Sweetdaisy's aim to be mortgage-free

sweetdaisy

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS wrote: »

Hi SD, We all have different views on religion etc but hope you don't mind if we hold you in our prayers - it must have been a difficult time making the decision re your DS surgery.


Best wishes Tilly x

Thank you Tilly and Southerndave. This is the first time that we've had to make a decision as big as this regarding the children and no doubt that we will have to make more in the future. I just feel very fortunate that we have a lot of family support to help us along the way and don't know what I would do without this.

sweetdaisy

Cashback credit card statement received and I earned £5.14 cashback last month. £164.89 was also deducted from my statement which is the annual cashback that I earned last year. I already had the full amount sitting in the current account, so this £164 has been put straight into Savings.

Monthly interest has been added to the mortgage £152.01 - an increase of £4 compared to last month. This has in effect made an overpayment to the mortgage of £99.59, so I am happy with this .

I renewed my Car Insurance this week and decided to stick with my previous provider and had a £13 saving compared to last year - £252. DH also renewed his Car Insurance, costing £302. Both have been paid in full as I don’t like paying monthly for them. Building & Contents Insurance also renewed costing £467, this is an increase of £120 compared to last year but DH has added on all of his mountain/road bikes so they are now fully covered at home and when he goes away biking.

I have finally signed up to Texaco’s Star Rewards (fuel loyalty card). I have been meaning to do this for months, but never got round to it. As it is my local petrol station and I always use them I may as well get some free fuel vouchers off them, but I worked it out that it may take me 3-4 months to earn £5.

Just as I thought that our childcare costs would reduce from September (when DS2 was due to start full-time school) we have received a consultation document from the Local Authority informing us that they want to delay the date that nursery pupils start school . There are three options 1) no change and he starts full-time school in September, 2) he attends Nursery 10 hours a week and starts full-time school in September 2015 and 3) he attends Nursery 10 hours a week and starts full-time school in September 2016! As the Local Authority need to find annual savings of £1.5 million from the education budget, it looks like we will be paying Nursery fees a lot longer as school could be delayed. It’s a waiting game now and we won’t know of the outcome until April.

BlueMoo

Fingers crossed for your family SD.


*****

What an amazing achievement re the mortgage! :T:T
Give yourself a big pat on the back.

sweetdaisy

Spent a long weekend at Center Parcs and celebrated DH’s 40th Birthday. We all had a lovely time and the children really enjoyed themselves . It was a lovely weekend where it was a welcome break from pondering over my financial spreadsheets, no completing of online surveys or checking emails and just really enjoyed having fun time as a family. Center Parcs is very un-MSE as everything is expensive, but I saved up and budgeted for the break and paid for everything by cashback credit card, so did gain some cashback .

Finances have all been updated following our return and I have transferred money into the Direct Debit account to cover the spends made by credit card. I have also made a £93 mortgage overpayment.

I am off work this week on Annual Leave and going to make the most of it by getting back into my exercise regime. I started back on track this evening with a 55 minute brisk walk whilst listening to Radio 4 (which I missed whilst we were away ). Tomorrow I hope to walk for over an hour and would like to (at some point) break into a light jog, but as hard as I try, I just can’t get into ‘enjoying’ jogging. Maybe one day . . .

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Hello,

Just wanted to say hello and wish you all the best for your difficult decisions. I am sure that you will do the right thing.

All the best,

Squirrel x

sweetdaisy

Managed to get quite a few jobs done today:

• Booked DH’s car in for a full service tomorrow
• Phoned the Water Company and enquired about our water meter as it still hasn’t been changed and was informed that it is now going to be done week commencing 10th February
• Provided gas and electric meter readings (again) to Npower so that they can work out my bill, which is due to be recalculated next week
• Redeemed some money from survey/cashback sites which will be paid in a few weeks
• Went through all of my email folders and deleted over 500 emails that I just don’t need
• Received an instant payment from a PTC site and made a mortgage overpayment of £14
• Cleaned the two rugs which we have downstairs
• Finished washing and ironing all clothes that we took away with us on our break

Had a discussion with DH (or rather he had a discussion with me :rotfl:) about replacing his car, as it may be on it’s way out. It is 13 years old and if the service tomorrow shows that a lot needs doing to it, we are considering replacing it. We are going car window shopping tomorrow, as DH has a few cars in mind, but we need an idea of what price we are looking at, as DH would like a car which is around 3 years old.

Ideally I wanted to save up and buy a car outright, but that’s not going to happen as it will take a very long time. I have been putting some round figures into loan calculators and none come anywhere near the interest rate that we can re-mortgage at, so it pains me to even think about it but it maybe it’s an option to re-mortgage so that we can purchase another car. This will undo the good work that I have been doing for the past 2.5 years, but would be cheaper than getting a loan or a car on finance. I feel that I am having palpitations just thinking about it :eek:.

Had a good think about our Savings and am really enjoying seeing the savings balance increase. I have backtracked a little and reintroduced my old 'Savings pot’ so that I can keep the Emergency Fund completely separate to our savings.

These are my savings pots at the moment:

• Emergency Fund (raining day savings - only to be dipped into in an Emergency)
• Savings (to pay for all annual expenditures such as insurances, holidays, household items, family expenditures, meals out etc)
• Childcare Costs (all nursery/after school club/school dinner costs)
• DH’s pot (for his own personal spend)
• Christmas & Birthdays

sweetdaisy

Well, our car window shopping turned into car buying! DH had his car serviced and it cost £150. There are a few things that need to be done to it in the future and as his car is only worth around £500, we decided that it was time for it to be replaced. DH done a lot of online research about cars and was pleased to find a local garage with the car he wanted at a good price. We have bought a 59 plate Ford Mondeo Estate which is perfect for DH’s bikes as it has a tow bar (for a bike rack) and there is plenty of room in the back for the boys and enough boot space for their bikes as well. After some good negotiation from myself (as DH is rubbish at these things), I managed to get free warranty, parts and a services for 15 months as well as free annual MOT’s for the life of the car .

I have come away happy with the decision and usually after making a purchase I always feel a pang of guilt (however big the purchase), but I feel that this is the right car for our family.

I did a lot of pondering last night over whether to re-mortgage,get a loan, finance etc. and have decided to pay for the car: 50% from Savings and 50% on Finance over 3 years, with an interest rate of 6.5%. It is higher than the rate of our mortgage, but I didn't want to undo all the good work I have done to be a MFW :j and I aim to pay off the car before 3 years.

So, now my focus is to build up our Savings accounts, whilst continuing to make some overpayments on the mortgage.

Things I have done today:

• Bought a new car for DH (although I am on the insurance)
• Used my Cashback Credit Card to pay an additional charge for DH’s Car Insurance, which included a £50 broker fee :mad:
• Purchased some lovely sparkly shoes for a Wedding I'll be attending in April
• Redeemed £10 gift voucher from a survey site
• Sewn name tags into the boys’ dai caps for their St. David’s Day photos for school/nursery
• Went on the Cross Trainer for a 30 minute workout, did some press ups and squats to tone up
• Finished an interesting e-book that I started in the New Year about Oil and corruption. I am now reading a memoir about someone’s struggle to care for a relative with Alzheimer’s.

megela

A very productive day.

Well done!

BlueMoo

Sounds like you ahve made the right decision for you, and that is what matters! Well done for haggling! It can be very daunting, but sounds like you have a good deal.

On the shallow side, nice to have a new motor *vroom, vroom*

QB_Wolf

Sounds like a good car to me, I've had Mondeo's in the past and loved them.