Under the cherry tree, yet another MF wannabe!

potatosan

Hello,

I have been toying with the idea of creating my very own MFW diary for a while and have decided to take the plunge. It is a slow day at work and luckily MSE forums are one of the websites that haven't been blocked by IT.

About me: OH and I live together, no kids, brought a house last year (FTB), don't have any debts. I am obsessed with finding good deals and money saving where possible (cashback sites, voucher codes, loyalty points, etc). OH not so much, and is happy to leave all the money decisions to me. We have a joint account and we've been married two and a half years (Time sure has flown).

We are currently overpaying our mortgage by £200 every month which I want to take up to £500 in the next month or so. OH has had a pay rise so the extra money will go there.

I will be doing a statement of accounts in the next post so you can get a clearer picture of where we are. We do spend quite a lot of money and I have found moving money away to saving immediately as soon as we get paid helps massively. Otherwise just seeing that money makes me want to spend,spend, spend.

Other than that, any questions please ask and come say hello.

Betterthanever

Good luck with your journey! I'll be following with interest.

[Deleted User]

good luck!! i'll be following too

potatosan

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household.........
Number of cars owned.................... 1

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1000
Partners monthly income after tax....... 2500
Benefits................................ 0
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 3500

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 1022
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 250
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 156
Electricity............................. 125
Gas..................................... 0
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 35
Telephone (land line)................... 0
Mobile phone............................ 20
TV Licence.............................. 37.56
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 0
Internet Services....................... 12
Groceries etc. ......................... 50
Clothing................................ 25
Petrol/diesel........................... 50
Road tax................................ 16.62
Car Insurance........................... 25
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 100
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 25
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 0
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 25
Contents insurance...................... 0
Life assurance ......................... 22
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 25
Haircuts................................ 30
Entertainment........................... 50
Holiday................................. 100
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 2201.18


Assets
Cash.................................... 1700
House value (Gross)..................... 230000
Shares and bonds........................ 1100
Car(s).................................. 1000
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 233800


Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 202000...(1022).....3.3
Secured Debt.................. 7500.....(250)......0
Total secured & HP debts...... 209500....-.........-

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Total unsecured debts..........0.........0.........-


Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 3,500
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 2,201.18
Available for debt repayments........... 1,298.82
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 0
Amount left after debt repayments....... 1,298.82

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 233,800
Total HP & Secured debt................. -209,500
Total Unsecured debt.................... -0
Net Assets.............................. 24,300

Created using the SOA calculator at https://www.stoozing.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using other browser.

potatosan

On Sunday I made a big pot of noodles - yaki soba for lunches through the week. So it's quite nice having NSD's in the week. Lunches and transport can all add up so much. I also take my own coffee into work so no temptation there of grabbing a quick one at the work canteen.

I have also been cycling to work and OH walks most days so no transport costs. The buses are expensive at £2 for a single or £4 for a day pass. The weekly bus passes are not much cheaper either to make a saving.

Home insurance needs to be renewed. Aviva have auto renewed our home insurance from last year and I think it is a 14 day cooling off period where we can cancel. So I'll need to get around to that at some point today or tomorrow. I have looked at a few quotes but they charge 17.5% APR for paying monthly. What a con but we are going to have to go with pay monthly even with the added cost. I'll come back with figures tomorrow and let you know what savings I have made.

We have a 2 week holiday planned in November and with Christmas looming, it will be a period of spend, spend, spend. This is the first year we are doing Christmas in our house and taking over the mantle from the parents. Hopefully we will be able to budget wisely and have a great time as well.

wishingthemortgaheaway

Welcome to the mfw world.

I had no idea the interest on the monthly payments is so high. Ouch.

You say you are going to have to pay monthly this year, but you don't have to next year.

Try (and you are on a good income so this should be possible) to put aside the monthly payment again (so, if you are paying £30 including the interest, put another £30 into a savings account every month) worst case scenario is by this time next year you will have more than enough to pay the renewal in 1 go.

