Free at last….now to be Mortgage free!

midnight_child

Wow, you certainly have been busy.

I would put my priorities in a different order.

1. FD loan (presumably the most interest)
2. Barclaycard - 0% expires in Oct 2014
3. MDNA - 0% expires next year
4. mortgage - this will go down to below 170K over time due to normal payments anyway.

What is your interest rate on the FD loan? Surely it is better to clear this first and for the moment just pay the minimum payment on the mortgage and cards currently at 0%.
As the balance transfer rates may well be more than 2.5% to swap to another 0% rate when your deal ends I would priortise these over the mortgage. Ideal situation if you can do it would be to stooze the cash and pay it all off the month the 0% ends.

keza

Hi Midnight child!

thanks for the support and advice. I made the mistake of not putting my list in order of priority. FD is the main priority. Then Barclaycard then MBNA and finally the mortgage. I shall realist with figures this time

midnight_child

Hi Keza,

Just re-read your thread, I got a bit confused first time round thinking your were paying off in that order.

Do you think any savings could be made from your SOA to pay down quicker? The clothing budget in particular leaps out as me as being quite high (it's works out at nearly £7 per day!!). I have a dislike of clothes shopping but that amount would last me well over a year.

There might also be some decent savings to the food budget by batch cooking or shopping at a different supermarket.

MC

LauraJo

Hi and welcome
Good luck with your journey

keza

Hi Midnight Child.
I saw the same also and shamefully spent £2,000 in NY last month on clothes (PPI Refund) so dont think i will be buying any clothes anytime soon!!) so yes, perhaps that could go.

Trouble is, I have issues getting DH on board. he wants at least £500 of his wages left over for himself everymonth as his opinion is that he has been working all month and wants to spend his cash on what he feels fit. at the same time, I am left with around £300. We both have our own savings too so we do both add to those pots on a separate note.

I have started a spending diary and have pleaded with DH to let me have any money he doesnt spend by end of the month to throw at the debt but I do feel like im talking to a brick wall - he never has money left!

Also, groceries hit a high this month at £320....so I have a plan to do this months shop in A!di and !celand as we did change to 0cad0 since we moved into our new house. time to change back.

keza

Hi LauraJo. thanks for popping in :wave:

Your diary is an inspiration - im a long time lurker - havent posted but have subscribed!

keza

NSD today for me. Just sorting out tomorrows shopping list and the budget as DH gets paid tomorrow.

also, while I've been doing some of my studying, I have just seen my latest assignment back at a score of 95% so I am over the moon with that!

Had pasta bake for tea tonight which was half a bag of 29p pasta (14.5p) and a jar of pasta bake sauce from £ shop for, well, £1 so nice cheap dinner this evening. not sure whats on the menu for tomorrow but I suspect a pizza and garlic bread which were free from Iceland when you brought a newspaper all of last week and collected the tokens. Food tastes better when its free

keza

this morning I changed my grocery shopping choice….to A!di from 0cad0…. the difference is staggering!

The shop cost me £65.10. so I went onto my usual shopping site and placed the equivalent in the basket. the total came to just over £110. so in theory right there i have saved a massive £45! I can't believe it. I got meat for a good few weeks, all the monthly essentials and a couple of treats. really really pleased :beer:

spent the morning doing some prep for the bento lunches I now do for myself and DH. cut up lots of fruit and frozen that, cooked some earl grey tea muffins and made some jazzies with DS.

Now I am just sorting out the budget as DH got paid today. still aiming for £100 overpayment this month but now hoping I can shave £50 off the groceries budget and get it down to £250 enabling a further £50 overpayment. :T

keza

I love this site soo much, had a random £2 of club card vouchers sitting in my club card account and we no longer shop at telcos so of little use to us now. Saw on the grab bit board that theres a sale on family days out. managed to exchange my odd £2 for £10 voucher towards our planned trip to Colchester Zoo this summer

keza

we have made some big steps in the right direction this weekend.
I have put together a plan on how to get the house renovation pay off down to 12k by next May and hopefully it is doable.
also managed to get DH on board and we are now changing the way we do our money every month.

normally we put money into the joint account, enough to cover bills and DD's but done this by % of what each of us earn to keep it fair. recently, I have said why do we still have 'mine and yours' when we have been married for over 3 years, have a son and now a mortgage together. so we are going to put all our wages in one account, take out a reasonable sum of £200 each, each month as spending 'pocket money' and anything thats left after the budget is all paid, can go off the debt. some months this looks like it might be in the region of £400-£600 depending on the bills of course. so this is a mega point of change for us and we are really looking forward to it

tonight for dinner was quern stir fry, nice a cheap but tasty, and i am just making a cob loaf to have with soup tomorrow night