Mortgage Free In 12 Months

Carafan

Well its an early pay day tomorrow so I have had a look at whats left in the current account - just over £400 so have transferred £246.00 into the savings. This means that it rounds up the figure to £12,000 to save next year - £1000 a month:eek:

Hope you all have a great Christmas:beer:

Carafan

A belated Happy New Year everyone!:beer:
Well here we are at the start of 2011, this is when I have to really move things up a notch if we are to be mortgage free by the end of the year.

Looking back to last year not too much progress was made, mainly due to not starting on this journey untill mid November - I'm wishing that I'd started sooner!!!!

However I did manage to put £1264.00 into the savings account so not too bad a start.

So back to this year, I have just transferred £300 into the savings account and our first overpayment of £300 will be made at the end of this week so I feel that its a good start. I realise that its going to be a challenging year but I am looking forward to it:)

Carafan

Just a quickie!

Have just called my building society to get a balance as from the start of this year and it is £23,190 so a little bit better than before. Oh and have been paid £2.07 interest on my savings - every little helps!!!

katsu

Hi Carafan and Happy New Year. I've offered some thoughts for your rebudgeting.

Carafan wrote: »

Hi,
Well this weekend I've been able to look into our finances in a little more detail. This is basically how it breaks down -

Total Monthly Income (after tax/pension) £2758.59

Mortgage (inc £300 overpayments) £447.60
Council Tax £119.00
Electric £56.00 This seems quite high for the 3 of you. Have you switched recently/checked you are on the best deal? Have you used an energy meter to measure your consumption and see what to turn off? Are you on estimated bills? Do you turn lights off, nothing on standby etc?
Gas £50.00 Think you could probably get this down a bit too.
Water £36.00
Telephone £31.00 This seems high when it does not include internet. Have you looked at Martin's articles? Are you on a package for, say, free evening and weekend calls? Would something like that help you reduce the costs?
Mobile £5.00 Amazing :T:T:T:T:T:T
TV Licence £12.12
Internet £7.50 Good
Groceries £260.00
Clothing £100 If you wanted to, I suspect you could reduce this a bit for a short term mortgage push
Petrol £150.00
Road Tax £30.00
Car Insurance £66.00
Car Repairs/MOT £50.00
School Dinners £26.00
Dentists/Opticians £15.00
House Insurance £38.00
Life Insurance £6.05
Other Insurance £23.45
Birthdays/Christmas £83.00 :eek: Seems a bit steep. I do 23 people for Christmas and I spent ~£170. I use sale bargains (got next yr's cards and giftwrap yet?), charity shops, 99p store bargains etc.
Haircuts £15.00
Entertainment £50.00
Holidays £40.00
Caravan Club/NT £10.00

Total Monthly Expenses £1701.72

Monthly Budget Summary

Amount(£)

Total monthly income

2,758.59

Monthly expenses

1,726.72

Available for repayments

1,031.87

OK so thats the finances in order - next step a plan of attack!!!!:D

It really depends what you want to reduce. As you seem to have money slipping away I'd suggest a spending diary for a month or two, then you could see where the excess goes and decide if you want to trim it down.

Good luck and hope some of the above helps.

Carafan

Hi Katsu,

Thank you for taking the time to have a look at my budgeting - there are some good points.

You are right about the gas and electric seeming high and its something that i shall have a look at this evening. We do use an electricity monitor and I am quite obsessive about turning off lights!!! The only other thing that might make a difference is that the house is quite old (100yrs) and over 3 floors so takes a bit of heating - plus I work from home so at this time of year heating is on all day.

The phone figure needs to be changed as part of that amount is for my business number, i'd missed that so thank you! - its should be around £24. Again working from home saves on the mobile phone costs:)

I agree about the clothing amount and most months will not spend this much:A:rotfl:

Birthdays and Christmas - In this I've included everything, birthday parties, christmas dinner...the lot! I'm sure there are some savings to be made there but with a 10 year old its going to be tricky! I've whittled my Christmas card list down for next year from 70 to 20 as I will only be sending cards to my closest friends and family and put a note in everyones cards this year explaining my (eco) reasons why. The cards that I will be sending have already been bought at half price:)

Thanks once again, I'm off now to check out some gas and electricity deals:D

Carafan

Well I have just spent an hour working out the annual usage in kw's for gas and electric and looking at the comparison sites and come up with a saving of .........nothing!!!

So if any savings are to be made it has to be through how much is used.

On the plus side the house insurance is due this month, unfortunately due to circumstances we are unable to change our insurers however I have managed to get them to knock £55 off the renewal

My next step is to start a spending diay to help me track where the money is going.

Carafan

Well the first overpayment of £300 has gone out of my bank account today:j

I have been making a spending diary for both me and OH. So far since Wednesday I have spent..........nothing! and I have left the car at home and walked to school each day:A

On the other hand Hubbie has spent £125, our Freeview recorder gave up the ghost on Monday, it couldn't be repaired and he couldn't live without one:rotfl:. The purchase benefits us all though and other than this he hasn't spent anything. It will be interesting to see how things go over the weekend!

Hope you all have a good weekend and keep up the good work.

Carafan

Woooo, just amended my siggy to take the overpayment into account and noticed that we are over half way there!!!!:)

Carafan

Not much to report over the weekend.
On Saturday we had a day at home so didn't spend anything! However today I had to buy a birthday present for my friends son's 1st birthday and got a lovely outfit for £11 from M & S. We also spent £14.50 on a take away for tea so will have to be a bit more frugle with the grocery budget this week!

The details to enable me to manage my mortgage account online came through the post yesterday so tomorrow I shall look to transfer some of the savings and make an overpayment. At the moment our interest rate on the mortgage is 2.5% and the savings account 1.35% so it seems like a good idea - shall have to work out how to do it first though!!!!

Hope everyone has had a good weekend!

Carafan

I have come to the conclusion that not only am I a MFW but I am a MFW addict!

After finding out that I can't make the transfer over the internet I have just sent a cheque for an overpayment of £1,500 out of the savings account. I think seeing the balance drop will give me the added motivation as this is going to be a tough few months as alot of our expenses go out at the begining of the year. At the end of this month there is the house insurance to pay for and hubbies car tax so I will really need to tighten the purse strings elsewhere.