Tm's MFW ramblings

turtlemoose

Bah, spendy spendy. Fridge part of the fridge freezer has decided, after a week or so of everything being a rather warm 8-10 degrees, to now freeze everything rock solid so I can't even get half the stuff out of it :eek: The freezer part conked out too, luckily keeping the door shut kept everything mostly frozen, and now it's kicked in to super freeze mode, it hurts your hand if you're in there too long!!! New fridge ordered from Corrys today, work do some discount scheme thing so fridge was £370 but minus savings made it £340, plus £15 on top to recycle our old one. Not too bad I suppose. We did discuss a repair, but as a 9 year old appliance that was bottom of the range to start with, and has been moved house 4 times, decided it was probably time to say goodbye. Shiny new one on its way on Wednesday!

I've calculated what I could do if I stooze my car stuff. Assuming I borrowed £14260 (maximum), that would cost me £216.21 in money transfer fees. If I then pay minimum payment only, stooze the difference between that and what I can afford in an account earning 3% (I've gone mid range, sure I can poss get higher) then pay off the balance of the cards at the final moment before interest kicks in, then I will earn £210.88 in interest......costing me £5.33 to borrow £14260 over 2.5 years .... I'm happy with that as loan charges

turtlemoose

forgot to add, my stoozing calcs assume a profit of £150pm from my rental. Sounds a lot but, long story short, large amount of arrears that have been agreed to be paid very soon, so as long as everyone does what they said they would, we'll borrow the money in March 2016 and final payment Oct 2018 (although my last deposit in to stooze account would be Apr 2018 - so 2 years to pay it off).

JimLad

Stoozing! Now theres a technoque i havent thought about in a while since interest rates went poop.

I like that you have calculated your budget all the way to 2021! Very organised!

turtlemoose

this page is really useful jim, as current accounts are smashing savings at the mo on the whole, especially with the tax free stuff coming in April. This site does a quick look for you and tells you how to maximise the interest.

EatingTheElephant

An interesting site TM, thank you for sharing.

turtlemoose

I'm excited to say that turtlebaby no 2 is cooking :j due mid September, so will be on maternity leave for the first year that DS is at school. Not bad timing

We won't have enough income for even basic bills by the time we get to month 5 of mat leave, however we do have enough time to save between now and arrival to cover those 7 months as long as everything is stripped to the bone.

I currently buy the full childcare voucher allowance - I'll continue to receive that even when on SMP (making them free essentially) so OH and I are going to both keep buying the vouchers for the year I'm off, meaning we will have a stash of £5832 towards childcare when I go back to work. :T:T:T

Petal88

Congratulations!! Bad timing for me to read this I'm super broody at the moment
Hope your pregnancy so far hasn't been too bad

turtlemoose

not too bad, some nausea, a little sickness, cravings to eat lemons (whole, including skin!), but apart from that am feeling pretty good Had my scan yesterday and baby was waving, so lovely! the picture shows them with their hand up by their face. With DS he was jumping about all over the place at that scan, but this one was just relaxing and gave me a wave - so cue speculation from my mum that this one is a girl!

EatingTheElephant

Congratulations

turtlemoose

Decided to look at my original SOA posted on here as it has been 2 years!

Red is previous figure (where I've wanted to particularly note the difference!)

IN: OH £940 + ME £1580 + childcare voucher of £243
IN: OH £820 + ME £1600 + 2 X CC VOUCHER £486 + CB £82 + hfax x2 £10

TOTAL IN TO JOINT ACCOUNT: £2998
TOTAL OUT OF JOINT ACCOUNT: £2224.50
DIFFERENCE: £159.47 £773.50

So we now have a super surplus of £773.50 a month :T Trouble is we just bought the new car and got upduffed

All the old original debt I spoke about when opening this diary is now paid off :j:beer: but we have more for the new car and new windows and doors at home....
MBNA - 0% 02/18 - £7407.52
VM - 0% 10/18 - £2825.13
TSB - 0% 06/18 - £2441.10
HFX - 0% 02/18 - £3724.28
SAN - 0% 02/18 - £4083.00
TOTAL: £20481.03 (of which £404.49 is charges) :eek: - I will get £54.51 of those fees refunded from TSB next month though.

The money is currently sitting in a mixture of current accounts that pay 3% - 6%. I'll be paying the minimum monthly payments on all cards, but paying our monthly surplus in to the highest interest possible combination. I'll then pay off the cards in the final interest free month. I've worked out on an average savings rate of 4% I will earn £1265 interest in that time - making me £915 profit for borrowing £20k AND the car will be paid off in 2.5 years - including a year on mat pay.


On the car front, the garage offered me £2k trade in but the car buying place with the very annoying adverts have offered me £2.5k so that's a nice little bonus - new one doesn't arrive until May though so that value may drop a little as my mileage increases/car gets older etc. I guess I could try to sell privately but then it's the difficulty timing it right between the old one and the new one. I've just noticed Evans Halshaw guarantee to beat the annoying car place price, so will be paying them a visit towards the end of April

New windows and doors are to be fitted week commencing 4th April - VERY excited to have a non-draughty house and windows that don't vibrate when it's windy out!