What am I doing?Am I doing ok?

newdell

Hi there,
After reading nearly(!) all posts, I have decided ask your opinions. As always my SOA

(Monthly)

[Income]
My Salary £1840
My Wife's Salary £866
Rent Income (one room in the house) £216
TOTAL £ 2922

[Expenses]
Mortgage £ 980 :eek:
Elect,water,gas ~ £ 105
Travel (both of us) £ 225
Council Tax £ 110
TV Licence £ 11.25
Sky £ 44
Internet £ 35
Car Insurance £ 58
Petrol £ 100
Loan £96 (total £6000 left):eek:
Balance Transfer £ 45 (total £ 1700 left) :eek:
Food £350
TOTAL £2159

Actually when I write it down like this it doesn't look so bad :rotfl:
And mortgage details

Sale price : £ 212000
Borrowed : £ 200000
Interest only fixed 2 years (5.7 %) £980
After 2 years it will be 6.74%:mad:

Could you tell me where I need to be more carefully as I still don't feel comfortable about my finance?What can I improve to prepare my self for repayment mortgage term?

Thanks for your help!!!

NewDell

mrcow

Why can't you start repaying your mortgage now? Otherwise your debt is just not going anywhere and you are paying interest on it.

Who is your mortgage with? Most companies will allow overpayments.

Why not ditch your Sky, start overpaying your mortgage by £700 per month and start making your money work for you instead of someone else?

all_hours

According to your SOA you have over £750 spare each month. Do you have this left over? If not start a spending diary to find out where it's going. If you do have it left over are you saving it somewhere?

Whats the APR on your loan and BT. Have you considered overpaying on these to get them paid off faster? With the amount of spare income you have you could get these both paid off in the next year.

Your food shopping is high. How many is that for?

You could consider reducing or getting rid of sky package.

mrcow

Sorry didn't even see the loan or credit card.

Is the cc at 0%? If so can you get another 0% card at the end of the deal.

Will your loan allow overpayments? If so then how about redirecting the spare money to the loan (or into a savings plan to pay off the loan in one go) and then use it for the mortgage once the loan is cleared?

What's the APR on the loan and over how many years?

newdell

Thanks for the quick replies.

Unfortunately sky has 1 year contract which will end begining of next year.After that I will go back to freeview.

You are not going to believe me but I really don't know the APR of the loan :rolleyes: I will check when I get home. but it is for 74 months and I think i paid 6 payments.Could you explain "over paying the loan" more? when you say over pay, can I let's say pay £200 one month and £150 other month etc?Or does it have to be fixed, like £200 every month instead of £96?

Food is approx. actually. it is for 2 :rolleyes: But I eat a lot! :A Never calculated it. How much 2 people spend on food?

Balance transfer is 0% untill feb. After that i will try another 0% deal.

lynzpower

We spend 100-125 ish on food a month for 2. With that sort of spend you must have bulging cupbaords!!! Or be binning stuff unused We eat loads too

Also your internet is high- 35 quid. You can get tesco value BB internet for 13 quid, but there is cheaper as well - have a nose on the internet board for info

Overpaying the loan means paying your normal standard payments, but then any spare money you have chuck that at the loan as well, to get rid of it quicker. EG if you get your food shopping down to 150 a month, you have a spare 200 quid to pay off your loan each and every month, which will probably reduce the term considerably.

mrcow

Some loan companies will allow you to make regular overpayments (ie additional payments on top of your regular payments). You'll save money in interest repayments and will pay off the loan much more quickly (in about 1 year if you use your "spare" income in your case).

Other loan companies won't allow this, so the alternative is to put the money by into a savings account until you have enough to pay the settlement figure of the loan off all in one go. You may have to pay one month's interest as a penalty for doing this, but it will still save you money in the long term. Who is the loan with?

By my calcs, you are paying about 7% apr on the loan (but check when you read the paperwork) which isn't bad. If your credit card isn't at 0%, you'd probably be better off paying that off first.

Ref Sky, after the year contract is up, phone to cancel and they will probably offer you a 1/2 price deal!

newdell

I will work on the food bills,promise:)
About internet. it is a problem for me because I have some special requirements. I host my web server and email server at home,so only bulldog (as far as I know) doesn't block required ports.

So I will call halifax and tell them instead of £96 I would like to pay £200 every month. is that correct?

Cannon_Fodder

Sky - no need to go to Freeview, just keep the box & dish when you cancel, and use the Sky box to watch everything "free to air"...same difference as Freeview, but I find Sky has better channel reliability...

mrcow

Halifax don't state whether they allow overpayments on their loans on their website, so you'd have to check with them.

The best way to go about it is to sort out your budget and maths and work out the maximum you can comfortably overpay by. From your SOA, you could easily afford to pay more than £200 per month. If you could increase this to say £268 per month, you could pay the lot off within two years to coincide with your mortgage hike.

It's worth just going through your finances to see if this is feasible. If Halifax don't allow overpayments, it may even be worth looking at refinancing the loan completely over a two year period?

lynzpower

newdell wrote:

I will work on the food bills,promise:)
About internet. it is a problem for me because I have some special requirements. I host my web server and email server at home,so only bulldog (as far as I know) doesn't block required ports.

So I will call halifax and tell them instead of £96 I would like to pay £200 every month. is that correct?

your best bet is to call them and say can you overpay

I think an extre 104 shoulnt be any problem at the mo, but is it YOU that does the food shopping? ONly many of us have found it a struggle to get the shopping budget down- so maybe see if you can make ad-hoc overpayments frst then send cheques, or pay cash or do over the internet as and when.

Other thing, what have you got to sell? Books, dvds? Anything hanging round the house, get it on ebay! and with the proceeds, pay off debt with it