2020 vision. VoucherMan's MFW diary

ajmoney

I have just seen your thread for the first time and had a read through. Our mortgage free date is between 9 and 10 years away until you posted this...

VoucherMan wrote: »

Had some unusually entertaining thoughts while cleaning this morning.
Mortgage free by 50:) was the main one. (6 years)

which immediately gave me another date which is quite unrealistic of being mortgage free when I am 40, which is 6 and a half years away. If we changed our holiday and lifestyle plans then it may be possible but we shall see. I won't panic DH, for now I will just keep talking to him about the other dates.

BookWorm

Hello there

Just wanted to say that I've enjoyed reading your thread so far and it sounds like you have a good plan for the future. I'm a solo owner of a mortgage too (sounds better than singleton I think?!) and I find it comforting that people in similar positions are interested in getting rid of the mortgage asap. If you don't mind I'd like to follow your journey as you go and I wish you all the best with it!

VoucherMan

After a week of annoying setbacks I've decided to play with some numbers to cheer myself up.

It seems the plasterer has decided not / can't be bothered to turn up :mad:

As well as some plastering he was due to fit a new back door. Oh well, his loss. I won't be asking him to do do any more work in the future. Just need to find another one to take over. Think I've found a local one with some good feedback. I'll give him a ring tomorrow & see if he's interested.

I've sent emails to a couple of local door fitting companies. Hopefully they'll be in touch soon.

To the finances....

Seems I had more money laying around than I thought. I've kept enough aside for the door & fitting, made another £300 overpayment (which I hadn't expected to make until next month) and put the rest, which was due to pay for the plastering, into my ISA. Might as well earn some interest on it for a bit.

This means I just need another £400 to reach this years target which I'll do with the monthly standing order.:)

No point updating the balance in the signature yet. Best to do that at the start of the month after DD has gone through and interest has been recalculated, but a rough figure (from the mortgage calculator - actual figure will hopefully be slightly better) is £50765. I've updated the estimated MF date though. Gone from September to June 2022:):)


Not planning on making any additional overpayments next year. Apart from the standing order I'm going to concentrate on building up the emergency fund a bit. Then in 2014 I'll be back to attack the mortgage. Still going to have the MFiT-T3 to work on but unless I get bored or there's a change of plan the diary's probably going to sink to the depths of MSE oblivion for a while gathering dust.

Enough of sitting around. The housework awaits! I might give this 20 minute thing I read about in nattypants diary a couple of weeks ago a try. Makes the work a bit less tedious. Not sure I'll get to sit down again though. The cats have relocated to the settee and while they like me warming it up for them they're not so happy when I return to reclaim my spot. We'll see.

VoucherMan

Final (?) update of the year.

The last mortgage payment has cleared and the interest's been updated. No more overpayments to make. So I end the year (and start the MFIT-T3) with a total of £50174.

Back in August I'd estimated (okay - Locoblade's calculator did all the hard work) a figure of £50208. Not going to have the figure corrected for the new challenge though. I'm going to cheat and give myself a £34 head start.

In other news -

After October's setbacks I've now had a new back door fitted. Don't know who's happiest. Me or the cats. They've now got two doors with cat flats to go out of. Or rather out of one, in through the other. Round in circles all day.:doh:

Found another builder. He just finished stripping out all the old walls and ceiling. Neither of us realised it still had the old lath and plaster ceiling. Don't know how he managed to do the work. When he called me to have a look I almost choked on the dust as I walked through the door. All down now though and I see the cellar's full of timber and plasterboard so hopefully see some improvement tomorrow.

And the best bit.... I think it's going to cost less than the previous plasterer quoted. :j
To save?:A or to spend?:think: After all it is almost :xmastree: - _party_ - :EasterBun


Off now to feed my spreadsheet addiction. AKA MFW 2013. Hope to see plenty of there. :wave:


:xmassign:

black_taxi_2

As a single guy I got my mortgage down to 30k then decided to upgrade modernise my flat.central heating/kitchen/wooden flooring/flat screen tv sound system built sound built into wall.(couldn't live without central heating now-dont know how I managed)

Took me back up tp £48515 2009.

My online repayment tracker mortgage with HSBC is best thing I ever did.3.29% over base rate .50% no penalties any over payments.

You can fast track a payment anytime from bank account online---and it shows up instantly.

VoucherMan

black_taxi wrote: »

As a single guy I got my mortgage down to 30k Should be there within 3 years hopefully then decided to upgrade modernise Working on that a bit at a time my flat.central heating already got it /kitchen done it /wooden flooring don't fancy it /flat screen tv got one sound system got a nice system though not built in built sound built into wall.(couldn't live without central heating now-dont know how I managed)

I've still the idea in my head of moving once I've paid off the mortgage. Couldn't do it now unfortunately as I couldn't get a big enough deposit, but I've registered with Rightmove and get regular emails for any new houses going on the market in my area so at least over time I'll get an idea of whether I'll be able to afford it or not.

Meanwhile I'm pretty much confining my DIY / home improvement budget to stuff that will hopefully make the house easier to sell, & maybe increase the value.

Currently on with the (nightmare) re-plastering of the utility room. So much for having it finished within a week!

