Hoggle's looong journey to becoming mortgage free!

Danny5

Hi, I started my diary this week too, I haven't quite matched your enthusiasm yet but I'm hoping that will come to me pretty soon!


Just a quick one on the boiler cover, I've plenty of friends who are boiler engineers and the majority of them recommend having it. As an example a PCB can cost anywhere between £100 - £200 or a gas valve in the region of £150, before you even think about paying someone to fit it! (dependant on which boiler you have) I would say the other option is to put the money you would spend on the cover in a separate account somewhere, so if your lucky and nothing goes wrong with it, you have a big stash of cash!


Good Luck!

laura_hoggle

Thanks for that Danny5, the boiler cover is on my list of things to look into more this weekend, and talk to my parents about (always asking their advice about things like that!) I need to check over the paperwork the previous owners left about it as I can't remember when it was installed.

I'm hoping that my enthusiasm for this won't be short lived, I sometimes have a tendency of getting obsessed with something for a month or so then forget about it... Hopefully the motivation of becoming mortgage free earlier will be enough to keep going! Also, I do love a good spreadsheet - I was devastated after we got married last year, having to give up my 'wedding budget' one. Now I have reasons for lots more! (I do realise how sad that makes me sound....)

Good luck on your journey too, I'll pop over and have a read of yours if that's ok!

Danny5

Haha yea, I do love a good spreadsheet too, I've got one set up for overpayments although there hasn't been any for a year or so!


I used to make regular overpayments and managed to take about 25k off the capital in the first 5 years but due to marriage/separation/divorce the last couple have been a bit of a poor show!


Your more than welcome to look at my diary, any help or tips is appreciated/ needed!


The only other tip I can give you is once you know what your bills and outgoings etc are, stick it up on here and I'm sure people will see things you've missed to save you money, worked for me yesterday!

laura_hoggle

Yes once I've got all the bills figured out for definite I will be posting our SOA, although DH and I have separate accounts for our wages to go into and for individual expenses (petrol, phones, union membership, gym etc) and a joint account, which is where our household bills come from. I've been putting the SOA off a bit because I wasn't too sure exactly what to put on, but I think I'll stick to the joint account as primarily that's where I'd like to find the majority of the overpayments from.

Taking 25k off in 5 years is pretty impressive! I'm hoping for £4k this year, then we shall see what life brings. As a 'newly married' couple, having just bought a house, people I work with are taking bets how long it will be before a little Hoggle appears!

Our first mortgage payment is going to be £1030, and then £716 for the next 19months. Ideally I'd like to budget it as £1030 every month, but I shall have to see how we go with that payment this month to see if it's feasible!

edinburgher

I'm also debating boiler cover, as DH and I have always lived in rented houses it's never crossed out minds that we might need it! I did an online quote which said £13.50 a month I think, this included an annual service but I think I'll try and look into it a bit more.

I absolutely agree with Danny5 - I'm not a big fan of insurance as I think it's more cost effective to self insure for a lot of things (pets, phones etc.) Boiler cover, on the other hand, definitely not! We've had some very bad luck and have had 3 call outs to fix boilers in the last 2 years alone. An annual service will cost £50 minimum, so once you take that off the monthly premium, I think it's a reasonable cost for peace of mind.

laura_hoggle

Thanks Edingburgher, DH and I are both off and at home this weekend so will sit down and get that sorted.

My wages went in fine today (yay!) so over the weekend I'm going to sit down and work out what I can afford to put in the OP account. I need to buy new shoes for work which is probably won't be cheap but a necessity working in a hospital being on my feet a lot of the day-although my position is changing slightly so there will be more sitting down!

Will definitely get eBaying over the weekend, needs to be done and get the money somewhere more beneficial!

Watty1

Great start...enthusastic welcomes....look forward to reading more.

laura_hoggle

Thanks Watty1!

So this weekend has been quite a lazy one, my brother came over yesterday, I attempted slow cooked pulled pork for dinner, 1st attempt wasn't too bad, just need to try and perfect it! We went to the local pub for a drink, but we all signed up to their mailing list before we went to get a free pint each, which was great - a free round is always appreciated, and saved us nearly £10!

Today we've been a bit green fingered and planted a few seeds for veg and herbs, it's not something either of us have done before so not sure if it's going to work or not. Fingers are crossed, would be nice to be able to grow something edible!!

I've added £100 to my OP account from my bank account today, in the hope of getting it to £500 by the end of March. It's currently at £140.16, so it should be achievable!

I'm going to get eBaying today, just need to get my backside in gear and get taking some photos. Am hoping to make about £100 from that, but we shall see!

laura_hoggle

So I managed to put 5 things on eBay at the weekend, 4 have bids so far but all have watchers. All at 99p so far but don't finish til Sunday, fingers crossed there's the usual last minute bidding!

There's currently £190 in my OP account, and I'm going to sit down again and reasses the bills at the weekend, but at the moment it looks like we won't be paying electricity DD this month due to the way they've set up our new account, so I might put that money into the OP account as well, as it's money we should be spending!

Still no news on getting our deposit back from our previous rental, my shifts have changed this week so I don't have a day off, I'm working 9-5 and don't get decent phone signal at work so unless DH gets chance to call them we might not be able to chase them for a few days

getmore4less

re the SOA.

You need to budget(plan) where you want to spend/save ALL your money.

the balance should be zero, plan over a minimum of 1 year preferably longer 5-10years

The SOA is just a snapshot but should have everything on it, one thing missing from the traditional SOA forms are the longer term savings categories so add them.

Along side the plan is the tracking, spending diary is essential if you don't have the system set up to track against budget as some of the items will be guesses to start with in a new home.