Journey to £0 by 2020, with a few bumps along the way

chelseablue

Happy new year all!

January's direct debits to the cards went out today, new balances are:

Lloyds: £2,812
Sainsbury's: £1,137

So total debt is now £3,949

Under 4 grand at last! :j

Partner is driving me mad, he's totally different to me when it comes to money. Just wants to spend, spend, spend.
This weekend he wants to go and look for a new sofa!!!! :mad:

enthusiasticsaver

That sounds like it could lead to conflict if you both have different views to finances. Not uncommon sadly.

My DH is like me in that he hates debt but he is or was less enthusiastic about saving than I was. Having now seen the benefits by being able to retire 8 years early due to me insisting saving for the future was as important as new car, sofa etc and having the money to help our kids he is much more on board. Now the strings are loosened a bit I struggle a bit when I don't keep track of our finances like I used to.

chelseablue

Done a bit of account admin today, no longer use my Santander 123 account so phoned them and closed it.
Before I did that there was £1,690 in there so I transferred that over to my Nationwide account.

Which means the wedding is now fully covered :j AND there's still £2,400 to come from my Dad and £1,000 from Mother in Law.

I'm sure they'll be a few wedding things that will crop up so they'll be a surplus there to cover them.

Partner gets his bonus next month but that's already earmarked for the flights to Australia.

My bonus is due end of March, it might be enough to clear most of the credit cards but I might keep it in savings for Australia spending money (I'm guessing for a 4 week holiday you need quite a bit of cash?!)

Also the car purchase looms ever closer, lease car goes back end of March.

chelseablue

Nothing much to report today, pay day tomorrow and there's £65 left in the bank.

Our fixed rate mortgage with Halifax expires at the end of March, had our broker look around and he found us a better rate with Nationwide than what Halifax were offering to stay.

Application went into Nationwide and was approved so from April we'll be in a 5 year fixed rate at 1.79%

Means payments will be going from £720 to £790 a month.
Could be worse and at least it still starts with a 7 :rotfl:

chelseablue

February's direct debits have now gone to the cards.

Balances now:

Lloyds: £2,702
Sainsbury's: £1,096

Total debt: £3,798

Only major bill this month is the house insurance, purchased it yesterday for £128. Bought it through Quidco and getting £45 cashback so technically only costing £83 for the year building and contents :T

Only thing is cashback doesn't get paid until June. Why does it take so long :cool:

Oh, tv licence expires 28th February but doing that out of February's pay

chelseablue

Well we've bought a car :eek:

Where my partner works, they were selling one of their company cars so we've bought it.

Good news is it cost a lot less than we were going to spend.
Our original plan was to spend up to £10k on something that was a few years old

But instead its cost us £5,500 for a 2012 BMW 3 Series.

We have had to get a loan to pay for it, but the lease car is going back next week so just swapping one monthly payment for another.

Lease car was £129 a month and the loan is £136 a month.


Downside is insurance is higher on the bmw than a Hyundai, looking at about an extra £20 a month

Upside is I've said we have to keep it as long as possible, so hopefully now I've got a few years without hearing about cars :rotfl:

enthusiasticsaver

chelseablue wrote: »

Well we've bought a car :eek:

Where my partner works, they were selling one of their company cars so we've bought it.

Good news is it cost a lot less than we were going to spend.
Our original plan was to spend up to £10k on something that was a few years old

But instead its cost us £5,500 for a 2012 BMW 3 Series.

We have had to get a loan to pay for it, but the lease car is going back next week so just swapping one monthly payment for another.

Lease car was £129 a month and the loan is £136 a month.


Downside is insurance is higher on the bmw than a Hyundai, looking at about an extra £20 a month

Upside is I've said we have to keep it as long as possible, so hopefully now I've got a few years without hearing about cars :rotfl:

Another downside to BMWs unfortunately is the cost of parts and servicing. As the car is 2012 though I guess you may not use the BMW dealers and just use local garages which will be cheaper although parts will still be expensive.

Still better than paying a small fortune for the car though. The reason for high insurance is apparently because a lot of older BMWs are driven by boy racers. Not saying your OH is but that may be the reason.

At least you know that being an ex company car it will have been serviced regularly.

chelseablue

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

Another downside to BMWs unfortunately is the cost of parts and servicing. As the car is 2012 though I guess you may not use the BMW dealers and just use local garages which will be cheaper although parts will still be expensive.

Still better than paying a small fortune for the car though. The reason for high insurance is apparently because a lot of older BMWs are driven by boy racers. Not saying your OH is but that may be the reason.

At least you know that being an ex company car it will have been serviced regularly.

Yes wont be using bmw for servicing or any repairs, would need another mortgage :rotfl:

I'll just use the garage I always go to with my car

chelseablue

Just had the completion statement through regarding our re mortgage on 3rd April

On completion we're due £117 back. Will try not to spend it all at once :rotfl:

I'm sure I read that we get £500 cashback from Nationwide after the mortgage starts with them, will dig out the paperwork and have a look.

chelseablue

Got my bonus today, £1,500 after tax and NI was taken off it.

Moved it straight over to my savings account.

When I logged into Nationwide online banking today I noticed there's now a mortgage account on there, so all ready for the change over from Halifax next week.

Must ring Halifax today and find out if they're taking a mortgage payment next week, mortgage normally comes out on the 1st of the month but that's Sunday and Monday is a bank holiday.

So would have been on the 3rd but that's the day we move to Nationwide.

Looked through the mortgage paperwork and we are due £500 cashback, need to call them and find out how they send it.
Presume it's into the account the DD comes from, hopefully not a cheque as we don't have a joint account............yet :eek: