The march to financial freedom

millionaire_in_training

Easy peasy :rotfl:

My head gets the same and I went through stages of will I or won't I pay mortgage off quicker but luckily my mortgage is tiny and I am already on a repayment rate. Only £173 per month. I could never cope with one your size. You are doing so well. My house is tiny. It was a 2 bedroom and I made it into a 3 bedroom. DD has a decent sized room. DS's is small but mine is literally a 3/4 bed, a bedside cabinet and a built in wardrobe at the end of the room. I feel like Harry Potter in the cupboard under the stairs. Small price to pay though for us to live in affordable housing. I also have a home improvement loan @ £112 per month that runs concurrently with mortgage. My plan is that when my debt is paid off then I will overpay my HIL and get rid of that so I can live comfortably with only £173 per month to pay to mortgage until I am 60. I will be RICH :rotfl:

Skinnylatte

Selling sounds like a plan to me, that mortgage is a bit weighty. Just think to be debt and mortgage free - wow!!!

Ali-OK

Can't do it yet though, tied into this mortgage until end of 2017. That'll be the time to make the move - mortgage is portable, just penalties are high to pay off more than 10% a year or redeem it before then.

So perhaps I need to use the time inbetween to focus on a future career - evening course or distance learning. Trouble is, I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up :rotfl:

Checked my pension pot statement from last autumn - that's at £51k. Half way to apparently what the average pot should be. I might make that one work out ok!

millionaire_in_training

Ha Ha I had that exact conversation m=with one of my friends yesterday. We were saying how difficult it is for the kids to know what they want to do and I had said 'For God sakes I don't even know what I want to do when I grow up' but then I just refuse to grow up

Shame if you need to sell but realistically 3 bedrooms will be too much for you if your DS leaves home eventually so no point in killing yourself in the meantime to pay for it x

Ali-OK

:rotfl::rotfl:

Feeling quite lucky with DS as he's got a few career ideas - he's moving slightly away from History Teacher and more towards Accountant/Auditor at the moment - the latter would definitely suit his Aspie side better.

They get great opportunities each term at school to study new areas and life skills, he's been particularly good at debating and would make a great public speaker apparently :eek: He's onto Business & Finance after Easter.

Spot on their MiT, I'll be rattling around if on my own. I was in my first house (3 bed semi) so sold up for a flat, hated that, bought a 2 bed semi and managed to fill it up with DS's toys :eek:. So bought this one - it's a 4 bed Bed 4 is my study, bed 3 has been the spare for the staying parent - Mum spent weeks here when Dad was in hospital nearby as she was/still is terminally ill herself and doesn't drive.

I've just looked up the value of my sports car - I am swinging towards selling it again - it should sell for £6-7,000 privately. That would clear the debt and top up the emergency fund. I know it's a no-brainer from an outsiders perspective. I might try and get it serviced whilst off next week, buy 6 months car tax instead of 12 and put it up for sale.

So not motivated at the moment, full of worry, yet doing nothing about it is not going to help. I have moved the Qmee 87p earnt from Paypal to my bank account though

Ali-OK

Right, a more positive update than my moping earlier

I've finished Year End as far as I can do and that can be dropboxed to my Accountant. :T. I need to get prepped for work tomorrow, so that's my next job. I'll also be filling up with personal use fuel tomorrow after I've collected a 6p off a litre voucher that Mum has for me :T

Financials today then:
- bank account checked - £250 off the debt tomorrow :T
- freepostcodelottery checked
- Nectar adpoints - 10 more, so finishing the week on 64 pts
- Nectar Search - up to 30/100
- Nectar Canvass - a small 20 pointer done today
- Nectar card value - up to £51.46
- Inbox Pounds - slow going there at the moment but up to £10.85
- Qmee - nothing extra today so far

The change bucket is close on producing bankable amounts - nearly but not quite there...

£4.60 in 5p's
£0.94 in 2p's
£18 in £2 coins

Must do the electric supplier comparison and switch too - silly to leave it.

Thanks for support today - if I put as much energy into pushing my business as I have in worrying about money, I should do just fine

Ali-OK

We're safely through the first day of the Easter break - always a bit manic with the extra hour of driving to drop DS off at Mum's. Her £34 cashback for switching gas and elec has arrived in her bank account as well. We're onto her phone package next

£250 off the CC debt today and up to 42.6% paid off. Yay! Seems a very long time since anything came off the bottom line.

Filled up with personal use fuel today and courtesy of the 6p off a litre, spent £37.20. Pretty sure that'll last me all of April, even though 300 miles will go on for personal use this week alone.

