Mr Motivated's Sort of MFW Diary

Hurdler

Hey MM loved reading your thread. I bow to your spreadsheet superiority.

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Good morning MrMotivated, good to see another SS nutter .

Sounds like you have some good plans already and have been given great advice. I always pay my council tax by CC now and this pays for cineworld and meals out - cant beat free entertainment. On that note, I also apply for free cinema tickets via this site. Mr Tilly and I often manage to go monthly FOC and some months, twice.

We all have different drivers and the fantastic thing about this forum is that everyone is so supportive. At the end of the day it is how we maximise our disposable income which counts, whether reducing spending, increasing income etc and then you have other choices with the cash. I split mine between capital repayment and off setting.

Good luck on your journey and it does become a little addictive :):)

Tilly

MisterMotivated

Thanks everyone, for your support and ideas. Not a lot to update on recently.

I've been using my cashback credit card on all spend recently (about £200 over the last two days).

On the cashback front, I've claimed a missing £20 and taken my "free20quid" account up to the £100 withdrawal amount (got £80 cashback from spending £50).

• I opened a Cash ISA the other day and transferred the full allowance, as well as opening a new savings account ready to replace my current one (rate drops on 19th April).
• Had a decent win betting on the MotoGP last weekend :j (only signed up to online betting site to get cashback ).
• A couple of my ebay items sold this morning, so that's a little extra for the fund and some more space in the house.
• I've taken receipt of a number of old DVD's recently (nothing dodgy :cool:). I'll watch and keep some of them, but will probably sell a lot through musicmagpie/similar (any better site suggestions welcome)
• I've also acquired various bits and pieces (toilet/kitchen roll/tin foil/cling film/stamps/lightbulbs (again, nothing dodgy). These should help cut down a little on grocery/home consumable spending.
• As above, my savings account anniversary is approaching, so I'm expecting around £50 interest from that
• Over the past year, I've been stocking up when I found good deals on soup and other long life foods. I'm trying to use up a lot of this now as I'm running out of cupboard space. Not to mention I'll then be able to have fun stocking up again:rotfl:
• One of my survey accounts is approaching redemption amount

Hopefully I'll have more soon.

I decided not to use the cashback cc for council tax as the charge for cc payment offset some of the benefit, and I had a lot of hassle getting the DD set up originally, so don't want to cancel and have to go through that again.

DawnW

MisterMotivated wrote: »

• I've taken receipt of a number of old DVD's recently (nothing dodgy :cool:). I'll watch and keep some of them, but will probably sell a lot through musicmagpie/similar (any better site suggestions welcome)

I would compare what MusicMagpie and Zapper are offering for your DVDs and accept the higher offer

MisterMotivated

Hi all.

Sorry I haven't been on in a while, there have been some unexpected 'issues' to deal with over the past few months, which I wasn't expecting. I won't go into detail but they involve the previous tenants in my house :mad: meaning my savings plan has suffered a bit of a setback.

Motivation has been dwindling somewhat over the past couple of months, so I thought a visit here might reinvigorate my enthusiasm and remind me of the end goal. I haven't been spending unnecessarily, but there haven't been so many opportunities to actively make or save money.

My cashback credit card is now out of the bonus period, so I'm back to using a 0% card for now and will start using the cashback one around Christmas, just enough so that the cashback I receive clears off most of the balance. I have another 0% expiring next month, so I'm weighing up paying it off or BT'ing to a new card. I have most of the best rated ones, so would be fairly limited. I'd also like to have them all cleared by the time I come to buy another house, hopefully less than two years down the line.

I have a lovely new tenant in my house. After last tenant's issues, my neighbours have kindly offered to be my eyes on the ground, as it were, and let me know if anything untoward starts happening. It feels good to know the place is making - rather than costing - me money again.

I haven't done anything yet with the mass of DVD's I received before, mostly because musicmagpie's typical 30p per disc wasn't very inspiring. I have no plans yet for the weekend, so may look into alternative and more cost-effective means of getting rid of these.

