I really really want to be........mortgage free!

ourcornercottage

bumped so I can write a proper end of year update later and dont have to find my thread again!!!

ourcornercottage

Its not been a bad month

OP £400.53
Net reduction £1000.53
Daily interest now £7.36
Balance £113,779.46

Savings Short Term + £617.72
Savings Long Term (Pensions and ISA) + £1965.15

FIT payment still not received there was an issue processing it so that will be received in Jan.

End of year I have hit the OP target (just) and also ST saved an additional £6000 ish which is also exactly on target. LT savings (Pensions/Isa) up by almost £19000 which is good for us. Obviously helped in the short term by the brexit so expect this to be much reduced next year.

A couple of my higher interest savings accounts and regular savers due to finish in the early part of next year so will try to get as much as possible into high interest account accounts then I may OP the rest. I will have to play it by ear and see how it goes.

Overall its been a good year, gone a little awry since september but ended up okay. Am going to aim for £6000 OP again next year.

Hope everyone had a good christmas

ourcornercottage

renewed a couple of annual bills today and saved £20 per month in total. I was thinking today how years ago I would have just left these to run without checking. Paid phone line annually to get the lowest cost although I could have done without the cost this month! hopefully FIT payment will come through soon!!!

Have arranged for a windows company to come around a quote for putting in bifolding doors into our living room. This is quite a significant job but need to see how significantly financially. It would make a lovely difference to our lives and would make a significant improvement to the house so lets see. Im estimating £6000 but could be more. The doors along are £3000-£3500 plus building and structural works. Well we will see.

On plus side got another FC referral £50. Happy days

CathT

Hi occ, good saving on the bills and it all helps with overpayments.

Bifolding doors sound great, they really transform rooms. Hope you get a quote that makes it do-able.

chumpy45

End of year figures look fab, well done on your achievements. There always seems to be something to do in the house to scupper our plans doesn't there. We are currently getting quotes to have our stair bannisters and spindles replaced - and off we go again !!!

ourcornercottage

today was the day for the door quote but the BF has a very nasty bug so have rearranged it. I have lots of plans with our house having oodles of potential given the money which would be rather a lot. I think your could absorb £50k with no issue at all. We will get there in the end though!

Yesterday I switched my stoozing CC1 with no switching fee, 0% for 26 months and just over £20 from TCB. Bonus. Currently have about £12k in the stoozing accounts and we are more than neutral now although I will leave them with the minimum payment whilst I can get 3% interest + on the money and there are 0% switching fees available. I will probably run out pretty soon though!

I am going to have a decision to make soon as I have a couple of regular savers that mature, and I need to see if I can get better than the lloyds account I have some money in. In short, I need to see what interest rates are available.

Had a couple of annual bills coming out this month which was annoying but they are paid for another year and still waiting the FIT payment grrrr.

No OP's yet!

PS I am not commenting on many diaries at the moment but I am reading them to keep up with what you are all doing

CathT

You really do make the most of your money OCC. It definitely pays to be organised doesn't it. Hope your bf feeling better soon, this really is a dreadful time of year for illness.

ourcornercottage

I cant believe its been 3 months since I updated this!

Its been a pretty rubbish 3 months MSE wise (and everything else too!)

The mortgage is £111280 which will reduce by a further about £700 on monday when the payment comes out. I am still doing my regular OP of just over £200 plus some extra bits and bobs where I can. Not as much as I would like to as I am saving for house repairs. Will be starting soon as still getting in quotes.

I can see from my diary that I started the year on £113,779.46 so I will have reduced by about £3200 in 4 months so hopefully would get to £10k in this year even with the work being done on the house. It will mean that I will still be above £100k at the end of the year which is a bit

My maturing regular saver went into Tesco account which is earmarked for a new bathroom (or part of one!) the other regular saver is maturing on 28th of this month and that is earmarked for guttering.

Short term savings will be hammered but the long terms savings are going to be untouched so

then need to save to get the flat roofs redone, then the kitchen, then the carpets, then the plastering!

MiniOCC is in year 3 at school so has the rest of this year and 3 years left. Local high school is pants, wont get a place in local independant as dyslexic and wont pass the assessment. Need to think about moving possibly in 2 or so years to move to a better school catchment area or downsize to be mortgage free to make it easy to pay for a different independent school. Currently we live in a house which is about twice the size we need so it really won't be a chore. Should be highly achievable as we have brought very well with the house we have and not much comes up in our village less than £400k now. In reality we have about £30 - 50k in total to spend on it but we are still in a very good position.

hiddenshadow

Glad to see you back, OCC.

AlexLK

Good to see you back OOC.

Overpaying something is better than most do.

Rather sad to read about the house as I thought it was your dream place.