FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

Queen-Bee_2

Hiya FB, I just renewed with the Halifax too (though my premium is a mind blowing £504). Yes, I took the legal expenses cover, mainly 'cos there is a massive building refurbishment going on next door to me and I'm keen to make sure there's legal advice available if something goes wrong there. Maybe next year when it's all complete I'll drop it...
QB

financialbliss

Quick post from me, so that I'm not neglecting this diary.

Home insurance. Due on 12th March (date rings a bell... ). Still not tackled this just yet - aiming to have this done 'n' dusted by the end of next week, so that arranging the insurance doesn't distract me from the MFiT-T2 chart 01 due on the 12th.

Survey sites. Just passed the £10.00 mark with OnePoll - balance currently £10.20. I'm finding it quite difficult to grow the balance quickly as they are few surveys at present and some pay as little as 5p.

Not a lot else to report on at present, I'm afraid! Guess I'm not trying hard enough!

FB.

financialbliss

Last day of February already! :eek:

Which means mortgage interest. I've just logged in to Nationwide to grab the interest charged by our mortgage account and by keeping an independent tally of the interest, it's now looking like this for the year so far:

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 (929.33 / 500.00) / 168.71 (6.03) / 1,260.62 / 46,033.14 / Sep 2014

Totals: Payment / Interest / Net reduction.

Minimum: 1,398.03 / 168.71 / 1,206.20
Maximum: 1,429.33 / 191.83 / 1,260.62
Average: 1,413.68 / 180.27 / 1,233.41
Grand Total: 2,827.36 / 360.54 / 2,466.82

Balance outstanding: 46,033.14

March will see the daily interest reduce to under £6 per day. Looking forward to the March payments coming off, so I can grab the balance and report a MFiT-T2 value.

Financial Bliss.

hoobydoobydoo

Hello FB

MFiT-T2 #49 here - just read the first few pages of your diary and wanted to say "hello". I'd love to read the rest but I really must go and do some work (marking books and homework for tomorrow).

Good luck with your quest,
Hooby

financialbliss

Been an interesting day!

First - discovered that daughter has been accepted at the same school as our son, which is good news.

Second - discovered son is growing up. He comes home with a wobbly tooth and appears a bit anxious, but as a few class mates got £2 for a tooth, he thinks he'll get at least that and is hoping for £5.00 :eek::eek::eek:

Can't remember it being anything near that when I was young. 20 teeth x £5 x 2 children makes £200. Need to strategically think this one through, otherwise we're going to be parting with a ton of cash.

Mortgage. March payments cleared today, giving a balance of £44,621.54 I'll post details in a separate post, interest etc, plus update signature and charts on post #1. Perhaps not this evening - it's getting late.

FB.

gallygirl

financialbliss wrote: »

Second - discovered son is growing up. He comes home with a wobbly tooth and appears a bit anxious, but as a few class mates got £2 for a tooth, he thinks he'll get at least that and is hoping for £5.00 :eek::eek::eek:

Can't remember it being anything near that when I was young. 20 teeth x £5 x 2 children makes £200. Need to strategically think this one through, otherwise we're going to be parting with a ton of cash.

Superglue is called for I think FB :eek:

financialbliss

Good news (I think). Bank of England left the base rate at 0.5% today:
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8549156.stm

If I do nothing further, I'll revert to the Nationwide standard variable rate (SVR) next after our March payments in 2011, which is currently one of the lowest around at 2.5%. Still got 12 payments until March 2011 and anything could happen in the next 12 months!

Doubt the Nationwide rate will stay at 2.5%, but I think the base rate will now climb slowly rather than ramp back up, due to our fragile recovery.

FB.

financialbliss

I've eventually got around to updating the mortgage balance summary charts and the payment v reduction v interest chart on post #1 to photobucket after the March mortgage payments cleared on the 3rd!

