from them to claim £33.19 from the Post Office in cash. :T

Its all to the good when it was completely unexpected. :cool:

OK, have a great weekend all.

Take care,
Spigs

Spiggle

Hi All,

This is probably my last post on this thread as I'm going to start a new thread with an appropriate title later.

But just for on here I wanted to update the figures. The Mortgage payments went out on the 1st along with the CC OP. So a total of £839 off the two mortgages bringing my total left owing to £51,084.02. The £230 on the CC brought the total outstanding to £2,160. Therefore the total owing now is £53,244.02.

I was looking back over my posts and thinking about the milestones that make me jump for joy. While it's accurate that it'll be another four months or so to get the total under £50k I will also have a little jump for joy when I get the two mortgages total below £50 in a couple of months.

I'm also on leave for about a fortnight over the Christmas break so I'm planning on having another day or two to readjust my finances. We've had a few income changes since August when I last did the full works so I need to see if I can put some more money each month away. Only when I've looked at the numbers fully will I be able to decide whether any excess goes into savings or more on the OP. I'm favouring savings at the moment but I want to see what the options offer me in terms of the interest earned there versus the term coming down on the mortgage further.

I hope everyone is ok in the freezing weather and you are keeping warm and safe.

Take care,
Spigs