Introducing....

Urbanshyne

Hello all. I've had a week of financial extremes. Thrift dominated the first half - I spend £0 between Sunday and Wednesday; Thursday saw a small opening of £7.30 on a breakfast at Sainsbury's and since then, the sluice has been wide open, flooding everywhere with money. I spent £90 on petrol yesterday and £55 on food shopping today. ARGH!

On the upside, the petrol should last for a couple of weeks and I won't have to do much food shopping next week. Still, the numbers aren't much better than last week which is disappointing.

Nationwide and TSB have paid their first interest dividends - £6.03 from the NW and £3.53 from TSB - which have been used as OPs on the mortgage. I earned the grand total of 5p cashback on my TSB credit card this month (I'm gonna go wild in the sweet shop with that!) and I signed my new 5 year mortgage deal with the bank yesterday. It's 1.84% for the term which works out at £439p/m starting September. I'm pleased with that.

Finally, I opened up a Tesco Bank current account today just because it's paying 3%. I've got £2500 languishing in an account paying 0.25% at the moment. It's pants.

Oh. One more final thing - I've lost 2 lbs this week which is unexpected. I'm going to celebrate with pie and chips. What do you reckon to that!?

shangaijimmy

Welcome aboard! I agree with newgirly that joining the challenges are a massive help. I started with a 12 month goal but found the wait too much. I then had some goals for a variety of milestones which was better but not great for motivation on a month without a clear end goal. So this year i listed a monthly goal in my first post which i can cross off and make a visual mark on progress. This has been a big help in motivation, and so far i've hot each month of targets i thought unreachable!

Anyway good luck and i'll be cheering yon on for the next 5 years :hello:

Jessy103

I often reward a weight loss with an indian or pizza so I say go for the pie and chips! :rotfl:

Urbanshyne

Oh My. It's been a while but I haven't given up. Honest. In fact, if anything, I've ramped up the MF challenge to clearing my mortgage balance by Dec 2020 - fingers crossed.

My mortgage today stands at £91884. I've got approximately £20000 in savings and those are increasing by £500 a month. I'm also overpaying by £1250 per month and my standard payment is £440. Add all that up over 36 months and by my reckoning I should be pretty much mortgage free by Christmas 2020.

Anyway, it's good to be back and I should be able to keep this diary updated more frequently than in recent months.

Happy New Year, nearly.

L

greent

Welcome back

debtfreeforlife

Wow, impressive! I'm assuming you don't have any overpayment penalties on your mortgage, then?

Urbanshyne

debtfreeforlife wrote: »

Wow, impressive! I'm assuming you don't have any overpayment penalties on your mortgage, then?

Yeah, there are penalties. I'm on a 5 year fix with a 10% overpayment allowance. It's my aim to be mortgage neutral by 2020,

Jessy103

Welcome back and Happy New Year!

Escapar2020

Hi Lee

Interesting diary, I've been catching up, you have some serious targets, so good luck!

You asked about more ideas….

I've just saved £250 per year by switching from a contract ti sim only deal without upgrading my phone, and got more minutes and more data in the process.

Are you a higher rate taxpayer? It might be worth contributing more to your pension to reduce your tax rate. It might mean you have slightly less to take home though, but would beat any savings rate.the guys in the retirement forum know more than I do about it ;-)

Escapar2020

blocpartyfan

Happy New Year Urbanshyne!