FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

Good news - February payment / overpayment has cleared. Here's how it's looking today:

Opening Balance: 48,499.96
Opening Nationwide completion date: December 2014

Overpayments in Blue.
Interest in Red.
Balance in Green.

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

January: 1,398.03 (898.03 / 500.00) / 191.83 (6.19) / 1,206.20 / 47,293.76 / Oct 2014
February: 1,429.33.03 (929.33 / 500.00) / 18.22 (6.07) / 1,411.11 / 45,882.65 / Oct 2014

Totals: Payment / Interest / Net reduction.

Minimum: 1,398.03 / 18.22 / 1,206.20
Maximum: 1,398.03 / 191.83 / 1,411.11
Average: 1,413.68 / 105.03 / 1,308.66
Grand Total: 2,827.36 / 210.05 / 2,617.31

Balance outstanding: 45,882.65

I've updated the charts and information on post #1, plus signature to reflect the payments / reduced balance. Off to PM Tall Girl, as the MFiT challenge is now posting updates monthly for the remaining few months of that challenge.

Financial Bliss.

financialbliss

financialbliss wrote: »

6. Receipts.
Typically I let a pile of receipts build up, then do a bulk update in MS Money, just before the credit card is due, or sometimes let if slip for a few credit card statements... :eek:

Aim is to get receipts up to date and clear them by the Sunday of each week. While this won't have a direct impact on the mortgage, if I can quickly analyse the data in Microsoft Money and see that I've already spent a certain amount this year, then this may keep our spending under control.

Initially marked this as a success. Let's see how long before I fail, as I'm nearly 100% sure I'll fail at this one... :eek:

Sometimes I wonder if I've a desk underneath my letters, receipts and other stuff that gets put on there. I've added an option '6' to the aims for 2010, initially marked as successful, but let's see how long that lasts.

Initially, aiming to clear desk by this Sunday - 7th February.

FB.

setmefree2

financialbliss wrote: »

Initially, aiming to clear desk by this Sunday - 7th February.

Good Luck with that

financialbliss

Been doing receipts and paperwork in recent days. Also, home insurance is due early in March, so I'll jump into that soon. One recent item of post was one from Nationwide after our £500 February overpayment.

They now calculate our Mortgage ending in September 2014, brought forward one month from October 2014. There's something sadly pleasing about seeing this date slowly creep forwards...

Have quite a few updates pencilled in to do, but going to leave that until tomorrow now, as it's getting late this evening.

FB.

financialbliss

Regulars following this diary will note that I normally I take our electric and gas readings and supply to Scottish Power on the first of the month. Still aiming to do so this year...

...but just late in reporting. Should I be reporting them here or not? Not 100% sure - don't want the diary to turn into a pure maths blog, but let's kick off by reporting January, which you may remember was exceptionally cold!

Electric (Units / Cost):

• January: 353 / 37.76

Gas (Units / Cost):

• January: 73 / 88.42

Total, ie Electric and Gas (Units / Cost / Balance)

• January: 426 / 126.18 / 10.31

Massive amount of gas used, but probably going to be the most expensive month of the year. More worryingly, we're just £10.31 in credit, so here's hoping that Scottish Power don't up the direct debit.

Lots of talk on various diaries about switching suppliers. We're locked in until August this year on an on-line dual fuel tariff, but will do a comparison towards the end of our lock in period.

Financial Bliss.

financialbliss

Again, I regularly report our house price index. The site I use for this data has been updated for January, so here's January.

2009 year end house value: 244,917.64

Month: Change / Value / LTV

January: 2,533.79 / 242,383.85 / 19.49%

So, as the index dropped in January, so did our theoretical value - a drop of over £80 a day:eek:

Loan to Value is again our lowest yet at 19.49%, but I suspect this is no longer important to lenders should we re-mortgage due to having so much equity in the house.

FB.

financialbliss

And as well as a few stats, a quick round up of other things in my small corner of MSE..

