Hope is not an Effective Financial Strategy

shangaijimmy

DS1 birthday today and its been horrible for him. He was sick every hour, pretty much on the hour from midnight till 4am! In the end we'd run out of bedding to use. The dog was demented with all the coming and going, and DD decided she wanted to be awake from 12-3.45am also!!

So we had to cancel his outing with his 2 best friends to a trampoline place.

Anyway i've just gone through the accounts in a tired haze and will stick them onto the next post. Just give me 5 mins...

So exciting!

cookie9

Hope he feels better soon. Poor soul to be ill on his birthday of all days.

shangaijimmy

Well here goes for my first accounts of 2016. Overall another very good month for us that keeps us on track to halve our existing term of 19yrs and 1 month.

January Totals

• Overpayments - £616.72
• Closing Balance - £124,770.68
• TT's - £23.23
• Daily Interest Reduced to - £6.80
• Net Reduction - £1,091.26
• House Brick Coloured in for £125k

Cumulative Totals since Diary (March 2015)

• Average Net Reduction - £1,020.85
• LTV - 56.46%
• % Loan Remaining - 91.74%

A key marker for me is keeping net reduction above the £1k mark which i've now managed for 4 out of the last 5 months. And with no council tax to pay for the next 2 months i'm well placed to continue this through Feb and March.

The cumulative effect can really be seen in the daily interest and how its tumbled since March 15

• March 15 - £7.41
• April - £7.36
• May - £7.30
• June - £7.25
• July - £7.20
• August - £7.14
• September - £7.09
• October - £7.03
• November - £6.98
• December - £6.92
• January 16 - £6.86
• February - £6.80
• Overall its now 61p less than 11 months ago!

debtfreeoneday

Whoop, great going SJ!

hiddenshadow

Very nice numbers, SJ!

Hope DS feels better soon and his friends can do a rain check on the trampoline place.

shangaijimmy

Thank you. I must confess I'm very motivated at the minute and Mrs SJ even thanked me this evening for looking after all the finances! I've recruited DS1 to be the designated brick colourer and Mrs SJ is doing it with him.

I promised an amended budget which hasn't materialised yet (can I blame it on baby?), but on a quick look we actually have £318 surplus every month, which I'm sure I can claim £50 for an increased standard OP...

Anyway more to come from posting a budget and I'm determined to do it before I go back to work fully mid week (provided there's no more vomitting as between the 2 boys we've had consecutive night from Weds-Sat)!

Lynplatinum

Evening all

Im a right old night owl im afraid!!!

Poor lads - birthday treat ruined but I am sure you and Mrs SJ will make it up to them !! Bugs can be so inconvienient!

Well done on the figures SJ - you really are an inspiration!! Am gonna be phoning mortgage companies in the am to see if I can improve my lot. mine currently does not allow for overpayments but I want to follow your lead - am gonna look at Martin's recommendations should my current company not play ball but has anyone on here got any particular recommendations?
Thanks
Nite all!

shangaijimmy

Lynn, if you're willing to change your bank account to first direct I'd definitely recommend them. Very competitive deals and unlimited OP's (deal breaker for me).

TT'd 19p this morning, plus quidco £41.75 is now as payment pending, so hoping it'll be there in the morning to OP.

last day off and Mrs SJ has a day of visitors so it's dog walks and watching a film upstairs (snooze in the pipeline!)...

hiddenshadow

I second the FD recommendation. I already had a current account with them, but DH had to open one for us to get a mortgage. For a while he was transferring £1k in and back out the next day to meet their requirements to avoid fees, but then we discovered that the mortgage itself counts as a fee-exemption so we skip that step now. Apparently having an everyday saver (even empty) also counts.

My only (small! tiny!) complaint with them is that they're an online bank (yay) that doesn't let you view your mortgage balance online (boo). They will do text alerts for your mortgage, but those go out overnight so you have to wait for the next day to confirm balances. Or you can phone up every time you make an OP, which I did for about 18 months before I found the text alert options.

shangaijimmy

Totally agree hidden. I suppose the trade off is viewing the mortgage on internet banking v unlimited OP's, with the text alerts a perfect softener. I get mine every Sunday morning and my hope is that i'll have at least 1 OP per week.

Well i threatened to add £50 from monthly surplus funds to the OP pot. I've actually plumped for £60 as i couldn't have my payment + regular payment (not including bonus OP's) adding up to £1190 could I...!