Hope is not an Effective Financial Strategy

shangaijimmy

Well with the fence once again postponed we tackled the boys clothes. It seemed to last forever as well...! Anyway a job well done so all their drawers and wardrobe sorted out. Clothes for the bin, clothes for charity and a mountainous pile for ebay. So to feel like i've made as start i made 11 listings from the top of the pile.

Excited to see the chart 9 update from MFiT challenge. A expected i'm in the yellow with 74.24% of a £41k target and leaving me £311 shortfall. I think the shortfall will only steadily grow over the next 12 months. The extra £1k above £40k may well just scupper us! Very happy with progress :beer:

shangaijimmy

Well its a day early and even early for a Sunday, but i have more interest in money spreadsheets that watching Bing on CBeebies. And the dog is still in bed so i can't take him out either!

Monthly Totals - Payment 38

• Closing Balance - £95,015.63
• Total OP's - £594.65
• Net Reduction - £1,089.76
• Daily Interest - £4.27 (5p reduction)
• LTV - 42.99% **
• % Loan Remaining - £69.86%

** I'm basing LTV on the value of house from mortgage provider 4 years ago. However an identical house to ours (minus the conservatory) last month sold for £10k above the figure i am using. If i were to use the extra £10k figure then LTV would be 41.31%.

Length of Diary Figures

• Total Reduction - £40,984.38
• Cumulative OP's - £22,705.11
• Ave OP's - £597.50
• Ave Net Reduction - £1078.54

We are really pleased with our progress. Always worth bearing in mind that life doesn't seem to have been affected during this challenge in that we have added an extra mouth to feed, bought 2 cars (totalling £12k for the 2), had a foreign holiday every year and decorated the house from top to bottom. And we have contributed significant amounts to pensions.

I wouldn't say that we are massive earners. We do well with our jobs and have about £3.5k income each month. Comparatively we earn less than our 3 sibling sets, have a bigger house (with the exception of 1 set), have more children and will be mortgage free before any of them. In fact 2 sets will be paying theirs off well into their late 50's or early 60's.

:T:T:T:T:T:T

atypicalblonde

That makes for excellent reading SJ, you should be very proud

Busy_Mee1

Amazing progress Jimmy, I agree with ATB you should be incredibly proud :T

greent

shangaijimmy wrote: »

I wouldn't say that we are massive earners. We do well with our jobs and have about £3.5k income each month. Comparatively we earn less than our 3 sibling sets, have a bigger house (with the exception of 1 set), have more children and will be mortgage free before any of them. In fact 2 sets will be paying theirs off well into their late 50's or early 60's.

:T:T:T:T:T:T

:T:T:T:T Showing that it's not how much money you have, but what you do with it that counts

Kittenkirst

Fantastic & inspiring progress SJ!

I love your monthly round ups- seem a great way of recording how your progress is tracking! a

It's also good to hear that you are doing your overpayments but still enjoying family life & making memories :heartpuls

Suffolk_lass

I'm happy to share what I read but please bear in mind I am no expert - quite the contrary. I started doing this in my fifties (if only...)

I read Simplyfading's Frugal Cottage Blog here - she invests for income - it is worth clicking through to one or two of her guest posters' pages for different perspectives.

For a bit more of a hard-nosed perspective I read Mr Free at 33 here - he regularly posts on a stock he thinks is undervalued - his focus is as much on capital growth as income - which might be better for you. Some of the stocks are only available via the US so your platform would need to support the Dow Jones

Quietly Saving is here - I just tagged her as I was impressed with the first four years. Although some people are more diligent than others and brewing my own is not for me...

In newspapers I read Ian Cowie in the Times/Sunday Times for his musings about his personal investments, which always seem to be founded in good sense, and I read the Money section of The Times on Saturday (though I rarely agree with their choices), I do like the articles that tell me about the ten most reliable funds for income over the last x years, and that sort of article.

Others I have read I don't like their attitude, so I occasionally look to confirm my own slightly more ethical approach (I don't like hedge fund asset strippers at all, for example). For me, investment is to promote growth, wealth and jobs, not my personal wealth first. Just a bit of an old hippy at heart, really.

Also, when I buy things, I try to do so from Companies with premises in the UK (I actually check their premises addresses, and on google maps, to make sure they are not just a brass plaque place) - who are employing British workers, paying UK taxes and NI, UK rates and so on. And I am mildly obsessive about whether they pay their taxes here, (VAT especially) which I check on the EU VIES tool, the Companies House web-check tool and DueDil (short for due diligence). If I am buying stuff I want it to help the UK economy as well as me. Obsessive, Moi?

Karmacat

Jimmy, a wonderful update - keeping track is so important when the everyday steps seem quite small, like your TTS. Really brilliant to see how much you've achieved, when your life is also being lived well - you forgot pet owning too, which can be expensive. Love that the dog was still asleep when you posted

SL - thanks for your listing too, I used to be up to date with investment and blogs, but I had to let it all go, I'm looking forward to picking it up again.

themadvix

It looks like everything is going swimmingly well over here! Very impressive figures and have to agree with greent that it just goes to show it's what you do with the money that matters, not how much you have!

SL - I've got to echo Karma's thanks - have opened those links and will bookmark them for perusing. I need to get my head around investing more, it's something that passes me by.

greent

Another thanks from me, suffolklass - off to do some reading