Income.
Been beavering away at survey site OnePoll and I now try to force myself to log in daily to do any surveys there. Like OnePoll as the surveys are generally quite short, but typically, they only pay 5p to 10p each. After a long lapse, I'm probably back into the swing of things and should reach £10.00 by the end of this month. Payout isn't until you reach £40.00 though...

Home insurance.
This is due in March and I've had a batch of post and emails from various insurers touting for my business. Currently insured with Halifax and pay this monthly at no extra cost. Not had a renewal quote from they just yet. Need to review that the insurance we have still meets our needs and start doing some like for like comparisons. Hoping to keep this sub £200, but I keep reading that insurance premiums are on the increase. Will also remember to check QuidCo to see if any cash back can be claimed, but I tend to put this secondary, ie I may settle on an insurer and then see if I cash get cash back.

Savings accounts.
Had a cull of our savings accounts. Some had a great fat zero balance, eg NatWest eSavings after their £50 cash back offer but we had failed to close them, some had a few pence or £1. Best account was the Tesco eSavings, which had £1, but on closure we got £24.91 in interest.

Now have two savings accounts. Egg, fixed at 3.25% until later this year - the exact date I don't actually know but I think is sometime late in August. Our other main savings account is a Nationwide eSavings account at 0.45%, ie just less than half of one percent :eek:

Needless to say, both are less than our mortgage rate of 4.79%, hence my decision to start using our mortgage account as the "new" savings account

Financial Bliss.

financialbliss

financialbliss wrote: »

Now have two savings accounts.
Financial Bliss.

Doh! How exactly do you manage to miss out a savings account you're feeding to the tune of £500 each month?

Make that three. Also got a Halifax regular saver at a fixed rate of 5% - just got in before they dropped the account to 2% This also closes at the end of August and we should have £6k in by then, plus interest.

As we're diverting savings to the mortgage, not sure if we will open any further regular savers unless there is a hike in the interest rates and we can get a good rate.

Financial Bliss.

abouttimetoo

financialbliss wrote: »

Savings accounts.
Had a cull of our savings accounts. Some had a great fat zero balance, eg NatWest eSavings after their £50 cash back offer but we had failed to close them, some had a few pence or £1. Best account was the Tesco eSavings, which had £1, but on closure we got £24.91 in interest.

Now have two savings accounts. Egg, fixed at 3.25% until later this year - the exact date I don't actually know but I think is sometime late in August. Our other main savings account is a Nationwide eSavings account at 0.45%, ie just less than half of one percent :eek:

Needless to say, both are less than our mortgage rate of 4.79%, hence my decision to start using our mortgage account as the "new" savings account

Financial Bliss.

Hi FB

I'm looking at savings accounts myself at the moment; have you looked at LTSB Vantage account? It seems to fly under the radar of sites that recommend good savings account as it is actually a current acccount. You can read lots about it on LTSB site and indeed on here but key points seem to be that you can open up to three (although some people on her have opened far more) and that you can use the 'same' £1000 to cycle between all the accounts.

Rates look quite good, copied below from the LTSB site FYI
Current Accounts with Vantage

Balance Interest Paid MonthlyAER %Gross %Net %£1+0.100.100.08£1,000+2.001.981.59£3,000+3.002.962.37£5,000 up to £7,0004.003.933.14


Oops, that's not come out the way it was pasted - best look for yourself but 4% AER above 5k

Regards
ATT

financialbliss

Home insurance.
Got our renewal reminder from Halifax yesterday at £238.87 up by £41.89 from £196.98 the previous year.

The renewal includes £19.99 of "legal expenses" to "provide cover up to £50,0000 per incident for legal costs to negotiate your legal rights".

Do people normally take legal expenses for home insurance? I'd say yes for car insurance, but I'm wondering if it's needed. I'd be interested to see if others take legal expenses.

FB.