By the time the next 'could be annual' bill comes round (e.g. Car insurance) you may have enough in the pot to pay it out right. Then, up the monthly savings pot by what you would have been paying out monthly, so you replenish the house insurance pot & prepare the car insurance pot.

Sounds complicated but, it took me about three years to get
House insurance, 2 lots of car insurance, bt line rental, water, council tax, professional fees into the system. Now when I pay them there is always a bit extra in each pot to overpay the mortgage.

Good luck with your journey.

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary
I am sure that you spend more than £50 a month on food?

potatosan

So, it's been a while since my last post.
Thanks everyone who replied and the tips about monthly pots. Will probably be in a good position next year to pay off everything in one go instead of installments. (rich get richer). Please keep them coming.

Food spend is probably about £100 a month for 2. We shop in Lidl but many purchases are 'specialbuys'. I went in for milk once and came out with milk and a ukelele. This week my food shop was just £11. We have a store cupboard and just get top up shops of veg and meat as well as the usual basics. Some months we stock up more than others.

I got the home insurance sorted. Saved £60 on Aviva's renewal quote. Went with Swinton in the end with a £36 cashback from TCB. SUCCESS!

This month I am determined not to go into the overdraft. We have about £340 left in the account but also a £500 credit card bill from last month for our trip to France. So I have clawed back about £200 from other accounts (Natwest bills account) and withdrew £50 from my TCB account. Bonus was an HMRC cheque for overpaying on tax last year, so happy we will be in the black this month with possibly some left over. I love September. July and August just felt so long and never ending.

From next month we will be overpaying the mortgage by £500, got that sorted out and also checked it doesn't trigger any excess charges (ours is 10% of mortgage amount so not by miles).
That'll bring us to paying off our mortgage in 15 years. Whoop!

Today is also Young's pubs birthday so free drink from their app (On Tap). I have downloaded the app and am ready to have a free pint after work.

michelle09

Hi potatosan! Good luck with this.

Yeah, car insurance is terrifying in monthly installments. We were going to do it too until we saw the APR.

In your SoA you have your TV licence down as £37? Is that right? Ours is £12.37/month.

potatosan

Hey Michelle, we pay TV licence quarterly. I must have just put the whole amount in. I just did a quick SOA, not extremely thorough as it turns out.

getmore4less

SOA take a while to sort out to reflect reality from the way you are describing things
Amount left after debt repayments....... 1,298.82
is clearly not right the money has been going somewhere.

Do a review/SOA based on the last 12 months, that will show you where you have been spending and what you need to change to meet your new goals.

the key to taking control is knowing where the money goes and making informed choices of how you want to spend it.

You have the cash flow so don't need to do things monthly with high APR.
By overpaying £200/500pm on the mortgage and borrowing for the car insurance(all month payments are is debt) you are just upping a portion of your mortgage interest to the car rate which is not the best option.

The simple approach is preserve the cash till you have everything looking forward a full year covered then start overpaying, a full years forward cash flow analysis will tell you when you have money spare to overpay.

if you want to aim for £500pm think of that as £6000 per year it does not have to £500 every month if a bill comes in pay that and reduce the overpayment, on months with no bills pay more.

Otherwise just seeing that money makes me want to spend,spend, spend.

Budget and spending diary are the tricks here, plan where you want your money to go, review all the needs carefully.
Prioritise the wants so if you start going over you know where the cutbacks will come.
Then track with the spend diary and adjust the SOA to reflect reality.

A really good trick is to normalise on a year rather than the month the SOA uses, this give the relative total across different types of spend, weekly, monthly, yearly

don't think of how will be spend/save £3,500.
do it for £42,000 those annual total change the view



You don't have the OD/CC on the SOA
You need something if you can't pay the CC without going into OD to get the starting balance right for a SOA to work.
If you are going to be at Zero+ with the Tax refund then that will be OK, starting Oct. if not you need an entry to reflect the negative cash and any charges.