The End May Actually Be in Sight...

RoaringTwenties

Evening all

Just popping on to note a few changes here as you can see in my sig. Basically we've decided to take some money out of the MOS. We'd allocated every single penny to there as it was nice seeing the mortgage so low! But we've decided it would actually be better to have a bit of cash free/saved/to be used on bits we need. So we're at £19,959 now. Still on course to be MF by Sept 2016 which was the original date I calculated when we got the inheritance, allowing for the regular £209 monthly OPs that we've consistently made.

Been listing on eBay though so it could come down by more before we know it! Listed my first BIN/BO's under the new system, all for free. Quite excited at the thought of receiving offers, how sad

Calculated our daily interest earlier, it's now £1.75. At its peak it was £22.11 :eek:

That's all for now, hope everyone's having a good bank hol :T

Beckyy

I need to check out the new eBay rules/system. My eBay pile has been sitting un-eBayed for a very long time...

Always good to have some free money incase you need it. What a difference in the interest, can't wait til ours is down to a pocket change amount!

RoaringTwenties

Beckyy wrote: »

I need to check out the new eBay rules/system. My eBay pile has been sitting un-eBayed for a very long time...

Always good to have some free money incase you need it. What a difference in the interest, can't wait til ours is down to a pocket change amount!

Hi Beckyy, the new eBay system seems much better thus far - I've done my first ever BIN/BO & it was free :T. I'm hoping this automatic re-listing business helps too

RoaringTwenties

I know we don't have to justify ourselves on here but for a while I've been meaning to put a note on about our MF efforts pre-inheritance. We used to OP odd bits here & there, though money was tight with quite a big mortgage relative to our sole income & two expensive kids! I remember we OPd £200 once & nearly fell over :rotfl:. Mainly it was a tenner here & there. The ironic thing is that we OPd less as we were trying to save more, we hated it when a bill came in & we didn't quite have enough put by, so we developed a strategy of over-saving so that there was a surplus when the car insurance, new specs etc bills came in. The theory was that we'd then OP the surplus, although it often seemed something else would come along & swallow that whole grrr

Anyway, I suppose the point I wanted to make is we've not just been trying to be MSE since the inheritance, we've been like that all along...

RoaringTwenties

Another thing I'd appreciate thoughts on is our burgeoning idea of cancelling our accident, sickness & unemployment insurance. Now don't go :eek: on me, there's method in my madness

Basically we are very risk-averse people and have always been insured to the hilt. We pay £64.40 monthly to the BS for £1100 pm cover for one year in case of ASU, it kicks in after 56 days. This dates from when we had a mortgage of £150,000 with large monthly payments. We've been wondering if we still need such a high level of cover. My OH gets 6 months full & 6 months half pay from her employer in case of illness, & a generous redundancy payment, which in both cases works out to more than our remaining mortgage. Whilst no job is secure any more, hers is about as good as it gets. So we're thinking that the ASU might be a bit surplus to requirements.

To be fair to the BS, when we paid the inheritance off the mortgage they did suggest we might wish to re-think our level of cover as our mortgage had reduced so much (I suspect this was also them recording into the call the fact that they had alerted us to this in case we tried to pull some future claim out of the hat that they had kept taking lots of money for insurance that we really don't need!) We could just reduce the cover of course, rather than cancelling it. And we want to keep our life/critical illness cover as that's to care for us/the kids if the worst happens.

Feedback gratefully received :beer:

Beckyy

Personally, I would just keep your life/critical illness cover as your mortgage has been paid down so much if the worst was to happen and OH become ill no doubt you would be able to extend it or reduce payments accordingly within 6 months full/6 months half pay your OH's work give.

If you cancel the ASU you could then OP the extra £60+ a month and it'll likely make a really big dent in the amount of time you clear the mortgage in.

gallygirl

Have you tried looking for cover elsewhere in case it's cheaper? If you can get lower priced cover you may decide it's worth keeping?

RoaringTwenties

Beckyy wrote: »

Personally, I would just keep your life/critical illness cover as your mortgage has been paid down so much if the worst was to happen and OH become ill no doubt you would be able to extend it or reduce payments accordingly within 6 months full/6 months half pay your OH's work give.

If you cancel the ASU you could then OP the extra £60+ a month and it'll likely make a really big dent in the amount of time you clear the mortgage in.

Thanks Beckyy, that's pretty much word-for-word how I explained it to my OH when I first thought of it!
:T

RoaringTwenties

gallygirl wrote: »

Have you tried looking for cover elsewhere in case it's cheaper? If you can get lower priced cover you may decide it's worth keeping?

I could do gg although I think the BS is pretty competitive (though things have prob changed since I took it out!) & it's also just a standard price whoever you are so no faffing about with long & detailed personalised applications. To be honest I think we'll reduce/cancel it, it feels like double insurance really given my OHs work will also pay out enough to pay off the remaining mortgage. Just feels odd cancelling insurance, we've always been major insurers!

edinburgher

Hello RT - can't believe it has taken me this long to read through your diary after all your helpful comments to me :eek:

It sounds like you've been on quite a journey over the last couple of months and it must be a very exciting time.

I read every post (honest), but I've either missed (or nobody has asked), the biggest question of all:

What are you planning to do once you are MF? Both yourself and Mrs RT are a good decade younger than the 'average' MF person based on my experience.

A few observations/areas to explore:

• Re. top savings accounts - it doesn't matter if you're not earning, monthly payments to the accounts don't have to be salary
• You can complete a form R85 to get your savings interest paid with no tax deducted (if you don't already do so)? This would mean you could get c. 5% gross on quite a bit of money, saving might allow you to pay off the mortgage faster than OPing.
• You really like the word 'profligacy'