Weekly shopping has been cut down by a reasonable amount. Previously, I was using lots of '£6 off £30 spend' vouchers to save a bit of cash, but there are only so many non-perishable items I can buy. After doing a bit of a stocktake and counting 59 rolls of toilet paper plus over a year's supply of washing powder, I decided to stop with the vouchers, spend my clubcard/nectar points and try to use up what I have.

I claimed some cashback I'd forgotten about so that added an extra ~£36 to the fund. Not to mention, the balance on my gas/elec account has been climbing again so I may email them and ask to send me a cheque. I realise heading towards winter, some would urge caution, but I believe my direct debit amount is still high enough to cover higher winter payments. If not, a quick call will sort that out.

I think that's everything I can update on for now. I'm going to make an effort to update my progress more often.

MisterMotivated

Hi folks, just thought I'd post a quick update on here. I know it's been a while since I posted last, but, as I'm sure many of you will understand, after the initial flurry of money saving tactics, things settle into a routine and there's not a lot to update on.

Anyway, my emergency savings are now covered and I'm doing reasonably well in saving for a deposit on another house, aiming to be in a position to start looking seriously around June - October next year. My BTL is still doing well and I have a lovely couple in now, with no problems.

I made my first overpayment on my BTL mortgage yesterday and forgot how good it feels, especially as it's interest only and all payments so far have done nothing to reduce what I owe. I also had fun updating all the figures on my spreadsheets. I now want to overpay again. However, it goes against my plans to save for another house, which makes more sense financially as, when I buy another house for myself, the mortgage will be less than my current rent, and some of it will at least be going towards paying off the capital.

I thought about overpaying ~£30 a month on the btl, so at least the balance would going down, as would the interest (by an extra 11p each month :rotfl:), without putting too much money towards it that it'd disrupt my savings plan. However, my 2yr fix is up at the end of the year and I'm confident I can do better than the rate it'll revert to. I'm not far over 25% equity, so hopefully the valuation won't have gone down since 2011. I might need to dip into the deposit fund in case it's needed to keep me above 25% LTV. A similar house about 50 yards away is currently under offer - advertised for offers over more than mine was last valued at in late 2011, so hopefully that's a good sign. I'll be keeping an eye on Zoopla to find out how much the buyer actually paid.

Another point I'm considering is when to stop stoozing. I have 2 BT cards coming to the end of their 0% period (around £6k combined), so I can't decide whether to try to shift them or just pay them off. The returns are getting more and more feeble and I feel like I should start to cut down on the number of cards I have.

gallygirl

I'm sure you already have at least one SS showing it , if not if you make one showing net worth then it really doesn't matter whether you make actual OP's or your own 'offset', it's ultimately the net position that matters. If you do make capital repayments on the BTL ask them NOT to reduce the monthly payments as the interest is tax deductible. Ask them to reduce the term instead then you'll get the full benefit tax wise.

Personally I don't stooze as life is complicated enough :rotfl:.

Good progress, well done :T.

MisterMotivated

Thanks gallygirl.

You're absolutely right, I do have a "net worth" section on one of my spreadsheets, so overall I can still see the positive effect of savings. I think it's just from a psychological point of view that the overpayments feel better. Also, the interest rate is higher than I'm getting on savings, but I know this short term pain will help with longer term gains by getting me in a position to buy sooner, thus saving me ~£200 per month (from a 'wastage' point of view at least).

I'm not sure what you mean in terms of the tax issue (though the mortgage is interest only, so don't think it makes a difference) as any overpayments will reduce the interest charged the next month, regardless. On a repayment mortgage, I would then either pay the revised interest and less capital (ie reduced payment) or the revised interest plus a bit more capital to make up the difference (ie reduced term). I'm going off the idea of regular overpayments for now anyway. I think I'll just wait until the end of the year and review the situation then.

I do like stoozing, particularly as it looks better to have a higher cash total on my spreadsheet, but that's offset somewhat by the thousands of pounds of 'debt' on the cards. I think the time has come to simplify things a little so I'm almost certain I'll clear those cards when they expire rather than rolling them over to a new one.