CMs 10 year mfw plan... starting tomorrow!

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Moving is SO stressful. Good luck with your plans and OM is right, any challenge to focus the mind helps the journey.

Best wishes Tilly x

kirstypark

well done on surviving the move. I am so jealous as we move in 3 weeks and have spent the last 2 days window shopping at all the sales, hope there are still some bargains left at the end of the month.

cardiffmatch

A month has passed pretty quickly!

It's not exactly been a moneysaving month - we needed/wanted to buy a few things for our new house; these included a bed for the spare room and various items like blackout blinds, storage and shelves for the garage, stocking up on dishwasher tablets, a few ikea runs for outdoor cushions etc - the list seems neverending!

Still - the last big item arrives tomorrow - a wonderful spare bed which I secretly want to put in our room in the fullness of time...

So - where are we? It's still a month until I will be in the new job and living in one place, but we have estimated figures for various bills etc so I can make a stab at an initial SOA. Here goes...

House Purchase Price - £235000
Amount Borrowed - £205000
Term - 25 Years Repayment
Details - Approx 65k on a 2 Year fix at 4.2%, uncapped overpayments. Further approx 140k on 3.75% tracker for life at base rate plus 0.25% with minimum level of 3.75%
Payment - £1200 per month (rounded up to include fixed OP of approx £110)

We will take in approx £5500 per month when I start my job with a very uneven split between incomes! A rough idea of outgoings is below based on best guesses and so on...

Mortgage - £1200
Council Tax - £166
Gas & Electric - £85
Water - £32.50
Talk Talk phone and b/band - £22
my mobile - £47.00:eek: (ending in two months, phew)
Diesel - £80.00
Rail season ticket - £254 (hopefully less with new job)
Food Budget - £250? (best guess - when we are living in one place and I'm cooking this will probably shrink by about 33%)
Home & Contents Insurance - £37
Subscriptions / professional annual fees: £100
Service charge (Leasehold house): £50
Savings: £500 (these will be put into offset account)
Charities: £70
Magazines: £10

I'm sure there is plenty more, so I will add as I go along. It's all a bit artificial as my petrol consumption will disappear altogether (hopefully) and my new season ticket should be lower.

The food thing is interesting - when we are living together fulltime again we will obviously eat together; I love cooking but Mr CM does not. There are therefore economies of scale and also in my knowledge of cooking on the cheap!

So - in the short term, my next task is to find out what we pay per unit for electricity/gas and see what deal we are on. I'd be willing to wager it's some awful rate as we are connected to the previous occupants supplier.

The good news is that so far I have managed to offset over half our £3008 target on my own, so that daily interest payment is starting to shrink! Mr CM has started asking about how much the mortgage is costing, so I think my muttering about overpayments may be starting to filter into his consciousness Since the initial splurge on moving/buying is finished, I think this weekend I may tackle the "Once we are back from holiday, shall we start saving more?" question...

What's that you say? A holiday? Yes - I know... not very moneysaving. But we've hardly seen each other in a year and half the point of becoming debt free and aiming to be MF was to be able to afford to have some fun

CM

cardiffmatch

I thought of another key point:

I've chosen a MF date to coincide with Mr CM's 50th birthday. That seems an enormously long way off, but it allows for slippage; I've used various OP calculators and think we are more likely to be MF about 10 years from now. I wanted to have a date in my mind which wouldn't be too difficult allowing for a new kitchen somewhere along the line, a sabbatical year (that I've long planned) of travelling etc, a wedding(?!) and other costs that crop up...

Hurdler

Good plan - good luck with your journey!

cardiffmatch

I've had a "tidy up" of bank accounts etc following all the monthly bills going out over the last few days - signature updated to reflect this. I've also had a couple of Tilly Tidies already this week (thanks for the fab idea, Tilly!) so I'm a little further along the way to the £3008 target for the year end.

Mortgage balance is (for a few days at least!) beginning with £203k rather than £204k which is pleasing in itself:beer:

On a very exciting note, it has just occurred to me that we go on holiday next week and when we come back, it'll be only two working days left until I can move back to our home in Cardiff - therefore stability and all sorts of nice things. This has made me smile enormously today as I think I've been a bit grumpy recently. I'm trying to relax on planning mortgage-freedom until I move back in, both so that I don't sound like I'm harping on about money whenever I come home for the weekend but also because it'll be easier once bills and expenses etc have settled into a proper routine...

Onwards and upwards!

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

You're welcome

Won't be long and it will start with a £1............

:j:j:j


Tilly x

pavlovs_dog

Welcome aboard CM. I see you're very local to me (Pavlov towers is just down the road in the Vale of Glam) :wave:

All the best with your MF journey.

cardiffmatch

Hi Tilly and Pavlov - and thanks for the encouragement! Pavlov, I look over at the Vale (Penarth, specifically) across the Bay every time I go for a walk and think how pretty it looks. Good luck to you both and hope things are on the up with Mr Tilly's employment soon Tilly. Reading your diary made me think how important it is for me to build up some savings as I am on fixed term contracts until at least mid 2016 - therefore I'm offsetting rather than overpaying for the time being.

Moneysaving fail today... I forgot to make a packed lunch. This seems v silly and small but buying supermarker or other pre-made lunch is so expensive round here!

I think the reason I'm most bothered about this is that I made a plan of all the things I know I'm going to spend money on until the end of August - this thread https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4726897 inspired me to plot all my days out (including our holiday!) and compare what I think I'm going to spend against the remaining cash I have for the month. This was a v useful exercise as even without any additional impulse buys, my initial estimate was £400 overbudget!

I've trimmed that considerably with some judicious reviewing of plans; I feel really quite in control which is pleasing. Except for the lunch fiasco...

cardiffmatch

Money Spending Expert . com took over at the weekend - it was Mr CMs birthday and we went out for a lovely meal as well as drinks with friends. Then we bought a bed for the third bedroom in addition to all the bedding we needed (duvets, pillows, mattress protectors etc). My budget is thus shot to bits with about £70 to last till the end of the month, to include my train travel!

It has occurred to me though that I might have been a bit unfair on myself and tried to stretch this month's budget from payday (21st July) to the end of August instead of August payday, so I may instead only have to last another 9 days! I think that's the budget period I'm going to plan for as I'll just forget otherwise.

Having a TT today and will also transfer the £2.15 I haven't spent on coffee today or yesterday. Being a bit of a spreadsheet and stats geek, I might work out the cumulative impact of overpaying by the cost of a coffee per day is...