MF Quest

house_help

Feb has been the low spend month expected so far. Off to Chester for couple nights tomorrow so will be some spending to come but the hotel and first nights dinner already paid for. The two months of no council tax will pay for rest of the trip

Jut got £75 amazon voucher on topcashback for some car insurance found for my parents a while back Free money as they paid for it after I found it for them Another £15 is also on it way for refering a friend. I have my eye on a new camera case and a few DIY power tools will try and find what I need in the warehouse.

Am in process of having my DDs etc.. moved over to my First Direct account in order to get the £125, I hope it all goes smoothly. Will put in for wages from next month (get paid on 15th not no time to move this month).

I got the reg save cheque on Monday just waiting for it to clear before OPing the SL

house_help

Feb continued with low spend. Have had a few work trips with meals out so food cost pretty low also. Just need ensure I put my expenses in early enough that I get the cash back before CC bill needs to be paid.

Found couple things I want in the Amazon Warehouse : ) still have another £25 to spend, will keep it until there is something that I need.

The FD process is going well I think but acid test will be next month as official switch date for DDs and SOs to start being paid from the FD account is 7 March. I may have to keep a drip fund in both for a while incase any DDs or my wages do not transfer as they are supposed.

I have had 2nd thoughts on OP the SL, am going set-up an additional £250 DD monthly instead of paying a lump sum (the DD that was previously going in reg saver that has now ended), that way if I need to stop for whatever reason I will be able to rather that put in a lump sum and not be able to get it back.

I have another reg saver finishing at start of March. I am going to put the money into premium bonds as not too bad option for high tax payers at the moment and I have had luck with them before which will hopefully continue.

Have spent the last two weekends out in the garden chopping down trees and hedges! We are nearly done with the cutting down now! We will need to borrow a mini digger to get out some tree stumps and level remove a load of gravelled section the previous owners put in for no apparent reason! Then we can start making it look tidier rather than pulling and cutting everything down! The garden already looks a lot bigger and lighter, but does means limited privacy for the time being. There are some existing trelice but they need painting so all looks a bit of a mess at the moment but we will get there!

house_help

£500 OP sent over today. Total OP now at £9k and £1.5k for 2013 so far

The OP has brought us under £150k total outstanding :d Whilst still a big balance its better than £165k, pleased to have taken off £15k total in 18 months.

With the low spend in Feb there was pretty large surplus on the current account at end of the month. I have picked out a couple of stocks for long term investment and put the rest into some existing trackers.

Renewed my broadband and phone rental at end of the week. I negotiated a £3 PM discount but had to sign up for 24 months. Happy with the price and the 24 month lock is applies both ways and to the discounted price so hopefully will turn into a good deal if prices for new customers / deals rise in that time.

I also got around to updating contact details for my old company pension and logging into check performance. Its a small fund as I was only there for a couple of years and when I was on low paid training contract but current value has grown about 40% compared to what I put in between 2009 - 2011. I had chosen 5 investment funds, the best has grown 63% whilst one (Gold related shares) has not grown at all! Not sure why I thought a punt on gold was a good idea at the time! I will leave the investments as are for time being and see if gold shares start performing again, they were showing growth of 30% against my avg buy price in June 2011 so if it gets back to there will sell out and find something else. I am a long way from retirment so not worried and I see this pension pot for going into higher risk stuff (and not worry if it loses all its value) whilst keeping my current (and bigger) company pension scheme in lower risk funds (the choice is much more limited anyway so little choice)

house_help

I have now set-up the direct debit OP of £250 to the student loan to start next month. With the OP and reg amount out of wages it will be paid off in a year. The mortgage will then be my only debt (apart from 0% stoozing cards)

At the moment I putting just over £1k a month into regular savers and another £750 into mortgage and SL OPs. This will continue for the next 3 months and will eat into a balance I have sat in an instant saver account with pretty low interest. I will also take out of there this 13/14 cash ISA allowance to put in best account I can find. After 3 months one reg saver accounting for £500 of the monthly amount will end, the balance will be used to pay off a stoozing credit card as the 0% ends shortly after. I will then look again at my thoughts on the stock markets and whether to stick that £500 a month into my tracking funds. At the moment I think the market is too high and I am expecting it to come down hence fill reg savers instead. I have taken some profit and sold some tracking funds also but put that into some other specific funds and a several company shares too.

The above is my plan anway! Will see how we go.

house_help

£500 OP for April sent across few days ago. Eating into the 140's

Filled up my new year ISA and the various reg savers and OP to student loan have gone out.

I have had some good new in work with a promotion to take on more responsibility and a pay rise Its not huge but will give us that bit more.

Having mentioned in before we have now gone ahead got a chicken coop. Need to put it together and then we plan on getting three hens to join us and hopefully provide eggs There is a small holders fair near us in about a month so will get the hens from there as a wide choice of breeds.

I got my FD reward for switching bank accounts. There was a couple of DD problems but all sorted now. Their customer service is very good.

