Hope is not an Effective Financial Strategy

ShineALight

Hi SJ,

Just popping in to say reading through your diary was the inspiration for me to finally get my act together and start one too. It's amazing to see what you've done in four years.

So much so that the first part of my mortgage free wannabe journey will be to make my capital repayment at least £1,000 a month - and start to bring that interest down!

shangaijimmy

Thank you Shine, I'll be popping in to check on your progress.

Well today we have an afternoon, evening and stay out night to ourselves. Kids have headed to caravan with grandparents and we have dinner, bed and breakfast booked at a country lodge type place. So hoping for open fires, lots of beer and food!

11p TT this morning and tomorrow will be the first OP of year 5!

A_Frayed_Knot

Well deserved break, sounds idyllic - enjoy.

shangaijimmy

Hotel was amazing...quaint, picturesque very friendly. Food was fabulous, a little fancy for us Northen folk when we looked at the menu though :rotfl: One night just didn't feel enough unfortunately.

So back to reality of washing machine, uniforms, spellings, packed lunches and bedtime stories...

Made our first OP to our new mortgage and our 5th year of the challenge...£4.22 made up of TT's from the week. That reminds me that i must sort out standing order tomorrow. I have to do it by ringing in which becomes a pain as I never know the telephone passwords (only ring up every 2 years) so have to go through the rigmarole of setting them up again!

Hoping to have received our Gas and Electric refund this week, if not I'll make a note of chasing it up.

Suffolk_lass

Fabulous post SJ, I am sitting here chuckling at the hotel image in my head. I love that you are already over-paying that new mortgage when it only started a fortnight ago.

Your MFiT-T5 reference in your signature should have the caveat that 0% is after 0 updates though!

shangaijimmy

And as further proof to suffolk of my commitment... A great morning as £60.34 refund received from Sainsburys energy and promptly dispatched to the mortgage (13 days worth of interest). And the customary 48p TT.

13 must be a theme as we also have 13 days till payday and £228 to last us... If we manage it then we're totally back on track following the ridiculous month of January for birthdays and with no expenses other than 1 food shop and 2 lots of petrol barring any emergencies we should manage it (if we don't we wont be far off our recovery though).

shangaijimmy

23p TT to start the day which keeps us plodding on with a feeling of some momentum. I'm determined to find 15mins to ring the bank this morning and sort out the standing order too.

shangaijimmy

Standing order for our regular OP amount has been sorted. So our commitments mortgage are now:

• Mortgage = £526.59
• Regular Overpayment = £673.41
• Total = £1,200

Am delighted to see that our OP amount has now overtaken our actual standard payment. I suppose this is now realising the impact of the snowball.

So the quest for each month is to find an extra £26.59 to make our OP's up to £700...

And on that note I've TT'd 61p today.

A_Frayed_Knot

:j for snowball !!! We are forecast for snow 4.00am till 9.00pm Saturday :eek: :j

See it roll . . . Well done :beer:

shangaijimmy

Lucky you being forecast snow. We are forecast the customary rain...!

68p TT this morning. Feeling quite motivated for the years mortgage assault so making am over analysing our budgeting...which naturally is fantastic! I have our S&S Isa to adjust at the start of April when we get Mrs SJ's second pay on the new salary.

And I wondering, are we all having a tax boost in April? Have i imagined it or does our tax free earnings threshold rise a bit?