Mortgage free by 2021?!

GilmoreGirl

Wow, hiddenshadow, very impressive non-work sum! For the cashback, do you use the free or the premium account?

lippy1923

Excellent figures re mortgage payments and non work income. Glad you enjoyed xmas. Cheers to more OP's in 2017.

Caravan_of_Love

Great thread!

While saving is great and we all seem to enjoy it, don't forget to live a little as well guys. We all end up in a box at the end of the day and you can't get back your peak years when you are nearing the end of your time.

hiddenshadow

GilmoreGirl wrote: »

Wow, hiddenshadow, very impressive non-work sum! For the cashback, do you use the free or the premium account?

I did have the premium TCB account but haven't renewed it this month (as I doubt it'll be as useful once we're living in Ireland/mostly spending in €). I do think it paid for itself in 2016.

debtfreeoneday

That is impressive work, you get some serious whack from surveys.. what are your best sites?

hiddenshadow

Swagbucks: £427.00
Panelbase: £147.45
Populus: £100.00
1poll: £80.00
Ipsos: £75.00
Yougov: £50.00
Prolific: £22.12
Lucky Phone: £10.00
Other: £8.50 (think if was off a survey from swagbucks or GFK)
Amazon: £5.00 (think this was DH actually)
GFK: £4.00

Swagbucks is my favourite in that you can earn quite a bit via very little work (probably 20 minutes of clicking on things sporadically while I'm eating breakfast in the morning), but my least favourite for actual surveys - lots of pointless questions and screening out at the last minute. I only do the bare minimum to get extra points each day - most days this can be done via phone apps while you're doing other things, which is nice. If you get the first level of extra points each day it nets about £20 each month.

Panelbase has been brilliant - quick to screen you out, some interesting surveys, pretty good payouts.

Everyone else I do as and when.

Caravan_of_Love

Sounds as if your employer are looking at potential avenues to call it a day. I read they are a startup so doubt they will have experience in HR and are fairly at a loss in terms of how to play it.

It sounds as if your heart isn't in the job anyway. Perhaps a sit down and see if you can work out a handshake agreement? Would more than likely be best for both sides and take the stress off your shoulders.

In regards to your test results, how is your diet and are you active?

hiddenshadow

Caravan_of_Love wrote: »

Sounds as if your employer are looking at potential avenues to call it a day. I read they are a startup so doubt they will have experience in HR and are fairly at a loss in terms of how to play it.

I think if they were considering this they would have done it already. Granted, perhaps the medical reports are their attempt at it, but they certainly aren't in a rush about it (first mention of wanting them back in August, only just now getting round to actively pursuing them).

It sounds as if your heart isn't in the job anyway. Perhaps a sit down and see if you can work out a handshake agreement? Would more than likely be best for both sides and take the stress off your shoulders.

My heart isn't in it because they won't let me do my job. I don't adore everything about where I work, but I'd certainly be happy to keep working for them - they've had requests from me and my GP to let me work from home but their policy there hasn't changed. Given that I end up exhausted/unable to walk within hours of arriving at work (if I even get there), commuting in isn't really an option.

When we first started discussing moving abroad in June, I did consider investigating if work would be happy to let me keep working for them remotely. The past few months have made the answer quite clear, hence the search for a new job.

In regards to your test results, how is your diet and are you active?

Healthy, and no. Prior to these symptoms limiting my activity I was running 2-3 miles 2-3x/week though. Would be nice to get back to that...

hiddenshadow

Caravan_of_Love wrote: »

While saving is great and we all seem to enjoy it, don't forget to live a little as well guys. We all end up in a box at the end of the day and you can't get back your peak years when you are nearing the end of your time.

I'm not sure if this was in relation to anything in particular from this thread. I think I've said before that we try and be pretty balanced with our finances (and lives in general). We each have spending money per month, we have an eating out budget, we try and do fun things on a regular basis (sometimes fail due to our lazy and/or homebody natures more than anything else ), and visit family/friends.

The numbers in this thread are relatively large compared to other MFW threads but that's due to our fortune in careers/jobs, not because we're slaving away 24/7 or anything.

I probably spend far too much free time reading up on personal finance, or tweaking our budget, luckily for our finances I consider it a hobby rather than a chore.

hiddenshadow

December OPs: £5.00
December Offset: £1,625.77

Current (offset) balance: £119,668.86
Month we’d be in to get to our current balance without OPs: October 2025 (+4 months)

2016 Overpayments: £22,856.23
2016 Offset Savings: £6,853.96
2016 Interest Saved: £25,732.87

Total Overpayments/Offsets: £54,808.96
Total Interest Saved: £54,193.81

Daily Interest: £8.36 (down £0.16)
Monthly Interest: £249.95 (down £12.63)
December 2015 Interest: £578.76 (down £328.81)
December 2015 Daily Interest: £18.67 (down £10.31)

House Bricks: +3

Mortgage reduction: £42,000/£43,000 (97%) (Average: £3,500.00/mo)

Out of the 120s! To think this year I started out wanting to break into the 120s. Didn't quite make the extra-stretchy goal of £43,000 but I have no complaints about our progress in 2016.

Stocks & shares ISA: £1,500/£1,200 (125%)

Got incentivised to invest.

Net worth increase: £85,770.90/£65,559.14 (130%)

Really surprised by this as I thought £65k would be a stretch.

MFIT-4: £39,831.14/£90,000 (44%)

14% ahead of schedule.