FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

uzubairu

financialbliss wrote: »

Mobile.

Was intending to move to Asda mobile – 8p for calls and 4p for texts regardless of network. Nice and cheap – will do for us. Not interested in per month phones, even if it’s “just £15” as a friend told me he paid per month.

So, my options now are

a) Attempt cable unlock. May cost between £10 to £15, possibly more.
b) Get cost from Virgin mobile. Suspect this will be relatively expensive, if they even do this at all - they need to protect their revenue. I’ve just emailed them.
c) Purchase an Asda phone. These start from £22.00 with £4.95 postage

The Asda phone option could be offset with trading the Samsung mobile on mopay.co.uk – they would give me £4.20 for it. Not bad considering I’ve had it 11 months and it only cost £8.98. Additionally, the Asda phones are not locked to any one network.

The aim is to get our mobile costs down. Still researching options and not in too much of a hurry to switch.

£15 per month is still too much for me to pay for a mobile phone too.

I recently encouraged to change to the new Tesco PAYG tariff with the tripled credit (I am staff so I get even more free credit) but I don't use my phone anywhere near enough to benefit from it.

I used £3 of last month's £45 of free credit before it dropped off, but when it dropped off the few calls I made were more expensive (20p calls/10p texts)and I couldn't go back on my old staff tariff (10p/5p) because it had been withdrawn.

After a little research on MSE, I found that there was a Tesco PAYG Lite tariff (8p/4p).
Internet usage is a lot more expensive on Tesco tariff, but I will never use my phone for internet access.

After a drawn out phone call to Customer Services, they finally moved me to the cheaper tariff.

I hope you find a nice cheap solution.

Floxxie

How about getting a new phone and selling your old one - either eBay it or use one of these recycling companies, depending on the price you would get?

financialbliss

financialbliss wrote: »

The Asda phone option could be offset with trading the Samsung mobile on mopay.co.uk – they would give me £4.20 for it.

@Floxxie,
Thanks for tip - already checked on mopay.co.uk and they report it's worth ~ £4.20.

Thanks,
FB.

financialbliss

The mortgage.
Thought I’d better mention the mortgage as the August payment and overpayment cleared today. :j Today our mortgage is £52,174.96

May not seem like an interesting value, but each £4,750 of the original capital is 5% of the mortgage. Today we reduced the mortgage past £52,250, which means we have paid off 45% of our mortgage.

Based on our regular monthly payments of £1,025 towards the mortgage, I still estimate that we will be mortgage free in August 2014. Need to bring this forward still, but I’ll not dwell on that right now…

Ideally, I would have liked a year end mortgage value of £47,500 – 50% paid off, with the remaining 3 years to clear the remaining 50%, but I now don’t think we will achieve this £47k5 year end target.

Page 1 charts updated – signature to follow.

FB.

Floxxie

financialbliss wrote: »

@Floxxie,
Thanks for tip - already checked on mopay.co.uk and they report it's worth ~ £4.20.

Thanks,
FB.

:rotfl:Guess where I read up to on your message? Had a quick check for you on comaparemymobile as was surprised at how low that was. Unfortunately it is the highest offer on there.

Well done on the remaining mortgage balance.

financialbliss

The site I use to get the Halifax HPI was updated today, so here's how that relates to us for the year to date to July:

2008 year end house value: 232,022.54

Month: Change / Value / LTV

January: 1,990.83 / 234,013.37 / 24.94%
February: 859.68 / 233,153.69 / 24.63%
March: 3,167.24 / 229,986.45 / 24.65%
April: 135.73 / 230,122.18 / 24.20%
May: 5,474.79 / 235,596.97 / 23.29%
June: 3,031.50 / 232,565.47 / 23.18%
July: 2,760.01 / 235,325.48 / 22.55%

The Halifax index went up today, similar to what the Nationwide reported last week. There's a thisismoney article here, if anyone is interested:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages-and-homes/house-prices/article.html?in_article_id=489270&in_page_id=57&ct=5

We're up by £2,760 for July, meaning that for this year to date, we have seen a theoretical increase by £3,302.

Grabbing the mortgage each Sunday of each month and then averaging out against the HPI gives the ability to generate the loan to value - the lower the better. Above data shows our lowest LTV to date at just 22.55%

Financial Bliss.

