Mortgage Free in Three Yrs

Kaz2904

Well as usual my snowball is looking really exciting until I update it in the next week when I know how much interest I've paid. It's depressing adding the interest on at the moment because it is still at a level where the interest added is enough to add an extra month onto my snowball.
It is getting better though and every single spare penny I receive goes straight over to the mortgage.

comping_cat

Im so looking forward to updating next week - ive been a bit crafty, as i closed my Nationwide account (my only savings!!!) and ive paid the money into my mortgage!!! As i can borrow any of my overpayments at any time, its still safe as savings, and its now bumping £1000 off my mortgage, so should see a good bit knocked of my mortgage for the Aug check in!!!

Trouble is, dont have anymore to pay in, apart from what i can earn as extra, but never mind, still nice to see something coming off this early in the challenge.

angelavdavis

:mad: :mad: Am furious with A&L! I opened a business account with them about 6 weeks ago. Into which I deposited a large sum of money in cheques and a transfer for services I had been paid for.

Since then I have discovered that their online banking service is completely unreliable.

I paid myself my salary via CHAPS into my A&L premier account on 17th July. At the same time, I also entered a CHAPS transaction for expenses that I was owed. Having checked yesterday, the salary has still not cleared even though the expenses went through the next day!

When I phoned them, not only were the Business account team unable to even see the CHAPS transaction :eek: , when they referred me to the internet banking team, it was clear that the CHAPS transaction has become lost in their system! Not only that, but when I challenged a couple of things on the account, the phone operator said she was going to log a request as my online account doesn't appear to be working correctly!

Bearing in mind there is only me as an employee, it makes you wonder what disasters would have happened had I had lots of staff to pay!

On checking the A&L Premier account balance, I have gone into overdraft - I am furious! Am drafting a snotty letter at the moment to claim back my charges for the overdraft. Luckily, the overdraft is OK so it will only be pennies, but I am also conscious I lose out on interest too!

I was hoping to get a bit extra cash into the mortgage for 2nd August, at this rate, I will be lucky if I can even make my main mortgage payment!

Kaz2904

Oh no Avd, that's terrible. I hope they give you some compensation from it.

Dithering_Dad

angelavdavis wrote: »

:mad: :mad: Am furious with A&L! I opened a business account with them about 6 weeks ago. Into which I deposited a large sum of money in cheques and a transfer for services I had been paid for.

Since then I have discovered that their online banking service is completely unreliable.

I paid myself my salary via CHAPS into my A&L premier account on 17th July. At the same time, I also entered a CHAPS transaction for expenses that I was owed. Having checked yesterday, the salary has still not cleared even though the expenses went through the next day!

When I phoned them, not only were the Business account team unable to even see the CHAPS transaction :eek: , when they referred me to the internet banking team, it was clear that the CHAPS transaction has become lost in their system! Not only that, but when I challenged a couple of things on the account, the phone operator said she was going to log a request as my online account doesn't appear to be working correctly!

Bearing in mind there is only me as an employee, it makes you wonder what disasters would have happened had I had lots of staff to pay!

On checking the A&L Premier account balance, I have gone into overdraft - I am furious! Am drafting a snotty letter at the moment to claim back my charges for the overdraft. Luckily, the overdraft is OK so it will only be pennies, but I am also conscious I lose out on interest too!

I was hoping to get a bit extra cash into the mortgage for 2nd August, at this rate, I will be lucky if I can even make my main mortgage payment!

Hi Angela, sorry to hear that you're having trouble with your bank - running a business is hard enough without all this palarva with the bank. I was wondering though why you are using CHAPS and not BACS to transfer your salary? CHAPS is relatively expensive method of moving money and is generally only used for business to business transfers or transfers of large amounts of money (i.e. used by solicitors when transferring your house purchase money). BACS is slower (it seems to take about 2/3 working days for my salary and dividends to get from my business bank to my personal bank account.

As a recommendation, I use Cater Allen private bank for my banking and find ther customer service and internet banking to be really first class. As I was introduced by my accountant (SJD Accounting), they waived the minimum 5k holding and I have completely free banking. I put my corporation tax into their 30 day notice account and get pretty good interest on it too. You might want to look at these if you get sick of A&L.

angelavdavis

Thanks Kaz and DD for your support.

Thanks also DD for the recommendation.

I only used CHAPS this month because I have only just set up the company and was sweating it out that my money would be cleared quick enough to pay the bills! What a waste of time that was! A&L aren't going to charge me for the failed CHAPS transaction (good of them eh!) but I will still go after them for the overdraft payment.

A&L give me free banking which was the prime reason for going with them. I went to join the Federation of Small Businesses in the hope they might have some offers, but they were only interested in selling me other stuff and haven't processed my application!

I will have to get myself an accountant. Just so little time to sort everything. Am just about to make the first PAYE payment (if I ever get paid obviously:o !)! Might also be cheeky and look into your accountants too! Let me know if you can get commission before I approach them!;)

I was working via an umbrella company until the law changed in April as I wasn't sure I wanted to go back down the route of setting up my own limited company again (did this a few years ago - wished I had never stopped, hindsight eh!). Change in law forced the hand and the wish to pay off the mortgage earlier made me decide not to pursue permanent opportunities.:D

Desperate_Housewife_2-2

Hi guys, just got paid and balanced up the old finances and sent my balance update to Tallgirl. Are we keeping it secret until she releases the figures or shall we do spoilers?!
I must admit (sad to admit it) I felt a surge of adrenalin when I did mine! I know you guys will understand!
I'm so glad I joined this thread and thanks to DD and TG for doing the books.

catshark88

Hi,

Sorry to be an idiot, but what is the snowball mechanism referred to by Kaz2904?? Have tried looking it up but no luck yet!

Am really looking forward to hearing how everyone has got on in the Aug update. :T

sparklymessygirl

Here it is

http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx

Here is the mortgage snowball thingy

http://www.whatsthecost.com/mortgage.aspx

but I like this calculator though (pretend the dollars are £)

http://bankrate.com/brm/amortization-calculator.asp

Sparkly

Optimistic_Saver

Thanks SparklyMessyGirl!!

The amortization calculator is brilliant: http://bankrate.com/brm/amortization-calculator.asp

My brain was beginning to melt trying to work out the effect of my monthly payments and annual lump sum extra payment on the overall term of my mortgage.

Even better, with the amortization calculator you can see at a glance the effect of all your extra payments (and hard work) in reducing your mortgage. The real eye-opener is looking at the amount of interest you pay each month and watching that reduce and reduce as you pay your mortgage off.

Thanks to MSE and the Free in Three Challenge, I have changed my mortgage term from 23 to 10 years (simply by asking my mortgage company to change the term of my mortgage) and am now saving like crazy to pay off an additional lump sum each year.

If the mortgage interest rate doesn't prevent me (when my current fixed rate ends and doubtless goes up by a massive amount next July) I am hoping to have it paid off in 7 years.

I keep reading all the Free in Three posts and they are keeping me motivated. Thanks everyone!!

Am really looking forward to seeing the chart in August to see how we are all doing. :T