He came back on Thursday with an electrician & sorted out some of the wiring. Moved the cooker switch (which isn't working so it's microwaved meals until he gets it fixed) and messed with the plumbing. Hoped he was going to come Friday but all the old plaster & other rubbish is still in a pile on the floor. I think he's just doing this job to fill his spare time :mad:

Oh well, let's wait and see how far he gets next week. Besides, if students (and others) can live on microwave meals I'm sure I can manage a bit longer. The washing machine could be a bit of a pain though. Presently stuck in the middle of the kitchen. I've enough clothes to last another week or so. If it's not sorted by then I'll have to think of something else. At the moment I've two ideas. I could temporarily connect the washing machine to the dishwasher water inlet. It's a hot feed but if I turn off the boiler & connect it to the cold inlet it should work. Plan B - I haven't visited the parents recently :A

Once this is all finished I can start thinking about the other two or three jobs I'v got planned. First is re-plastering the stairs / landing, then the spare bedroom and then I might get the cellar, or at least the walls of the steps going down to it, re-plastered. All to be painted a nice bland magnolia type colour which, apparently, often appeals to people buying a house. Me, I don't care. I'd happily have every room of the house painted / papered blue. It would make the job a lot easier.

If at the end of it all (when the mortgage is paid off) I decide moving isn't going to happen then I'll maybe think about having a swimming pool fitted in the bathroom or something. But for now I'm quite happy with the the existing set-up and I'm sure the cost of a new bathroom would far exceed the value it could add to the property.

nattypants

VoucherMan wrote: »

All to be painted a nice bland magnolia type colour which, apparently, often appeals to people buying a house. Me, I don't care. I'd happily have every room of the house painted / papered blue. It would make the job a lot easier.

Hey VoucherMan, you should get yourself over to Lulabelle's diary - before you know it you'll be ordering Farrow & Ball colour charts and having complimentary eggshell paint discussions.....

Good luck with all the work:T

NP:D

VoucherMan

nattypants wrote: »

Hey VoucherMan, you should get yourself over to Lulabelle's diary - before you know it you'll be ordering Farrow & Ball colour charts

Been over for a quick look. Luckily for my wallet & sanity I've not been converted.

It has however reminded me about the carpets which I'd conveniently forgotten. The carpet on the stairs is in need of replacement. The cats like to use it as a racetrack and occasionally, if I have the cheek to try and lay in bed past six in the morning, they use it as a scratching mat.

I'm also doing my best to ignore the living room carpet not least because of the aquarium in the corner of the room which won't be easy to move. It doesn't help that I've recently started treating the cats to a chicken wing at the weekend. Unfortunately they don't like to eat them in the kitchen. They like to drag them into the living room to show me what they've just 'killed'. Sometimes they then abandon the wings. Other times they decide to eat them which is worse as it usually ends up leaving drops of blood on the carpet. One's brought a piece in now as I'm writing this...

Beaten him this time. I've put it back to the kitchen again.

Because of this I have to keep getting the carpet shampoo out to clean it up and I'll end up with patches all over the carpet. I'd hoped to give the carpet a really good clean in the summer, but summer never happened.
Just decided to have a go over Christmas. Extra long holiday this year so I'm sure I can find a couple of hours somewhere to try and clean it up. I'd hire someone to do it if I was convinced they'd do a decent job. But I'm not, so I won't.

All this talk of getting people to do the work for me. I think I'm moving to the darkside! It goes against my principles as a tight @r$€ paying someone to do something that I can easily do myself. Then of course there's the satisfaction of seeing it afterwards when you've finished.

But then, it would be nice to have someone else do all the painting. After all I'm already going to get someone to do the plastering. and lay the carpet. Why not to do the painting as well?

Sepa74

I got my carpets professionally cleaned... it wasn't too expensive, and the different it made was amazing! I'm definitely 'investing' in getting it done every year from now on.

Of course the cats immediately started regurgitating hair balls, vomiting etc all over my nearly pristine carpets, so you would never know they had been cleaned, but they looked great for about 5 minutes!

VoucherMan

To sign up or not to sign up? While updating the 2013 mfw I discovered that there's a savings challenge being organised. Since my plan for 2013 is to build up the emergency fund this could be a good incentive.

Or I could just plot my progress on here? I want to save another £4500. The spreadsheet currently suggests £4200 by the end of 2013 but it shouldn't be too hard to squeeze an extra £300 from somewhere. It's only £25/ month after all. This doesn't factor in any of my DIY projects though.

Or the carpet cleaning that Sepa74's talked me into getting done. (I'm a pushover aren't I?)
I found a local carpet cleaner. Some good reviews although they are on his own website so can't be 100% trusted. He's only got a few slots left before Christmas but there's no point getting him in until the builders finished (whenever that might be!) so probably not getting the carpet done until the new year.

In defence of the builder though he had told the electrician about the problem & he was supposed to have fixed it on Saturday morning. Until I phoned him on Monday he didn't know there was still a problem. And as for the builder's absence. He does a lot of contract work which at this time of year often includes fixing frozen pipes. Would have been nice if he'd let me know though! At least he's made some progress now and the oven's working again. A bit of pre-Christmas baking this weekend methinks.

So long as he gets finished before Christmas I can get a proper fix on the finances. I think he'll be sticking to the quote price but until the jobs finished you can never be sure. One he's gone I'll know just ho much I've got spare. I'll have to sleep on it for now.