FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

Virgin update – me.
Emailed Virgin last Thursday evening asking them to e-mail me my Port Authorisation Code (PAC), so I can transfer existing mobile number from Virgin mobile to Asda mobile. Got an automated reply saying they could take up to 48 hours to reply.

After no reply after 48 hours, I emailed them a second time, this time giving them a link to the OfCom PDF:

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/guides/Transferring_Mobile_Guide.pdf

that specifies "The PAC must be issued to you within two working days of the request over the phone, by text, e-mail or post depending on your provider. Your PAC is likely to be a nine digit code and is valid for 30 days."

After no response by early this evening, I called them (getting an alternative free to us number from saynoto0870) and asked for my PAC again. Operative suggested it had been issued. Put Virgin SIM back in my phoned and a text from Virgin arrived with my PAC. Doh! Immediately gave this to Asda mobile and my existing mobile number is being transferred by 16.00 on Thursday 13th August.

Virgin update – Mrs Bliss.
With having her mobile phone for over 3 years, she fancied a replacement. Can’t argue with that as she uses hers more than me. Browsed a few brands/models until she came across a Samsung J700 she quite liked the look of: Phone, text, camera, MP3 player, organizer tri band etc. More detiails here if interested:

http://www.yourmobilephonereviews.co.uk/samsung_j700_reviews.htm

Priced at around the £75 mark not locked to any one network, we we about to buy one for her until we thought outside the Box. Mrs Bliss logged into Virgin mobile and had £20 upgrade allowance. Great. Better still, they were selling the phone for £39.99 – using the £20 allowance, we got the phone for £19.99 plus £4.95 postage. This was actually ordered at about 20.45 on Sunday evening and it arrived before 10am on the Monday morning. Has since been unlocked and Mrs Bliss has also gave her PAC to Asda mobile, who is also getting her number transferred this coming Thursday.

Ok, we’ve spent a little, but will start saving immediately in call costs.

Financial Bliss.

earthgirl

This sounds great! Don't you just love it when all the organising and planning works out - thats a hefty saving on the second phone!

canne_2

Well done FB. Sometimes it takes a little planning and ingenuity but money can be saved in all sorts of ways!

setmefree2

Yay well done on the phone savings:T

THRIFTY_GIRL

financialbliss wrote: »

Sat Nav.
we also took a wrong turn, so I’ve been pondering over a Sat Nav box of tricks.

Again, I’m just researching the options at present and not even sure if we’ll purchase one. Like any purchase, you can often go overboard, so we’ve just been looking at the relatively basic models such as the TomTom classic and TomTom IQ UK versions, ie systems at about the £150 or less mark.

Still not 100% sure if we would benefit from the purchase, ie would it be a cost effective purchase, or is it the big gadget / techie streak in me that wants one. For anyone with a Sat Nav system – are they worth their price?

Financial Bliss.

We have had a Garmin for over 2 years now and would definitely recommend. You can pick one up for as little as £90 in Halfords. They have some cheaper RAC ones too but i don't know what they are like.

I was told by the workers too that Garmin is the most reliable as they never had any back;)

financialbliss

THRIFTY_GIRL wrote: »

We have had a Garmin for over 2 years now and would definitely recommend. You can pick one up for as little as £90 in Halfords. They have some cheaper RAC ones too but i don't know what they are like.

I was told by the workers too that Garmin is the most reliable as they never had any back;)

Hi thrifty,

Thanks for that handy satnav tip. Not sure we will jump as quickly with a sat nav as we did in sorting out the mobiles.

Final mobile point - this evening I purchased a SanDisk micro 2Gb for Mrs Bliss's new phone - storage for photos, music etc. Paid a massive £3.51 from Ama*on, which included the postage. Will probably take a few days to arrive.

FB.

Queen-Bee_2

financialbliss wrote: »

I’ll update the above numbers and graphs each month throughout my journey.

Hi FB - The way you've plotted your progress on the graph and chart at the start of your thread really hammers the message home. Can I ask how you did produced and uploaded them? Pictures (and charts) tell a thousand words as far as I'm concerned... and more to the point, I find them very motivating! QB

unhappy_shopper

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.

Hi FinancialBliss, I have been a lurker for so long and I read your posts regularly.
Have now decided to overpay and become MF at the earliest. Thanks for your inspiration and also to lots of other people who post regularly in the MFW thread.

financialbliss

Queen-Bee wrote: »

Hi FB - The way you've plotted your progress on the graph and chart at the start of your thread really hammers the message home. Can I ask how you did produced and uploaded them? Pictures (and charts) tell a thousand words as far as I'm concerned... and more to the point, I find them very motivating! QB

Hi Queen-Bee,

Yes - it's a challenging schedule, but the prospect of being mortgage free in just over 3 years (40 months and counting), is a massive motivation. The chart shows the ideal curve and how well I am adhering to it.

The charts are quite straightforward and can be summarised as follows:

• Create chart
• Export chart to Paint
• Upload to an online storage provider
• Link to online storage

Create chart. I use Excel to chart various bits of data I’ve collected and analyse about the mortgage. Create a chart, line, bar chart etc, and format this as you would normally do a chart.

Export chart to paint. Once you’re happy with the chart, right click on the chart image in Excel and select ‘Copy’. Fire up paint and paste into the blank canvas. Save locally on your own PC as an image – I tend to use .PNG or .JPG formats. What you're doing here is extracting the screen to an image.

Upload to an online storage provider. Once you have an image, you need to upload this to some online storage. I use http://www.photobucket.com. This is a free to use service, but you can upgrade to a paid for ‘professional edition’ which I think allows larger or more files to be stored. There are also other free online storage providers, their names escape me right now.

Create an account with photobucket, log in and then select local files from your PC to upload. I’ve got two accounts with photobucket, a personal one and a MFiT-T2 one!

Link to online storage. Once they are uploaded, they will get an online URL / address. Take a copy of the address and then paste into a MSE post to show the image

May take a few attempts to get this right, but it’s quite straightforward to do.

Hope that helps - look forward to some charts in your diary!

Financial Bliss.

Queen-Bee_2

Evening FB - well I've created a cahrt I am very happy with, but I've gotten stuck of the Export Chart to Paint bit. If I right click on it, I don't get a 'copy' option. I guess this could be cos I am using a different version of Excel or using it in the Boot Camp partition of a Mac... Goodness knows! But hopefully, it'll eventually get posted up in my diary. In the meantime, thank you very much for the helpful instructions, Queen-Bee