FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

Just a quick point this evening. I really don’t know where the weekend has gone!

Saturday saw a letter demanding the payment of the outstanding balance on the holiday. Balance What balance?

Went into paranoid mode. Logged onto holiday web site – showed as fully paid. Logged onto credit card site – showed as paid and value matched. Pondered for a while, then called their payment helpline to discover it was a computer error. Phew. It was only 17.88 outstanding, but if you’ve paid in full, you don’t expect any problems later down the line.

FB.

LouiseJ

financialbliss wrote: »

Just a quick point this evening. I really don’t know where the weekend has gone!

Saturday saw a letter demanding the payment of the outstanding balance on the holiday. Balance What balance?

Went into paranoid mode. Logged onto holiday web site – showed as fully paid. Logged onto credit card site – showed as paid and value matched. Pondered for a while, then called their payment helpline to discover it was a computer error. Phew. It was only 17.88 outstanding, but if you’ve paid in full, you don’t expect any problems later down the line.

FB.

Same happened to me with a vets bill, paid for a load of blood tests £92 at the surgery then got a letter 1 month later asking me to call in and clear a balance of £9.15 Apparantly they did a urine test on my pet from 7 miles away, now thats clever! Computer error, sounds like a human error to me, computers are such easy scapegoats.

financialbliss

Two letters of interest this week so far.

Credit card. Paper statement has arrived. There’s nothing more sobering than seeing a large credit card balance in writing as opposed to on a computer screen. In fact, further to my post #101, it wasn’t 1,525 when I logged in and took a cursory glance at the balance, but actually 1,558.

This short term cash flow issue is currently getting to me. Needs paying by 25th January, but I’ll get paid before then. Trouble is, I’m then looking short for the 900 mortgage I’ve just committed myself to. Expect I’ll pull saving out of icesave, but that then leaves me short for the monthly savers further down the line. Need to look at the figures mid to late January to see how I’m doing.

Alliance and Leicester. As my car loan is about to terminate this month, as expected, A&L have very kindly offered to lend me more money. I initially borrowed 6k over 12 months which cost around 175 pounds in interest.

Their current “deal” is 7,500 @ 6.9% with loan protection over 60 months – total cost 11,271.

Needless to say, I won’t be taking them up on this very generous offer and the letter is already on the shredding pile.

FB.

setmefree2

January hey:o:eek: Don't think we're going to be able to do an overpayment this month either....

financialbliss

I’ve been getting to and from work for a number of years by public transport. This isn’t straightforward for everyone all of the time, eg connection times, buses / trains not going quite where you want them to, but in my case it’s almost a taxi!

I get to and from work by bus. It meanders around the suburbs - my stop is pretty much the last one, then it’s a non-stop shuttle into town. Works really well for me. Door to door, it’s about 40 minutes for approximately an 8 mile trip. That’s including the walk and wait at the bus stop.

I get some contemplation time before I get to work and chill time on the way home from work. Oh, and no stressful driving in traffic.

I enjoy it, to which some may find odd! It’s also a lifestyle decision.

We could probably afford two cars, but that said, the road tax, insurance, car payments, fuel etc would all have an effect on our disposable income, ahem I really mean mortgage overpayment fund.

For the last 12 months I’ve had an annual bus pass, paid for in January 2007 via a 12 month 0% credit card I had at the time, now cleared and closed. The pass expired on 1st January 2008 and I’ve been analysing what I can do to keep my travelling costs down.

A 28 day pass would currently cost 55.10. So 13 of these is 716.30. It may be that I could be creative with my holidays such that I end up with only 12 * 28 day passes, but I’m still looking at around 661 or more.

A 12 month pass is currently 590 – I think last time I got one I paid 560.

Clearly, an annual pass is going to be a saving. To encourage use of public transport, reduced carbon emissions etc, my employer has a travel scheme. I’ve now researched this scheme in a bit more detail.

The ticket itself is the same, except you get a reduction via the employer bulk purchasing tickets – the reduction is determined each year depending on how many people join the scheme that year.

Last year was a 7.5% reduction over the current annual price. Finally, while you get the ticket immediately, you repay the employer via salary deductions over 12 months, ie an interest free 12 month loan.

So after studying this and failing to see a catch, I this week signed up for our corporate 12 month travel scheme. It cycles around each April, so I need to purchase a few monthly tickets, but this does seem like a good deal.

Ok, it’s probably not a massive lifestyle decision, but has anyone else made any lifestyle money saving choices such as this?

Yours curiously,
FB.

savingmore

been reading your posts and enjoy your diary...
i am impressed with your determination to try and pay off your mortgage so quickly.
lifestyle choices: trying to be vigilent in recycling...not very good at that, and also about to start buying free range eggs and probably veg to start, going to do some research on the net to try and find local sources in farm shops etc.... wish i could use the buss more but can't unfortangely...

financialbliss

@savingmore - thanks for that reply.

For a moment, I thought I was on my own!

FB.

taka

You are not alone... (sorry that sounds slightly stakerish :eek: ). I bus it too. I live closeish to the city centre and couldn't get much closer without horrific parking charges! Its a bit of a pain getting to work now as thats about the furthest away from my home you can get while being in the same city but I think to drive it would only save me around 10 mins and the cost of this would far outweigh the benefit timewise! The only time I miss not having a car is when I want to shop out of town... its a nightmare by bus!

financialbliss

Two quick points this evening...

Tomb Raider.
Can’t have work and no play, so just a quick console snippet!

Since getting the original playstation, I’ve always liked the platform / action adventure that is the Tomb Raider series.

Eidos made a press release on 10/01/2008 giving official details that the next Tomb Raider game will be called Tomb Raider: Underworld. Suggested release date is quarter 4 2008. Having purchased all of the previous Tomb Raider releases:

• Tomb Raider (1996) PS
• Tomb Raider II (1997) PS
• Tomb Raider III (1998) PS
• Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (1999) PS
• Tomb Raider Chronicles (2000) PS
• Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (2003) PS2
• Tomb Raider: Legend (2006) PS2
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary (2007) PS2

This will be the first Tomb Raider on the Playstation 3 and guess I’ll also be buying this one

Northern Rock.
I’ve not publicised any details about my location, but perhaps the travel post prices gave a small indication of my geography, ie not expensive enough for south east. Anyway, not a million miles from me, the Northern Rock shareholder meeting was held today, with a mere 600 of 100,000 + shareholders attending.

Shares still on the slide – closed today @ 69.25p. I guess as I’ve hung in this long, I should sit tight to see what, if anything I get from our 1,000 (conversion) shares, but I’ve not much hope for much cash from this now.

FB.

financialbliss

Pay. I get paid on the 19th of each month and with the 19th January being a Saturday, I’ll be getting paid on Friday. I always get my payslip a day in advance of payment, so I turned up after lunch today to find my payslip on my desk.

This included the recent pay award but without the back pay I got last month, and confirmed my calculations that I’m better off after tax by about 50 pounds a month.


Broadband. Still on the subject of work, they’re going to start allowing us to have personal internet access use from our desks during our lunch breaks. The previous official line was either use a public access point, or view sites at home – work only while at desk.

What they’re about to do is unblocked certain sites, eg, webmail, ebay, banking sites etc between 12.00 and 14.00. I think it’s a very fair approach, and while I can’t guarantee I’ll have the time available to respond to any posts made here, I’ll probably at least have a quick check to see if there’s any recent replies.

FB.