My mortgage free wannabeness starts here!! :-)

ixwood · 3 April 2007 at 10:18PM

Cheers again James. I think I can live with volatile.

Sorry for going MIA. I had a busy patch and haven't had much time for proactive money saving.

I haven't got too far with stoozing, or ISAs yet, but I have swapped my car for something that should cost half the price to run (was audi a3 1.8, now seat tdi) and started preparing my house for a downcost bid, so I can invest more/pay mortgage off quicker.

At the minute, I've got a nice detached 2 bed stone cottage in a decent location. I'm going to cash it in and get somewhere cheaper to run and hopefully halve my mortgage at the same time.

jamesd · 4 April 2007 at 3:47AM

That's pretty good moneysaving action!

ixwood · 24 April 2007 at 11:05PM

I'm slowly getting there.

I've cashed in my ISAs today. Most of them had a strong US influence, so thought it was time to bail.

It's BRIC time!!

I stumbled across ETFs. They look good (IMVHO). Almost like a tracker and with low charges I'm considering constructing my own BRICish selection to get cheapish access to some (hopefully) high growth markets.

Are there any downsides to the ETFs?

ixwood · 24 April 2007 at 11:14PM

ixwood · 24 April 2007 at 11:22PM

Decisions, decisions. I just selected everything i fancied to do OK in the next few years. There's no India one, but I can live with that.

I'm thinking china, Taiwan, eastern europe (i.e russia) and 1 or 2 of the other asian ones. Asian property may be good with all those trillions of ever richer people wanting "proper" houses.

Any thoughts? Anybody know how I actually invest in a ETF? The website doesn't actually seem to sell them. Useful. If I need a broker, anyone know a good (cheap!) one?

Miss_Penny_Pincher_2 · 25 April 2007 at 12:51AM

Good luck with your quest ixwood!

I'm a chicken and know little about stock, shares etc but sound like a good way to increase your investment!

I was wondering what is the interest rate you are paying at the moment? If it's less than 6.5% the Barclays mini cash ISA could be a risk-free place to stick £3,000 or perhaps the A&L ISA paying 8.1% for new account holders - they were advertising a 12% regular saver which I was going to recommend but I can't see it on their website so perhaps this has been withdrawn? Can still get £100 for signing up for current account though

ixwood · 26 April 2007 at 12:59PM

Thanks

Miss_Penny_Pincher wrote: »

I'm a chicken and know little about stock, shares etc but sound like a good way to increase your investment!

Me too!! Worryingly enough.

I'm not sure what returns I've had, as my cash was spread around 5 different tracker funds and they've all done differently at different times.

I'll dig out all the paperwork and add up what I've contributed and see what's left. Hopefully there's something!!

I've never used a mini cash isa before. Might be an idea for some of it. Although I'm 20odd years from having to pay it and more than likely selling up in the summer anyway, so might go for something a bit more risky..

Speculate to accumulate Rodney, speculate to accumulate.. :rolleyes:

My mortgage free wannabeness starts here!! :-)

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