Tm's MFW ramblings

gallygirl

Congrats on the upduffing :rotfl:. Great progress also :T.

turtlemoose

With no kids, we could be mortgage free in no time at all - we'd have a surplus of over £1000 a month (on top of more luxuries!) so the mortgage would be smashed in 5 years. That's not even including rental profit.

Really, REALLY makes me wish OH and I had met when we were younger, 6 years would have done it! Could have become MF (or certainly mortgage neutral) in 5 years *then* had the flexibility to have the kidlets with that security.

But OH turns 40 this year and is absolutely dead set against having more after that, and I'm absolutely dead set I want one more.... so I had to get a wriggle on to get this one cooking before he became too old :rotfl: the perils of an age gap relationship!

turtlemoose

I should have mentioned really, I've factored in a mortgage OP of approx £2k a year between now and end of our fix (2021). As we are at 2.88% I'm saving this rather than OPing it yet, as it'll earn more interest than it'll save. It means that by the time we come to renew our product, even if our house price remains static, we will be in a position to be at <50% LTV which should get us a cracking deal. I hope, anyway!

turtlemoose

I'm ditching the S123 (well, downgrading it to a normal a/c hopefully) and swapping all my DDs over to Nwest Reward account - for £3 a month fee and higher cb rate than spanish bank, and better interest in various other current accounts, I don't need the 123 any more (not at that price anyway!).

BUT what is most exciting about this (I'm so sad I know!) is that when I activated my online banking today to see the new current account, it automatically added my mortgage!!!! So now I can see the detailed transactions on my transactions, instead of just the few-days-out-of-date balance which is all I could see before!!! happy happy turtlemoose today

Been doing a lot of driving for work which means extra £££ for mileage payments - this payday is an extra £140 so I'm keeping £20 for a pair of maternity trousers (using hairbands to extend the waistband on normal trousers atm but will have to give in soon! despite not gaining any weight yet, I definitely have a bump already!) and putting £120 in the OP pot. Next payday should be about an extra £230 so will probably keep £30 save the rest for OPs

SuperSecretSquirrel

Jealous of the online mortgage account!

Might have to look into that NW account too. S123 is earning its keep at the moment, cashback is pretty much £5 a month (fluctuates a little so sometimes a few pennies under and sometimes a few pennies over) so covers the monthly fee, leaving pretty much a straight 3% savings rate on up to 20k for me. If the NW account is better though, I'll join you!

The thought of hairband trousers made me laugh haha

turtlemoose

SSS suppose it depends on your cash amounts.....significantly higher than mine I should imagine for me, I can use the other banks and get 4/5/6% plus a few 3% with no fee, and that's plenty for my cash - do you still need the 123 after you've filled all the others (and the linked reg savers)?

turtlemoose

Booked a week on the south coast during next school hols, only £380 for a 3 bed house for the week....has kitchen, washing machine etc so seems like a perfect base. Last holiday as a family of 4! Quite pleased with the price as it is during a school hol - we don't usually have holidays as so focussed on debt, figure we will have this as a treat before baby comes and I'm on mat leave and we're skint for a while!

SuperSecretSquirrel

I'll have to do an up to date check on interest paying accounts, I have quite a few with lowish 2-3k limits and a load of linked regular savers... A while back BOS (I think...) were offering 3% on 5k and you could have three of those accounts. Didn't have anything to put in them at the time so didn't apply, but now they would swallow up my s123 balance and then some, so worth seeing what is out there. Thanks for the prompt

Holiday sounds great I like the idea of renting a house or flat, more flexible than a hotel room/suite with littleys in tow. Shall keep that in mind next time we're thinking of going on our hols

turtlemoose

Here is a great site to check current accounts SSS. It doesn't count the limited time linked savers though, so for those there's this fab thread on the savings board where folks have kindly popped all the current accounts and regular savers etc together. You could easily get 4, 5 and 6% so get moving

We booked through airbnb, some great little places out there for not a lot of effort to find them. I think when new baby is 2+ will be our next holiday, we'll probably go for a holiday park type pllace and book a chalet through that site - seems to be around half the price of booking with the park directly!

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks for all the info turtlemoose