FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

gallygirl

financialbliss wrote: »

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.

Good result there FB. I had a letter from Swintons yesterday asking me to ring them about my insurance when suitable. Arranged via internet but passed to local broker. Renewal came in at £212.26, a bit up on last year, but they are offering a whopping £60 cash back after 90 days so net is £152.26. Don't think I'll bother shopping around, will just renew with them.


JOKE!:rotfl: Suspect it will be hard to beat though

Looking forward to Friday in a non-weekend related way FB :T

financialbliss

Woo - this diary has just broke through the 100,000 views.

I've also passed Thefunkygibbons, which I'd not previously noticed.

Well, as I suspected, the wobbly tooth didn't stay wobbly for long. Voice shouting down the stairs a little earlier, after we put him to bed:

"Mam, my tooth has come out...".

Suspect the financial incentive played a factor in it's "falling out", as myself and Mrs Bliss are pretty sure he encouraged it to come out a little. Showed #1 the gap where the tooth was and he looked all nervous. What's more, we have a second slack tooth too.:eek:

Believe the tooth fairy may be paying a visit this evening we're giving £2 for this first tooth.

FB.

financialbliss

For many of you on this mortgage free treadmill, your council tax bill may be your second biggest bill after your mortgage.

Ours arrived today for 2010/11 - we're a band 'D' property and have gone up from £141 per month last year to £145 per month this year - an overall 2.7% increase over 2009/10. Total bill for 2010/11 is £1,448.37.

Slightly less of an increase that I was expecting.

FB.

Kiwisaver_2

Phew!! I made it to the end of 68 pages after several weeks of reading.

Hi FB,

Adding to your list of readers from around the world, you're doing a grand job and I have very much enjoyed reading your journey so far. Having been where you are, I find it quite interesting to see some parallels and wonder what folks such as yourself will do when they are 'finally' mortgage free. There's always an onwards and upwards and it's not always in a way one might initially consider.

Without boring you with an essay about my life, we took out our first mortgage of £80k in 1990/1991 when interest rates were 15.5% and house prices were just on the slide downwards to an 'affordable' level for us. We struggled big time to meet those payment for the first few years, but with annual salary increases it became easier and we continued to pay the same monthly amount after the interest rates dropped to more 'normal' levels and made a few one off larger overpayments from savings. We became MF in 2004 and it was such a wonderful feeling of freedom (for a while).

Of course with being MF along comes other ideas and dreams of what we could do with our lives and we got itchy feet, took a leap of faith and emigrated to NZ in 2005. Such a massive expense, a huge chunk of our equity funded the move to the extent that we needed another small mortgage (10 years term) to buy a place here, so it all began again. And here I am, five years later lurking the MSE MF diaries, clipping coupons, doing surveys, reading the electricity meters and desperately chucking everything we can at the latest mortgage (recently changed to offset) in the hope of being MF again in mid 2012; aiming to shave off three years from the initial ten years, which is no mean feat and pondering where this might lead to next for us. :eek:

financialbliss

Well that's a quarter of the year gone already. End of month means mortgage interest and here's January to March:

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) / 181.65 (5.86) / 1,411.60 / 44,785.46 / 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: 1,418.90 / 180.73 / 1,238.17
Grand Total: 4,256.69 / 542.19 / 3,714.50

Balance outstanding: 44,785.46

Funds in place for mortgage and other start of month direct debits.

The original mortgage free in three (MFiT) challenge ends tomorrow - once the mortgage payments clear (Saturday perhaps?), I'm going to use that as a final figure to report for that challenge.

FB.

financialbliss

This is not funny in the slightest. :mad::mad::mad:

Our Playstation 3 just this afternon stopped reading any of the media, eg PS1, PS2 or PS3 games, audio and DVD format disks.

Fortunately, last time it had a fault and I purchased a replacement, I managed to get a 12 month warranty over the standard 3 month one they offered and I'm still in warranty.

So, I've called playstation UK support this afternoon, and they're doing a like for like swap with another original 60Gb PS3 next week due to Easter bank holidays.

While on the phone I was offered the chance to swap to a 160Gb model instead of a 60Gb model. The pros I guess being the 160Gb is a newer (more reliable?) model with a bigger HD, while the cons are loosing PS1 and PS2 compatability, loosing 2 USB ports and loosing the ability to put your digital camera media card directly into the PS3 via a number of slots.