The snapshot of the mortgage on the 3rd was:

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 (929.33 / 500.00) / 168.71 (6.03) / 1,260.62 / 46,033.14 / Sep 2014
March: 1,429.33 (929.33 / 500.00) / 17.73 (5.91) / 1,411.60 / 44,621.54 / Sep 2014


Totals: Payment / Interest / Net reduction.

Minimum: 1,398.03 / 17.73 / 1,206.20
Maximum: 1,429.33 / 191.83 / 1,411.60
Average: 1,418.90 / 126.09 / 1,292.81
Grand Total: 4,256.69 / 378.27 / 3,878.42

Balance outstanding: 44,621.54

and I've rounded that to £44,622 and used as my value for the MFiT-T2 challenge chart 01.

Got a letter from Nationwide yesterday as a result of the March £500 overpayment indicating that from April 2010 we have 4 years and 6 months left on the mortgage. I read that to be no change on the February completion letter of September 2014.

However, I'm keeping my own tabs on payments and I currently estimate that we should complete in January 2014 - moving in a month due to the overpayments this month.

Anyone from the MFiT-T2 challenge dipping in here ?

There's a few updates outstanding - I'll get them fed into the spreadsheets during the course of today.

FB.

financialbliss

Just a quick update from me to keep the ball rolling.

Extra income.
I've today requested £10 and £15 vouchers, ie total of £25 from our barclaycard credit card to spend at Argos - ie the Goldfish barclaycard rewards programme. Will get around to adding this to the income objective for 2010. Also had a few small amounts of QuidCo cash back which I need to add in too.

Flat tyre.
Washed the car today and checked the tyres. Glad I did as I spotted the rear passenger was looking suspect. Took it off to check and it had a great big screw embedded in it. Need to get that fixed tomorrow.

Home insurance.
Slacking here. Needs to be in place by Friday 12th and it looks like we'll be switching from Halifax (238.37) to another provider. Direct Line and Churchill came in between £148 - £160 and some more big names came in under £175.

Rather than jump in this evening, I'm going to review tomorrow and make a final decision based on policy, price, excesses etc tomorrow.

FB.

financialbliss

Oooh - My 1,000'th post...

Since it's a milestone number, may as well keep it about numbers.;)

Home Insurance.
Decided to go with Direct Line for home insurance @ £150.15. Comparable cover compared to Halifax at £238.87, except for the obvious £88.72 difference in price. Was paying Halifax insurance over 12 months at no extra cost, but am paying the Direct Line in one go, as they charge 20%APR for paying monthly.

Gas / electric costs.
Passed meter readings on to Scottish Power on the first of the month. Looks like this for January - February:

Electric (Units / Cost):

• January: 353 / 37.76
• February 298 / 32.09

Gas (Units / Cost):

• January: 73 / 88.42
• February 59 / 71.75

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

• January: 426 / 126.18 / 10.31
• February 357 / 103.84 / -31.53

Have been pushed into the negative, although there has been nothing from Scotish Power, so here's hoping they won't revise our direct debit upwards. Nights are putting out / getting a little warmer, so I'm hoping our gas consumption will drop off soon.

House Price Index.
The site I use to get the house price index data was updated the other day, so here's an update of our theoretical value:

2009 year end house value: 244,917.64

Month: Change / Value / LTV

January: 2,533.79 / 242,383.85 / 19.49%
February: 678.69 / 243,062.54 / 18.91%

Note that TiM reports that Halifax suggests a 2.5k drop in house prices:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages-and-homes/house-prices/article.html?in_article_id=500580&in_page_id=57&ct=5

So, I contacted moneyfacts (site I use) and they reported:

"This is because we show the non-seasonally adjusted figures whilst the article quotes the seasonally adjusted figures."

So, I'm going to keep using their HPI data as they appear to know what they're doing... :rotfl:

MFiT-T2 challenge.
Now off to see who has updated and perhaps put a quick appearance in that thread too!

FB.