Lois_E begins a long MFW journey

catshark88

gallygirl wrote: »

I agree. Can whoever switched the weekend off just do one and switch it on again .

Yes, please do!

Back to a week of DH working mad hours and kids at school. Will miss them all.

Have a few social things this week, which is nice, but hard not to spend anything. Everyone takes something along, I will need to learn to bake...

Lois_E

Just had a letter from Halif@x saying that my 2.8% rate on my savings account with them will be dropping in April ... to 0.1%!

So if I leave a thousand quid in there for a whole year, they'll just give me one measly pound in interest, which will be taxed so I only get 80p! I'd be better off leaving it in my current account as added insurance against going OD by mistake and losing a £5 reward payment.

However, all is not lost. I still have my current account (empty and not being used, but not actually closed) with RBS from before I switched to Halif@x to start getting the £5 reward every month. And RBS are doing a limited time offer for existing customers of a savings account that offers 1.75% AER. Well, 1.75% is piddly enough, but at least it's better than 0.1%. I have money in 4 tiers of interest vs access:

1) Current account (Halif@x) - Pays me £5 reward a month, but no interest, of course.
2) Day to day savings - I want to get some interest on this, but maximising it is not the most important consideration because I don't keep more than a few hundred in there. The most important thing is that I do want truly instant access, as in faster payments rather than 3 days to clear, so I can use it to top up my current account if it's about to go OD. I put money in here if I have a good month, and take it back out when the car needs its service & MOT or I want to pay my house insurance in one annual payment, or similar. I'm getting 2.8% on this with Halif@x ATM, but after April then 1.75% with RBS will have to do.
3) Emergency Fund - This is where I build up larger sums of money over the course of the year ready to put in the ISA in March. ATM it's with GE and getting 3.06% - although only until August. I don't mind having to wait 3 days for payments to clear for this.
4) ISA. I put stuff in in March each year when I find out how much I've got just before the tax year ends. Access isn't a problem. This money's supposed to stay in here indefinitely, although in practice I expect I shall end up getting it out to buy a replacement car when mine gets to the point of needing replacing (although I hope that won't be for several years yet). ATM I'm getting 3.05% on this (tax free, obviously), but most of that's a 12 month bonus that will run out in March this year, so I'll need to transfer it to a different product.

Must keep reminding myself that there's no point getting annoyed that savings rates are so low, because if they go up then mortgage rates will go up too, and the net effect would be negative for me.

Radish72

Ooh you have reminded my that my Halifax interest rate finished in December (2.8 - 0.1%) so I need to find a new one

catshark88

skint_spice wrote: »

Loving the idea of a campaign of terror waged by making sock puppets

Not sure whether to laugh, or hide under the duvet!:rotfl:

Lois_E

Hmm.... Thinking I might redesign my sig to include the EF as well as the ISA when calculating my mortgage neutral date. Or would that be cheating? Opinions please!

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi Lois, it would show your true debt so it might make sense to include. Tilly x

Calfuray

I would say go for it, but... do you have enough space?

Lois_E

Calfuray wrote: »

I would say go for it, but... do you have enough space?

No. I will have to rejig things to eliminate a few characters so I can get the added info in without going over the character limit. Will see what I can sort out and do it later this evening.

Thanks for the encouragement, anyway, Calfuray and Tilly, and here's a wave for all you lovely people who've been thanking my diary and making me feel it gets read! :wave:

Lois_E

OK, done it.

I took the ".00" off the end of the family loans, since they're both nice round numbers now and I'm intending to keep them that way. I took the "20" off the beginning of the years in the the four dates in the bottom line. I changed "borrowing" to "owed" and got rid of the word "house". After all of that, I had enough characters spare to fit in my emergency fund to go on the same line as my ISA.

It was worth it - look, I've shaved 13 months off my projected neutral date

Edit: And now I've made it all a bit smaller, so it's not quite so much in your face.

skint_spice

Happy new siggy and 13 months off is fab!:j