Last night, I instigated the electricity supplier switch over, which should save me another £72 a year, plus £17 cashback too. :T

Financials
- Bank account checked - £20.32 in from Quidco this morning :T
- freepostcodelottery checked
- Nectar, Qmee and Inbox Pounds - all to be done tonight.

I've managed to balance the budget to get the emergency fund back up to £3k by the end of this month as well. I've reduced the sports car tax to buying 6 months - it is more expensive that way, but I'm going to sell it so it's a one off expense. Decision made and need to book it in for a service and then advertise for sale. I'll recoup some money with cancelling the insurance when the time comes and the sale price will pay off the rest of the debt and leave hopefully £1400-£2000 surplus. Hopefully will have that done and dusted by the end of April. Also means the runaround car can be housed back in the garage and free of bird pooh most of the time :rotfl: This is annoying me, can you tell?

I've also reduced nephew's 18th birthday money to £250 from £350 because I found my excel budget sheet from back in 2011 with the actual cost/amount of niece's 18th birthday that I paid for and had always planned to give the same as that, so that is now done and cheque written.

Work has gone very busy again with chunky (read higher value) stuff coming in - great news. Usually May, June and July are good months income wise. Fingers crossed this year follows suit.

I have another birthday card that I must write and post off today second class if it's got a chance of arriving on time. And I still need 4 Easter Eggs.

Oh and the meal plan has gone to pot tonight - one shepherds pie defrosting on kitchen windowsill today is now inside one of the pooches complete with broken (but very clean) dish on the floor :mad: Saves on giving her dog biscuits for tea I guess...silver lining and all that :rotfl:

Hope everyone has had a good start to the week. Feeling quite chipper here

Ali-OK

A quick last update for today on points and pounds.

Nectar adpoints - new week and all 47 points available are done
Nectar Search - up to 40/100
Nectar Canvass - might hit that in a moment but bed is also calling
Nectar Card - up to £51.88
Inbox Pounds - 2 surveys done and up to £11.53
Qmee - Yay! Another 10p in the pot

Tomorrow's plans:

- work
- seek out best place for sports car service (no local dealership here)
- speak to lady re the business that's for sale and officially do 'I'm Out'
- usual financials
- weekly Ald! shop and add Easter choc to list

Night all

Ali-OK

Day 2 of school hols and another billable work day. Ald! shop done tonight, spending £17.67 and £4.93 separately on 4 Cadburys Flake Eggs and a bunch of daffs for Mum. The latter has come out of my general spend money. Quite pleased with that as bought some extra bits to start a stock for when DS is raiding cupboards next week and more phyto-oestrogen foods to try and perk me up a bit. I need some cheese, but usually plenty of that YS in Morries, so will do that another evening.

Ali-OK wrote: »

[STRIKE]Tomorrow's[/STRIKE] Today's plans:

- [STRIKE]work[/STRIKE]Yes!
- seek out best place for sports car service (no local dealership here)No, carried forward
- [STRIKE]speak to lady re the business that's for sale and officially do 'I'm Out'[/STRIKE] Done
- [STRIKE]usual financials[/STRIKE] In part
-[STRIKE] weekly Ald! shop and add Easter choc to list[/STRIKE]Done

Achieved most of what I planned - some bits on the Financials list to look at tonight and I think I'll use the independent local garage for servicing the sports car. Will organise that tomorrow at some point.

Financials then:
- bank account checked
- freepostcodelottery checked
- Nectar adpoints - none extra for me to do there today
- Nectar Canvass - I logged on after posting and got a 100 point, 25 minute one - it was already past 11pm and I was ready for bed, but still did it! That's dedication! Not looked today though.
- Nectar Search - not done any today as yet
- Nectar card - up to £52.03
- Inbox Pounds - very small amount from there today and at £11.57. Down to doing surveys which take up more time, as tasks and videos have reduced to hardly anything
- Qmee - nothing new tonight, might get something whilst doing Nectar Searches though

Got another £2 coin in food shop change so have £20 there to bank now.

Only bit of bad news is something or someone has scratched the new car :mad:. Part of it will probably buff out, part won't as it's deep. I think you can get coloured polish now so may have to spend out on that. So annoying. The old car was so dirty all the time that I'm convinced it protected the paintwork - you could see if someone had dragged a bag along it, but it never damaged the paint. Perhaps that's the secret :rotfl:

Hope everyone has had a good day

millionaire_in_training

:mad::mad:re car. Annoying indeed. When I got this car my DD bumped it before I even made the first payment. Still has the bump in it. No doubt she'll get it fixed before I trade it in !!