FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

Quick lunch post.

Asda. Despite having a few initial problems getting in, I can now see I owe a grand total of £0.00 - second payment also cleared yesterday, but only showed as cleared yesterday today (if you follow).

House Price Index (HPI). The site I use to calculate our variations in house price has been updated today, so I'll be posting a HPI update this evening:
http://www.moneyfacts.co.uk/economic/UKHousePriceIndex.aspx

Mortgage interest. Stands at 2,001.49 today, ie broke through the 2k mark.

FB.

financialbliss

Well, as reported earlier, the site I'm using for the house price index stats was updated for September. So, here's how this reflects in our situation:

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%
August: 1,809.84 / 237,135.32 / 22.12%
September: 4,253.14 / 241,388.46 / 21.28%

So theoretically, we're about 9k up from the start of the year. This rise in September is also reflected in various news stories:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8292156.stm

Our loan to value is the lowest yet at just 21.28% :j Good news I guess for when we come to re-mortgage in March 2011.

Financial Bliss.

SmlSave

So theoretically, we're about 9k up from the start of the year

Great news

I wish my loan to value looked like yours - maybe in 10 years time!

financialbliss

SmlSave wrote: »

Great news

I wish my loan to value looked like yours - maybe in 10 years time!

Hi SmlSave,

Well we did put 105k down as a deposit on the property and borrowed 95k, ie just less than half of the property value of 200k, so I guess that big deposit helped immensely.

FB.

JonnyBravo

financialbliss wrote: »

Our loan to value is the lowest yet at just 21.28% :j Good news I guess for when we come to re-mortgage in March 2011.

Financial Bliss.

There's no real benefit for being anything under 60% LTV as per the rates you get offered..... at least I've never seen a special product for a eg 30% LTV etc. By then the risk of the lender losing money is pretty much the same ie negligible.
Anyhow, surely you'lll have such as small loan that remortgaging wont be worth it? I'll be amazed if you do anything other than go onto the SVR for the last couple of years.......



Unless you move of course!

financialbliss

Just getting a quick post in before I turn in for the evening...

Happy birthday diary!

:bdaycake::bdaycake::bdaycake::bdaycake::bdaycake::bdaycake::bdaycake:

Two years old today!

Still, here, still chipping at the mortgage as best I can. This diary lark could have been a temporary fad, but with the enthusiasm from fellow MFWs - I'm still here and keep posting as I find the time!


The MfiT-T2 challenge has kept me massively busy this week. A huge interest at the moment - in part I guess due to the original MFiT thread being linked to from the MSE newsletter and the MFiT then linked to MFiT-T2.

Also, this week I have re-organised the internals of the MFiT-T2 spreadsheet (actually just 1 spreadsheet file, but has 7 individual sheets so far) to make administration simpler and more automated, plus subsequently switched the MFiT-T2 spreadsheets to Google docs.

This has been a bit of a pain as the Excel sheets didn't import 100% and I had to do some re-engineering, but in future I should be able to get some better charts. Additionally, I don't have to worry about publishing them - they just get refreshed.

FB.

TallGirl

Sounds like you have got the charts sorted FB. Thanks for the tip I might look into that one. Also well done on your mortgage reductions that is great news. I find keeping a diary addictive and it is so nice to read others too.

financialbliss

Where has this week gone, I’ve just not had the time here!

MFiT-T2. This is going very well. Had a massive rush in October, with 33 people signing up to date in October alone, which has kept me busy. Don’t intend to drop this diary over the MFiT one, but come 12th December, it should quieten off a little as the challenge becomes locked. I’ve also updated my estimate of the mortgage on 12th December down by £308 to £48,639.

ASDA CC. Finally got the paper CC statement and two bits of good news. No credit card charges, plus as I cleared the outstanding balance in full the other week, I’ve a £0 bill.

Pay. Got my pay slip today and got two small but pleasant shocks. I've had a pay rise, taking my gross salary to £38,961.

One: Pay rise was 1% (double the 0.5% first put on the table). This was effective from April 2009.

Two: They back pay has also been credited this month.

As far as net income is concerned, it only changes my monthly income by about £22, so regarding commitments to the mortgage, I don’t foresee making any changes short term unless I notice my savings creeping up.

As far as future pay negotiations go, I now see 2 to 4 years of pay freezes or very small increases. This probably won't reveal itself until next summer after the general election and the spending plans of the government to be are made known.

Financial Bliss.

StuartGMC

FB
Looks to me like an ideal time to move to offset for the remainder of the mortgage with all the benefits it brings. You really are on the final leg now, so this will be your final mortgage change as thereafter the costs outweigh any savings.

Will Google Docs work better with OpenOffice files? The latter generally parse to/from Excel although my budgeting sheet with the weekly averaging doesn't as Excel doesn't support that function. Of course OpenOffice is compliant with ISO open standards and is free.

financialbliss

StuartGMC wrote: »

FB
Looks to me like an ideal time to move to offset for the remainder of the mortgage with all the benefits it brings. You really are on the final leg now, so this will be your final mortgage change as thereafter the costs outweigh any savings.

I've got until March 2011 to take stock, but knowing me, I'll probably not leave it until the last minute and work out my options 3 or 4 months ahead of time. Plus, I'll no doubt put the question here on MSE too...

StuartGMC wrote: »

Will Google Docs work better with OpenOffice files? The latter generally parse to/from Excel although my budgeting sheet with the weekly averaging doesn't as Excel doesn't support that function. Of course OpenOffice is compliant with ISO open standards and is free.

If I select a sheet to download, I get the option to save as:

CSV, HTML, Text, Excel, Open Office or PDF. I've tried Excel, but it's a very recent file format, so I could not import it. May install the free OO at some point, but for now, I'm happy with a combination of Excel and Google docs.

FB.