Queen-Bee_2

financialbliss wrote: »

It’s the 1st January and it’s that time of year when we tend to make up targets and aspirations for the coming year.

.....6. New registrations. Rather than just ramble on for the next 12 months, I’m hoping that I can strike a chord with five lurkers (one for each quarter, plus one for good luck) and inspire them through this diary to register for these MSE forums and say “hi” on this diary, especially if through this diary you have decided to overpay or want to be mortgage free.

Financial Bliss.

Well I don't know if you've kept track of the lurkers who have started their own diaries inspired by yours, but I am one of them and started my MFW diary a couple of days ago!

Having recently been made redundant, I'm now planning a complete career change. :j Consequently, I am taking steps to reduce my mortgage as much as possible over the next 12 months so I can return to full time education next September.

Now this is going to involve a complete lifestyle change, as up until now, I've never really budgeted. Consequently, I need to learn a lot quite quickly, and reading diaries like yours, and the OS threads, is the way I am going about it!

Queen-Bee

JonnyBravo

Queen-Bee wrote: »

Well I don't know if you've kept track of the lurkers who have started their own diaries inspired by yours, but I am one of them and started my MFW diary a couple of days ago!
.....
Now this is going to involve a complete lifestyle change, as up until now, I've never really budgeted. Consequently, I need to learn a lot quite quickly, and reading diaries like yours, and the OS threads, is the way I am going about it!

It's the original and the best isn't it QB?

Whilst you haven't inspired me to take up diary writing FB, I'd just like to echo the "Keep up the good work" sentiments. It's the new stuff you add every few months that's keeping this fresh and interesting.
Oh... and the odd talk of gadgets for us blokes. And the number analysis I guess..... I love that stuff and do plenty of it myself.... just can't be bothered to write about it!

:T

financialbliss

Queen-Bee / JohnyBravo / plus any lurkers,

It’s a bit like a major DIY project this diary thing is. Masses of energy and enthusiasm at the start, a drop of of enthusiasm / momentum in the middle before a mad rush at the end to meet the deadline – here’s hoping!

With quite a dull subject like mortgages and finances, I feel I’m in good hands here when discussing things. I’m now more inclined to sounds things out here now instead of “boring friends and colleagues” with mortgage overpayments and finances. Quite a taboo subject really!

As for the diary, it’s a fine balancing act between mortgage / financial stuff and other related items. I could probably easily achieve a post a day here, but I’d be ranting and rambling about so much that the mortgage message would probably be lost.

Perhaps why this diary is reasonably popular is that I try to update it reasonably regularly. The mortgage free in free take two challenge is going well, however that does take up some of my time administering new entrants and creating and updating charts and answering PMs.

I amaze myself sometimes that I find the time and energy to update this at all, but it’s the comments that I get back that drive me to continue posting. Always a thanks from me if you post here.

Thanks again,
Financial Bliss.

financialbliss

financialbliss wrote: »

a) Attempt cable unlock. May cost between £10 to £15, possibly more.
b) Get cost from Virgin mobile. Suspect this will be relatively expensive, if they even do this at all - they need to protect their revenue. I’ve just emailed them.
c) Purchase an Asda phone. These start from £22.00 with £4.95 postage

Quixk update on the mobile front. When I start researching something, I generally launch in with both feet and tend to jump quickly once I've made my mind up...

So, reviewing the above mobile options:
c) Purchase an Asda phone - most expensive at £26.95
b) Virgin mobile called me today - they charge £15 to unlock a mobile.
a) Cable unlock:

Sort of went with this option, but instead of purchasing the kit to do it myself, I managed to find a local shop who unlocked the phone for a tenner. I asked how he did this, and it was via a cable and a PC.

A quick visit to a local ASDA later and I've not only purchased a 47p SIM card, but also £5 top up at the same time. In doing this they waived the 47p SIM card cost. Small benefit to me, but not to be sniffed at. Mind you, 47p wouldn't even reduce my mortgage by 1 day :rotfl:

I've also emailed Virgin Mobile to request my Port Authorisation Code (PAC) - the equivalent of a broadband MAC code for mobiles, so I can keep my existing mobile number on the ASDA network. Why don't people do this more - it's free? Saves the bother of telling everyone you know you have a new mobile number.

FB.