Mortgage free by 50

Mortgagefreeby50

I have just transferred two sums of 'lost' money from my current account into the overpayments account. Normally, these would have got swallowed up and lost forever more, but now they shall go towards the mortgage as essentially it is money that has already been spent.

The first one is £58 refund from a shares trading company that I deposited some funds with a while ago and never got round to investing. After they had deducted a massive admin fee (grr), I got this refunded back into my account.

The second one is £35 refund from a terrible night in a hotel. When I say hotel, I mean my old university campus halls of residence. We decided to book a 2 night stay there to break up the journey home from Cornwall in May. It would have been really nice apart from the students were still in residence (the term had finished the day before) as it was the night of their summer ball. We had about 2 hours of sleep in 10 minute slots! It wasn't really the students' fault as they were just going about their business, and we were invading their space really. But our argument was that the uni shouldn't have advertised rooms as available to book on bookings.com if the students were still there. Luckily after a few emails back and forth, we got a refund for both nights, even though we went home after one night! So although the refund was £120, we just spent £85 on a room when we went to the olympics, so £35 is what is left.

Sig now updated.

Mortgagefreeby50

I am using the remainder of my annual leave to work part time until I officially start my maternity leave in three weeks time. :j

The plan for tomorrow is to batch cook/declutter at the same time. I emptied the food cupboards this morning and we have a grand total of 10 packets/jars of sauces that have been sitting there for AGES. We tend to buy what we need to cook on the day. It is very disorganised but it means we don't have much food wasted as we just buy the ingredients for that evening's meal. Unfortunately, this means we have jars of sauce etc that end up being forgotten.

I had a handy little voucher for £10 off a £50 online shop with Sainsburys, so I am going to use tomorrow to cook up a storm and freeze it all, ready for when we are in the early days of a newborn and won't have chance to pop to the supermarket every day.

So, for approx £40 of ingredients, we will have at least 20 portions of food, hopefully more. And tidier cupboards to boot!

The delivery charge is £5.75 (ouch) but I want it to arrive first thing while I am motivated and I don't want to wait until my next day off. So I will add £4.25 to my MOC total.

I had a couple of other coupons but they have expired already! Has anyone got a system to make sure they use them up in time? I put mine on the fridge so I didn't forget them, but the date still passed me by!

originator

Hiya (on checkout in sains) lots of customers have started wrapping coupons round their nectar card so as not to miss the dates.I also ask them at end of transaction if they have any they want to get rid of,they appreciate that lol

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Well done to you on keeping focused on being MSe at such an exciting time for you! And thanks for the nectar tip re amazon,

Squirrel

Mortgagefreeby50

Thanks, Originator! I have duly wrapped my £2 off next £20 shop around my Nectar card, I've got a week to use it by.

Hello SSS, I love your diary!

We went to a hypnobirthing workshop at the weekend and they recommended lighting a lavender candle when practising the breathing techniques so that during labour I will associate the smell with being calm. We just popped along to Wyevale and got a Yankee candle mini sample candle, which should be plenty big enough as it provides 15 hours apparently. I had two coupons to use there for £1 and 50p, so the candle cost me the princely sum of 30p! Go me! :T

I hope you don't find my details of each MOC boring, but it is very helpful for me to keep adding to the diary to keep the MSE thoughts fresh. :money:

Mortgagefreeby50

This may be a bit of a punt, but I've done it before and it worked a treat!
I have just bought 5 of the petrol vouchers for T on ebay for £9.90 including delivery. They expire at the end of the month and when I used one the other day it saved me £4.50 off a tank of fuel. So for an outlay of £9.90, I could save myself £22.50, a nice profit of £12.60!
The seller has 100% positive feedback on 200+ transactions, so I'll let you know how it goes.

PS I went through the Nectar website to get to ebay, more points earned along the way! I really wish we had known about this Nectar website before, as we have just spent £300 on a chicken coop and countless other transactions! Oh well, just got to make the most of it from now on.

Mortgagefreeby50

Update for today-

I spent a happy 3 hours in the kitchen this morning and ended up with 24 containers of food for the freezer! We now have casserole, chilli, curry, pasta sauce, chicken in sauce and stroganoff ready and waiting.

I have had an update for my ebay Tesco petrol vouchers and they have been dispatched- fingers crossed!

One of my amazon books has sold, £9 something coming my way! I will update the total when the money appears.

Had a check-up with the midwife and the little one is growing well, all good in that department.

So all in all, a very satisfying day off!

Mortgagefreeby50

Hi folks,

I'm wondering if anyone could give me some advice?
I have monthly repayments of £504 on my car, usually covered by my car allowance from work, plus a bit extra. My car allowance will continue while I am on maternity leave, and of course, so will the finance repayments, but my salary will drastically decrease!

I am trying to think of ways to reduce our outgoings while I have approx 9 months off, can anyone suggest the best way to get rid/reduce the loan repayments? There are 17 payments left (£8568) on the car. Of these, I would like to get rid of 10 months worth of payments (£5040), to give us more cash flow and perhaps mean I don't have to return to work early just for the sake of the car.

The options I have come up with so far:

1) Sell the car. Don't really want to have to do this, as I will have to buy another car, it's better the devil you know, and I will need the big car again once I go back to work and motorway driving.

2) Take out another loan with longer term and lower repayments. Could be expensive, current finance is 5.1% APR.

3) Stooze the equivalent of the car payments onto a 0% purchase credit card each month. This might be the best option, I could pay council tax onto this, plus fuel and food shopping. So the loan repayments will still come out, but we will have racked up a 0% debt on a card.

3b) According to Martin's email, the Virgin card will do a 0% money transfer for 20 months (4% fee), so that might be worth thinking about. We could repay as much as we wanted, and then transfer the remainder before the 20 months is up.

4) Do overtime/locums to raise the loan repayment money. I can do 10 keeping in touch days, so the maximum I can earn from doing this is about £2500, and I will owe tax on that.

5) Any other ideas??

I think I have possibly answered my own question, it would be good if we could get the Virgin card, transfer as much cash as possible with the 0% for 20 months, and pay off the loan early. It is quite scary having that much credit card debt though.

I would appreciate any thoughts...

Mortgagefreeby50

Still pondering the above dilemma, but I won't take any action until I'm sure about what to do.

Today has been pretty productive:

Posted off a claim for health insurance from work, I attended a hypnobirthing workshop at the weekend which I think might be included under the policy. It's worth a try! That will be £99 back if successful.

I received my petrol vouchers, and used some to save £9 off fuel, sig updated.

I have completed my tax return, so will be getting some money back to go towards the massive fuel bill that the work mileage doesn't cover.

Counted out my 50ps and £2 coins to put towards the overpayments- £33.50. Sig updated.

Decided not to go to yoga tonight as feeling tired, will save £7.50 and fuel! I'll bounce around on my birth ball for a bit instead.

Posted my amazon book yesterday and requested payment so that is £9.34 when it arrives.

I have transferred £48.69 from my wages bank account into the overpayment account as that brings me up to date with MSE overpayments up until November. I decided to do this as quite often if I have surplus in that account after my phone bill comes out, it gets bundled in with next month's wages, never to be seen again. I'm really trying to keep track of all the rogue pounds here and there that get lost easily but really add up.

I will keep my sig as it is, showing the monthly breakdown, as the last time I changed it as I was getting too far ahead, I ended up losing interest as the target was too big to think of yearly.

I'm off to look at my budget for maternity leave, I filled it in ages ago, but need to remind myself how much we should be spending on food etc.

Not a bad day, all in all! I caught Martin on Radio 2 today talking about Scrabble. Pretty scary! I'm rubbish at all board games!

Mortgagefreeby50

Just looked at the budget and it is definitely do-able! Is it sad that I'm getting quite excited about sticking to a budget? We have done it before, when we were seriously saving to snowball our debts and save for our wedding. We relaxed a bit after getting married, but still saved for the house deposit. We could have probably saved a lot faster but enjoyed life at the same time! :beer:

So... I have budgeted for £100 a week for food (including eating out/work lunches etc). I think this is more than generous, having a look at people's diaries, we could certainly spend a lot less. I have reduced our holiday savings pot to reflect a cheaper holiday, as we certainly won't be jetting off to Vegas any time soon! The £150 overpayment is still in there, and my MSE monthly target will still be £105 a month. This can be found from savings and left overs from the food budget, ebaying, amazonning, couponning etc.

The other good thing is that the car loan is still in the budget, so it looks like we can keep the original repayments and own the car outright from dec 2013. This is good news, as I really don't want to end up with a massive debt at the end of maternity leave.

Best of all, I have been super cautious, and worked out the budget as if I am having a year off. I am the higher earner of the two of us, and I had assumed that we wouldn't be able to afford for me to have a whole year off. Who knows, I may get cabin fever and decide to return to work after 6 or 9 months, but at least the option is there. I spent some time with a friend today who has a 7 month old, and it would break my heart to leave them at that stage, when they are learning new things every day, starting on solids etc.

The other cautious thing I have done is to assume that my stat maternity pay and car allowance will be taxed at 40%. I'm hoping they won't, but at least if I plan for worst case scenario, then it will be a pleasant surprise when there is excess cash in the account at the end of the month. :rotfl:

I really love Martin's budget calculator as it makes sure you take all of the little spends into account. :money:

As you can tell, I'm dead excited to get going! :j