At the time, I initially said like for like 60Gb please, but I've since wondered why they want to offer me a 160Gb model?

I bought the PS3 in December 2007 not long after starting this diary and this would mean I'm on to my 4th PS3. :eek:

Pondering over calling them back to ask for the 160Gb model as we still have a fully functional PS2. May do some research this evening before settling on a decision.

Any PS3 owners read this diary - would you swap to a 160Gb model?

Financial Bliss.

Floxxie

Hi FB,

I sold my son's PS3 for a newer version thinking it would cost less in the long run as it was more energy efficient. I didn't even think at the time that it wouldn't be compatiable with PS1/2 games. My son was not impressed. The buyer was over the moon with is purchase.

financialbliss

You are standing in a clearing. To the east and west are trees. Ahead of you is a tunnel labelled "mortgage". There is a sign nearby saying this is a long tunnel - please plan your journey accordingly.

Where now...?

Financial Bliss.

financialbliss

Ok. I'm back. A bit hit 'n' miss at present. Issues with playstation and life in general keeping me away from PC.

Sooooo, where were we?

Oh yes - where now?
Mortgage - quick update for this evening, then hopefully a few posts over the next few days.

The April payment and overpayment finally cleared on Sunday 4th April, giving a balance of 43,379.06. As the payments were the last in the MFiT challenge, I've recorded that value as my final balance. Reduction from £73,217 to £43,379. More info in post 4816 of the MFiT challenge: here.

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) / 181.65 (5.86) / 1,247.68 / 44,785.46 / Sep 2014
April: 1,429.33 (929.33 / 500.00) / 22.93 (5.73) / 1,406.40 / 43,379.06 / Sep 2014


Totals: Payment / Interest / Net reduction.

Minimum: 1,398.03 / 22.93 / 1,206.20
Maximum: 1,429.33 / 191.83 / 1,406.20
Average: 1,421.51 / 141.28 / 1,280.23
Grand Total: 4,256.69 / 378.27 / 5,120.90

Balance outstanding: 43,379.06

So, in removing the MFiT information from my signature, I wanted to put something in instead.

When we all started the take 2 challenge, my mortgage on 12/12/09 was £48,383. Similar to what others have done - I've took a black and white photo of our house and broken it down into 100 squares, each representing £483.83, ie 1/100th of the MFiT-T2 starting value.

I've then printed a second picture - this time in colour and again broke down into 100 squares. As the mortgage drops past each square, a black and white square is replaced with a colour one.

We have this picture on our boiler (fridge pretty full ) and have a matrix of mortgage values to make crossing off each square easier.

Not wanting to post a picture online, I've re-created the matrix and called this "The last 100 steps...":

The last 100 steps: Countdown to being mortgage free...

Link to this on post #1 and (currently) in my signature.

Still got a long, long way to go until we come out the other end of this mortgage tunnel. :eek:

FB.

financialbliss

Playstation. After the blu ray drive died on Good Friday, I was going to get a replacement under warranty today. Got a text message first thing this morning saying it would arrive between 11.59 and 12.59 today. Turned up at at 11.59

Finally decided on the 160Gb model rather than a like for like 60Gb exchange, which means I loose PS1/PS2 compatibility and a few other differences, but as the PS3 is sitting on top of the PS2, that's not such a hardship. Sony advised that they were struggling to source parts for the original 60Gb model now.

Just installing firmware version 3.21, adding Playstation network account back in and pulling down updates for a few games that I know have had on-line updates.

Mortgage. After paying the £500 overpayment for April, I'm now getting into the habit of expecting a letter from Nationwide commenting on the remaining mortgage term. Got the letter today which indicated that I have 04 years and 04 months remaining, which I've calculated they mean that should I keep up my standard payment of £929.33 without any further overpayments, I will complete the mortgage in August 2014 - a month earlier from the letter received last month. :T

Based on the overpayments I'm planning, I estimate I'll complete in January 2014 - difference is I know that I'm intending to make the maximum £500 overpayment between now and the end of the fixed rate, which ends in March 2011 - 11 payments remaining.

Base rate. Due to Easter / bank holidays, I'd forgot the Bank of England were in session for their regular monthly base rate discussion. Turns out they have left the UK base rate unchanged at 0.5%

BBC news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8609259.stm
This is Money: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=502523&in_page_id=2&ct=5

FB.