The garden is coming along slowly, we have removed most of the no longer required gravel. We had organised a mini digger for one weekend but the snow and cold meant we had to cancel so next free weekend we will try again and remove a load of stumps across the garden.

house_help

Quite some time since my last post! There have been a fair few changes since, the biggest being we are now engaged

We also now have a dog, new car and 3 chickens! Fresh eggs daily now in the HH household

All the changes , especially the car (paid in cash, no finance) and a holiday to Italy (not Canada unfort but still have plans....) meant that the April of my last post was also the last mortgage OP made in 2013 (probably why I haven't posted )

Its not all bad though as the £250 monthly student loan OPs continued and Monday I will make a lump sum from a reg saver accounting maturing to pay it off completely So since the last post that will be total cleared of nearly £6k with about £3.8k being an OP. Its not been rational to keep OP'ing it rather than the mortgage (lower interest) but to me its def a psychological thing to no longer have it. Plus its only now I have the lump sum available, the mortage OP amount can only be £500 per month without ERC so after that £500 OP the next best place is to the SL so that bit is rational its just the £250 per month May to Dec of last year which wasn't.

Since the last post I have also had further pay rise and more responsibility in work plus put into a much better bonus scheme for this year which is all good. Also approaching the final year of my masters degree, I only have 2 more modules left but also a dissertation. I am hoping to finish a bit early and have set a target of the end of the year by latest. I hope to be able to neg. a decent pay rise in work following completion as they will no longer be paying for me to do the course

The current plan for 2014 is to re-start £500 OP. The previous SL normal payment + OP was near enough that so shouldn't see any difference in disposable cash so am hopeful we can meet the target. We will be due to re-mortgage in September - we should be at the lowest LTV rates by then. I just looked at our lenders website and if could re-morg now on same type of deal our interest rate would be over 0.5% lower, taking about £100 off the std monthly payment. Hopefully rates stay where they are up until we can agree a new deal if so the plan is to keep the payment the same as now by reducing the term.

The potential OP stopper / big expense this year will be the wedding (August) but we having savings and parent / grandparent contributions to cover the current budget. We have already booked and agreed prices for most wedding day things, its the honeymoon that would probably stop the OPs if we find something we really like.

I jusst checked the balance and now at just over £145k. Over £20k paid off capital in just over 2 years

house_help

A long time since my last post and a lot of changes! Now married, with 16 month old! Masters is finished too!


OPs have been much more limited over last 4 years, in total £6K since April 2013. These were all in the last 6 months or so, there was a long pause in the middle with no OPs. This was however when we spent £15K+ on house improvements and the wedding and honeymoon to NZ was another £10K+. I can at least see where the money has gone!


We are now back in position to start more serious OP having just finished having the roof re-done there should not be much more house improvements going forward.


The original target of paid off 10yrs looks a stretch. The current outstanding is down to £121K. We will re-mortgage in September this year. We will be <60% LTV then so hoping to get a tracker rate ~ 1.5% for 2 yrs. To be done by end 2021 we need to OP compared to current payment by around 1,750 per month to pay it off. This is looks unlikely but we will certainly push to get somewhere close.


I have a question on re-mortgage. I just looked to see what potential rates might be and our provider has 2 tracker products one with fee and one without. The way I am comparing which is cheaper for us in that 2 year tracker period is as follows:


Product 1: rate 1.09% for 2 years - £999 fee. Monthly payment for £116K loan = £563.50 (19 yr term)
Product 2@ rate 1.49% for 2 year - no fees. Monthly payment for £116K = £584.50


Add the total 2 year cost in terms of monthly payments and product fee take from that how much capital is paid off the loan during that period to give the total 2 year real cost. For the one without the fee assume a month 1 overpayment of the other one product fee less the total difference in monthly payments over 2 years such that total money paid out will be the same.


So product 1 = (24 * £563.50) + £999 = Cash out of £14,523. Capital paid off at end year 2 = £11,111. Therefore real cost of £3,412


Product 2 = (24 * £584.5) = £14,028 + assumed month 1 OP of £495 to give same total cash out of £14,523. Capital paid off = £11,233. Therefore real cost of £3,290


For our outstanding amount the no fee product is cheaper by ~ £122. It would need to be a loan of ~£132K+ before the one with fee would be cheaper. Is this the way to calculate it? Relies on having the money to make the OP in month 1 for option 2, probably with product 1 you can add the fee to the mortgage but this will just cost more in long run.

house_help

After another long gap, an update and plan to get back on the MF journey!


We became mortgage free in March this year :beer: ...but only by selling the house w/o having bought another one yet! Have been renting since then but should be completing on new house probably next month.


So will soon be back to the beginning with mortgage :eek:



We are upsizing on first house (had another baby last month so now 2 x kids, want bigger garden etc..), however the OPs on first mortgage combined with some uplift in value over what we paid for work done, meant we had a decent chunk of equity to throw at new place. So although the house is 65% more expensive that our first we are only having a mortgage of +27% on our first one. Still it will be £210K mortgage :eek:



We will be <60% LTV so have got a decent rate mortgage :money:.Plan on OP as much as possible to try pay it off well before 25 yrs! In total on the first we OP by £22k in ~6 years but there was a 3yr gap in the middle with none. I plan on at least £500 OP month and hopefully more. We have gone back to a 25yr term rather than reduce it to give flexibility on OP rather than make the contractual payment too high incase of changes. If we can average £1k month OP we should be done in ~14 years! Its a tracker with no limits on OP so can throw the odd large chunk of cash from bonus etc..


£1K should be doable based on how much we have been savings in 6 months since we moved into rented but just need to get in and have accurate numbers on what it will cost to heat, electric etc.. We have a budget in mind based on discussion with vendor but not sure until we are in. It does have solar panels on decent rate FIT for few years yet so I am hoping that will more than cover the electric bill + some toward the heating, leaving more to OP :j