FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

setmefree2

well done on the £50 bonuses

StuartGMC

FB
We received ours in July so I think you can be certain to count on the second sum too.

SmlSave

Yay on the £50 bonus.....must mean mine's due soon too....wayhay!

financialbliss

setmefree2, StuartGMC, - thanks.

Checked NatWest today and £50 has now been deposited - I've now transferred it out including the £1.01 I already had in there.

I've also cancelled the £100 SO for 1st September. Guess I will have to get around to closing this account in due course.

FB.

financialbliss

More good news. Despite not yet getting a letter Mrs Bliss has also received the NatWest £50 reward for saving £100 for 12 months.

The grand total of £51.01 has been transferred out and we have also stopped the standing order due for 1st September which has been feeding the NatWest account.

FB.

evab_2

Good work, well done on bonuses!

financialbliss

financialbliss wrote: »

While I appear to have got a bit of regularity back into this diary, I’ve lost my form in other areas. So, here’s a short list of things I’d like to achieve in the next two weeks:

• Balance joint accounts
• Enter credit card receipts into MS Money
• Balance credit cards
• Pay Barclaycard credit card
• Pay ASDA credit card
• Review / open savings accounts

...I want the above objectives completed by Sunday 30th August.

Balance current accounts.
I have two main current accounts I keep a track of. Both of these (Nationwide) generate an electronic statement on the 28th of the month. Both have been downloaded and balanced up until 28th August.

Enter credit card receipts into MS Money. :mad:
Failed miserably here. Had an evening alone last night (Mrs Bliss out) and had the best of intentions to mop up all the outstanding receipts and cross-check against credit card statements. However, I had an idea about two new MFiT-T2 challenge charts :j and spent about 2 hours totally revamping the existing data so that at least one of the new charts could be automatically generated from other data in the sheets. Good in one respect, but bad as far as CC receipts go.

Balance credit cards. :mad:
Failed here due to not having entered data into MS Money.

Pay Barclaycard credit card.
This was done on 19th August. While the CC wasn’t fully processed into Money, happy that no transactions out of place, thus paid bill in full.

Pay ASDA credit card.
This isn’t due until Thursday 3rd September. Will be paying that in the morning before we leave for Filey, so I'll mark this as complete.

Review / open savings accounts.
Been quite busy here, so I'll mark this as complete. Main savings accounts earlier this month were:

• Barclays regular saver – 6.00%
• Tesco internet savings – 2.75%
• Nationwide E-Savings 0.45%

Hadn’t realised that the Nationwide account had such an appalling rate :eek::eek::eek:. Tesco rate has a 1.25% bonus, which for us expires in December, thus would revert to 1.25%. Have now opened an Egg savings account at 3.25% - again with a 2.00% bonus for 1 year (August 2010) and another Halifax regular saver at 5.00%.

Moved the majority of funds out of Tesco and Nationwide to Egg to attempt to maximise the better rate. Kept a bit back to fund mortgage and other direct debits from 1st September onwards.

A bit of a problem here as I was hoping to fund the Halifax account by the 28th August, then again on 1st September, but Halifax have been a bit slow in creating a new account and had to jump through hoops on the telephone to open one (internet opening was rejected). Now hoping to fund on or near 28th September, then again on 1st October to maximise interest. Did this last time and got £360.69 instead of the suggested product literature amount of £325.00.

Succeeded: :D:D:D
Failed: :mad::mad:

Overall, not too bad an effort despite us having a manic few days getting sorted and ready for our Filey holiday, plus there has been a rush on MFiT-T2 registrations in recent days.

May try and give an end of month mortgage interest post in the morning as I will need to transfer funds and pay ASDA CC.

Anyone else see the BBC weather report earlier - "turning more Autumnal in the next few days" :rolleyes: - great, just what we need when in a tent for 4 days. I'm sure we will have a good time regardless...

Financial Bliss.

setmefree2

Enjoy your holiday FB

financialbliss

@SMF2 - I'm sure we will - thanks.

Sun just breaking out through the clouds here, so looks like the start of a nice day. A bit on the windy side, but quite warm.

FB.

financialbliss

Regular followers will note that I post the mortgage payments and interest at the end of the month. Here's how it's looking for January to August:

Mortgage at start of year: 59,500.00
Overpayments in Blue.
Interest in Red.
Balance in Green.

Month: Payment (Std / OP) / Interest (per day) / Net reduction / Balance

January: 1,200.00 (898.03 / 301.97) / 237.37 (7.66) / 962.63 / 58,537.37
February: 1,200.00 (898.03 / 301.97) / 210.99 (7.54) / 989.01 / 57,548.36
March: 1,200.00 (898.03 / 301.97) / 229.56 (7.41) / 970.44 / 56,577.92
April: 1,025.00 (898.03 / 126.97) / 218.94 (7.30) / 806.06 / 55,771.86
May: 1,025.00 (898.03 / 126.97) / 222.96 (7.19) / 802.04 / 54,969.82
June: 1,200.00 (898.03 / 301.97) / 212.08 (7.07) / 987.92 / 53,981.90
July: 1,025.00 (898.03 / 126.97) / 215.58 (6.95) / 809.42 / 53,172.48
August: 1,025.00 (898.03 / 126.97) / 212.28 (6.85) / 812.72 / 52,359.76

Totals: Payment / Interest / Net reduction.

Minimum: 1,025.00 / 210.99 / 802.04
Maximum: 1,200.00 / 237.37 / 989.01
Average: 1,112.50 / 219.97 / 892.53
Grand Total: 8,900.00 / 1,759.76 / 7,140.24

I'm fairly confident that we will break through the 50k barrier in November. I've set ourselves a definitive 31st December year end mortgage target and as a result, I've upped the automated overpayment coming out tomorrow to 201.97. Just transferred funds to cover mortgage and other direct debits.

More on this year end target and a review of 2009 aims once we get back, as I've been a bit lacking in that area.

Financial Bliss.