Finally saw the light and now scrabbling towards it, one OP at a time!

fothers365

RBS cleared:beer:

Going to be a very tight month this month but it will be worth it:)

My job for tomorrow is to phone the mortgage people and pay this months interest payment now rather than the 28th so we can alter the DD to then from now on.

Now, pass the value porridge oats please as I think that's what we will be mainly eating for the next month:rotfl:

skint_spice

Well done on clearing RBS:j:beer::j

Guess what I'm having for breakfast? Yep, smart price oats over here too:p not quite sure what anyone gains by paying extra for them and I'm delighted to have converted lovely man over to from those wee bowls that are ready to add milk to:eek::eek: the extravagance and the packaging!

fothers365

Phew, been quite busy since I last updated this. We have left ourselves quite tight this month after stretching to pay off RBS. We have listed a lot of stuff on Amazon though in a bid to have a big clear out and a few of the bigger bits have sold so at least there is little dribbles of income due in.

I had a really nasty stomach upset during the week last week though so menu planning and home cooking went out the window a bit as I could stomach the thought of food for days so spent a bit more on food than we normally would have as I bought pizza and ready meals and thing for the rest of them for a few days.

We have brought the mortgage payment forward to the start of the month and have made a few TT op's so it is ticking away now.

As the RBS is now paid off the policy which ran alongside has now matured and can be cashed in so that is going to be about £9500. Most of it will go into the mortgage asap but I think we should keep maybe £1000 back and open up one of FD's high rate savers or an ISA.

I know it is bad but we don't really have any level of savings but DP is normally quite a spender and now he is onboard with this whole thing he wants to keep seeing results to keep him well motivated and on the straight and narrow spendwise.

fothers365

I have just read a lot of really complicated posts about when is best to do OP's and am now very confuddled by it all.

A lot of it was to do with N@tionwide- which is who we are with. I have been doing Tilly Tidies merrily but am now wondering whether I should be saving them in a separate savings account and sending them over once we get to £10 (daily interest is about £9.60 at present).

It is making my head hurt:o

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi Fothers, I phoned my bank to check whether it made a difference or not - may be worth doing the same maybe?

Tilly x

fothers365

I got a letter relating back to an Egg card I had a few weeks back saying that I might be due PPI. I had by chance just come across some details relating to the card whilst sorting out some paperwork so sent it off.

I just heard that they are sending me a PPI cheque.

:T:T:T

for the grand sum of £27.53:rotfl:

That is what happens when you virtually always pay your balance off every month like a good girl. Still better than nothing and will be overpaid when I get it:)


Tilly- I am going to phone them in a few days about something else so will ask them then. From what I read on their website I am not sure it makes any difference when I pay. From the few little tidies I have made so far when they clear it does seem to come off the balance.


I have a policy due to mature very soon that should be worth around £9.5K

I think all of that bar £1000 will be OP, the rest I might put into a FD 6% account.

fothers365

Now the RBS facility has been cleared and closed down I can now access the insurance fund that ran alongside it and is worth around £10k.

I have a car loan that is at a horrible 6.75% and has £5k left so I will clear that but am not sure exactly what to do with the other £5k.

We do not have any savings so the sensible option would be to keep it and not put it to the mortgage- I don't think we can remove OPs if we need to, just have a payment break.

With interest rates being so rubbish though I am not sure where to put it. The policy it is in is a shares thing and seems to be doing well at the moment and some can be withdrawn and the rest left in and I can keep paying in until it fully matures in Jan 2015 but some of the terms change and I can't pay in the monthly amount as I am doing at the moment, it would need to be a lesser amount. (Can you tell I can't understand the ins and outs of this policy:o)

The other option would be total withdrawal and into a cash ISA but rates are awful (but good for the mortgage;)) and if I did need to access it then we would lose a load of interest anyway.

Or I am wondering whether to take a risk and put it into some new stocks/shares thing. I really don't understand that much about these at all but have got a couple of basic idiot guides from the library to try and grasp the basics and I would trust my IFA who I have had for years to sort this out.

I am also copntacting my IFA to revamp my pension now I am in a position where there will be no more maternity leave to start paying back into that. I have had the same fund for 15years and think there are better products out there again I know not a lot about this- so he is going to look at that for me.

Once we have paid off the car loan though we will be completely debt free apart from the mortgage and have savings:j:j

That is a great feeling. I just need to get DP to be able to mentally offset the £5k from the mortgage balance. Perhaps I need to make a new spreadsheet/chart:rotfl:

Happy Thursday everyone:)

fothers365

I am still going round in circles a bit as to what to do next.

I phoned up NW last week and any OPs made can be taken back out again with no charge made for this service so I am thinking that rather than putting it in an ISA we will put 5K into the mortgage as we could get it back if we had a dire emergency.

The other £5k will be used to pay off the car loan.

I will restart the pension and the IFA is looking into updating this.

The thing that is bothering me at the moment is the fund the 10k is in (stocks/shares thing) is doing really well at the moment and has gained a lot of money over the last few weeks so part of me thinks that maybe we should leave the £5k while it is doing well but then if things crash we would lose out.

I have been reading a lot of finance books recently and books explaining how the stock market works and things as I was previously clueless about this. I was thinking this would help me to make more educated choices in the choice of the new pension fund.

I am wondering whether to use the £50/month that I normally put into that fund into a tracker/ecf when the original one matures. I am just trying to get my head round all the options.


Roll on payday- 11 days to go. I can't wait to move some money around and update signatures and stats:)

CathT

Sounds like you are doing your research to make your money work for you. It's great you can get any OP's back should you need to. I am totally clueless when it comes to stocks and shares and just pray our pensions are being invested wisely!

fothers365

When I first started the pension up 15 years ago I had no idea about any of this sort of stuff but I want to be able to understand it all a little more this overhaul!

I am finding it quite interesting though and am hoping it will help me be more overall in control of our finances.

10 days to payday and a few days in a caravan in the meantime. I think we might be into the overdraft slightly this month but due to OP rather than real spending for the most part. DP is now quite addicted to OP and is randomly sending amounts across without fully thinking about it. Still he is rarely buying anything these days that he would normally fritter money on.

I need to make a list of easy cheap caravan meals for next week. We don't normally do ready meals but I am thinking next week might feature heavily on them. I am not sure how great the oven and hob/pot/equipment situation will be.

I need to have 4 dinners, breakfasts and picnic lunches.

I was wondering about taking a cooked chicken with us to eat the first night then we can have it in sandwiches next day, pizza one night, maybe fresh pasta and ready sauce/pesto and garlic bread, not sure about the other day.

It needs all to be stuff 3 young kids will eat without risk of too much mess.

For breakfast I will take some cereal but I was also going to take bacon and eggs so we can have a fry up too so we hopefully need less at lunchtime (never seems to work that way though!) and a load of those part baked Lidl baguettes.

We normally get through a LOT of fruit in this house but we are lucky to have an excellent market a few minutes walk away. I am not sure they are going to be able to consume quite as much when we are away.