FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

SmlSave

I think the 7% from 2011 is an estimate of what it could be and (hopefully) not what it will be

Just as he's estimating 10% in 2014?

Come sort us out FB!

financialbliss

Oh dear. Sorry about the confusion.

I'm currently fixed at 4.79% Spot on uzubairu. This was fixed in 2006 and I entered a 5 year fix. In hindsight, despite the BoE base rate being tiny at 0.5%, I don't regret this fix as we've had good times too.

So, when we step off our 4.79% fix in March 2011, I'm projecting that our mortgage (be it SVR, tracker or another fix) rate is...

7% for the remainder of 2011
8% in 2012
9% in 2013
10% in 2014.

With this pessimistic forecast in place, I can almost guarantee that if I keep paying £1,025 per month to the mortgage, I WILL be mortgage free in August 2014.

Obviously, these are high mortgage rates, BUT, who knows how high and how fast the BoE base rate will ramp back up. Though I'd play safe and look at it from a pessimistic point of view.

Hope that clears up things?

FB.

Lunar_Eclipse

financialbliss wrote: »

Hope that clears up things?

FB.

Yes, thanks. Very clear explanation. I knew my interpretation couldn't be right.:D

StuartGMC

FB
I think taking the pessimistic view is very sensible for the planning, and those rates are not very high historically. In 1994 we were at 8% mortgage interest rates which then went to about 9.5-9.75% I think, but 13% was a typical rate for the previous 20yrs which is what we used in 1994 to gauge the mortgage we could afford.

Hopefully you'll have a very small mortgage then anyway so you could offset or at least the actual interest charged will not be too much.

Mumto5

Gosh, all those figures make my brain hurt - maybe it's time to think about going back to work (I work in finance!) It all seems to be going in the right direction FB. Keep it up FB I'm with you in spirit and if I go back to work I'll be with you in extra payments.

financialbliss

Back again. Been missing in action for a few days... Since 8th June actually.

I'm a firm believer in that if you're nothing to say, don't say anything, but I've now made a few notes / pointers, so should get back into the swing of things in the next day or so.

See we've some scheduled maintenance later today too.

FB.

financialbliss

Mrs Bliss opened one of these last year and we’ve been re-cycling exiting savings into this each month – the rate on this account being a fixed rate of 10% and feeding in £500 each month. The Halifax literature indicates that if you have paid in 12 x £500 monthly deposits, then you’ll see £325 in gross interest at the end of the 12 months.

This account was opened on 26th June 2008, so next Friday, this account is due to mature. We’ve managed to make an extra £500 payment due to opening the account near the end of the month, so we have £6,500 in there and are hoping to get a little more than suggested £325 in interest. From the savings and investments forum, Dagobert suggests a potential £367.26 gross if we managed to hit the optimum transfer dates.

We’ve been contacted by Halifax who encouraged us to continue with this account, the existing funds being swept to their web saver (0.1% interest) and starting a new 12 month regular saver at a much reduced 4%. How the savings landscape has altered in 12 months!:eek:

Hoping to send the money out on the 26th, as we’ve very tight for meeting payments in July for mortgage, council tax etc. due to cash being tied up in regular savers. The other current regular saver is Barclays at 6%.

So, what are we going to do next? I’ve not researched any further regular savers at present, mainly due to the poor rates. Suspect we will just bank this in our Tesco internet saver – best instant access rate, reducing the number of accounts we have.

Financial Bliss.

canne_2

Hi FB,

Good to see you posting again, I kept checking your diary and there were no posts!

I have started my own diary called Canne's Aussie Mortgage Free Diary after months of lurking...

Thanks for your inspiration!

financialbliss

Barclaycard Goldfish credit card.

Decided last Thursday to cash in some rewards for this credit card. When Goldfish originally ran the card, it’s rewards scheme was known as being one of the best around.

Each £1 spent earned 1 point. You used to be able to cash in 1,000 points for a £10 voucher as various stores: B&Q, Argos, Asda etc.

Decided to redeem £20 of Argos vouchers and 2 Cineworld cinema tickets. Came to do this and they have upped the points required for £10 again. I guess in the credit crunch everyone is feeling the pinch. Used to be 1,000 for £10, then upped to 1,250 and then 1,500 and now it’s 1,750 points for a £10 voucher :eek:

That was last Thursday. We were intending to use the £20 vouchers as part payment for a camping table – Argos catalogue number 340/4892 which was priced at £24.99.

Except last Friday they reduced this to £19.49 as part of their end of catalogue sale. Started searching and the stock they had locally started drying up, so we reserved a table, which was held until the end of Monday.

Pondered over paying £19.49 and actually securing a table or waiting until the vouchers arrived (can take up to 7-10 days) and missing out on the table. In the end we decided to purchase it last Sunday - this was the last one in store which we had reserved.

You guessed it, the vouchers turned up on the Monday and we could have had the table for free. Still the vouchers are valid until 2013, so I’m sure we will manage to use them well before then :rotfl:

Good money saving idea in principle…

Financial Bliss.

pavlovs_dog

for future reference financial bliss you can phone the argos store where your item is reserved (or pop in) with your reservation number and ask for your reservation to be extended. if memory serves the system allows us to extend reservations by a good fortnight. that would give you breathing room, especially if the offer price on the item would still be valid at the end of the extension period.

if the offer price expires a day or two before the reservation, so long as you have proof of the reservation (eg a reservation number) the store manager can, at their discretion, honour the sale price for you if you ask nicely enough.

HTH :beer: