FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

Twiddy wrote: »

The excitement is buiding up now FB, credit card in, funds transferred, mortgage paid - done!

Loving your work....

T

The Tesco card was/is planned as a slow stooze card.

I only need to pay the greater of 1% or £25 each month to repay the debt on the card, so that's £25 until the balance gets to £2,500.

So if I'm spending an average of £600 a month on the card, use £25 of my income to pay off the debt and place the other £525 into savings.

Savings grow at 3.1%, while I grow the debt at 0%. Obviously pay off before the 15 months expires. Plan to get a M&S card in the new year too.

Thanks for your support Twiddy.

FB.

financialbliss

Last day of October, so here's the mortgage interest, year to date to October:

Opening Balance: 33,304.75

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

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

January: 1,000.00 (929.33 / 70.67) / 131.57 (4.24) / 868.43 / 32,436.32
February: 1,000.00 (929.33 / 70.67) / 115.64 (4.13) / 884.52 / 31,551.96
March: 1,000.00 (929.33 / 70.67) / 124.43 (4.01) / 875.57 / 30,676.39
April: 887.41 (887.41 / 0.00) / 61.27 (2.04) / 826.14 / 29,850.25
May: 887.41 (887.41 / 0.00) / 61.62 (1.99) / 825.79 / 29,024.46
June: 887.41 (887.41 / 0.00) / 57.87 (1.93) / 829.54 / 28,194.92
July: 887.41 (887.41 / 0.00) / 58.04 (1.87) / 829.37 / 27,365.55
August: 887.41 (887.41 / 0.00) / 56.28 (1.82) / 831.13 / 26,534.42
September: 887.41 (887.41 / 0.00) / 52.76 (1.76) / 834.65 / 25,699.77
October: 887.41 (887.41 / 0.00) / 52.75 (1.70) / 834.66 / 24,865.11

Totals: Payment / Interest / Net reduction.

Minimum: 887.41 / 52.75 / 825.79
Maximum: 1,000.00 / 131.57 / 884.36
Average: 921.19 / 77.22 / 843.96
Grand Total: 9,211.87 / 772.23 / 8,439.64

Balance outstanding: 24,865.11

Funds in place for the mortgage collection tomorrow. More stats later in the week once the payment has cleared.

FB.

abouttimetoo

Hi FB, well done on your numbers and great to see your slow stooze cunning plan coming together :j

Thanks for the Spideroak tipoff, like Gally I've been meaning to research something like this for ages so thank you for doing the hard work for us (Gally, I'm not stalking you, honest guv :rotfl:

I had been tempted to buy an external hard drive but have had a poor experience with one of those before.

I've used your link to set up my account and for anyone else looking at this the hurricanesafe promo code that FB quoted worked great and I can see that my account has been opened with 6GB, so hopefully FB you will be getting another email confirming your latest addition. Like you I need lots more than 6GB but think I will have to resort to paying

Regards and thanks again
ATT

gallygirl

abouttimetoo wrote: »

Thanks for the Spideroak tipoff, like Gally I've been meaning to research something like this for ages so thank you for doing the hard work for us (Gally, I'm not stalking you, honest guv :rotfl:

Feel free. You'll soon get bored :rotfl:

financialbliss

abouttimetoo wrote: »

Thanks for the Spideroak tipoff, like Gally I've been meaning to research something like this for ages so thank you for doing the hard work for us (Gally, I'm not stalking you, honest guv :rotfl:

I had been tempted to buy an external hard drive but have had a poor experience with one of those before.

I've used your link to set up my account and for anyone else looking at this the hurricanesafe promo code that FB quoted worked great and I can see that my account has been opened with 6GB, so hopefully FB you will be getting another email confirming your latest addition. Like you I need lots more than 6GB but think I will have to resort to paying

Hi ATT, I've actually got a 500Gb external drive connected to the main PC. I have it set up with a Microsoft product called SyncToy that will synchronise two locations, ie PC drive and external drive.

The main issue (for me) was ending up on the laptop (as I am now - on the dining room table multi-tasking between making some soup and surfing the web, although as far as Mrs Bliss is concerned I'm currently organising the finances :eek:) and wanting some files off the PC, so my main use of SpiderOak is the sync option, although another backup never hurts.

I've also got a re-writable DVD drive, but I very rarely get around to writing a DVD, so the instant backup is great for me. Version history is also very good - I've already reverted to an earlier version of a file!

I've over 15Gb of holiday, kids and Christmas etc photos alone, never mind the 2 and a bit Gb of "files" (not all spreadsheets I may add), so I would probably need around 20Gb minimum.

As it's free, I can walk away if I decide I don't like it, but while I'm trialling it I'm acquiring storage through the referral link. Currently got 9Gb - thanks ATT.

Back to, erm pretending to be busy...

FB.

financialbliss

Haven't had much of a spring in my step in the last few days. Currently hugging a lemsip and turning in very shortly.

But, just wanted to share that the November mortgage payment has now cleared. Mortgage is showing a balance of £23,982.68

With savings specifically targeted at the mortgage of £1,685 that's an effective mortgage balance of £22,297.68.

Getting closer to that magical £20k mark. Should pass through this in January.

Charts, signature and all that usual stuff updated tomorrow now - haven't really got the energy

FB.

abouttimetoo

Aw, FB, poor you, hope by now you have started to feel a wee bit better, that's unless you have *dah dah dahhhhh* man flu in which case it will take a while:rotfl:

Well done on your numbers, I can't wait to see your January post confirming you have crashed through the £20k barrier, at those figures it's looking far more like some peoples car loans than a mortgage and that's got to be good!

Regards
ATT

financialbliss

Been a very busy (but good) day today...

Got a laminated photo of the house - a black and while copy is printed off and I've also printed off a colour version and cut this into 100 pieces. Haven't done this for ages, but spent some time this morning with the kids, glueing the missing colour squares on. Equates to the last 100 steps chart - link on post #1 if you've not looked at it before.

Comments from daughter (5) - daddy, is this your homework and daddy, do you have to do this!

Comments from son (7) - why don't you just pay it all back now instead of waiting. :eek:

Neat idea. We're trying - honest. Think he's starting to show more interest in money and tried to explain that when you borrow money, the quicker you pay it back, the less it will cost you (unless you save up). Didn't end up as a maths lesson, but was almost heading that way.

Went for a bike ride this afternoon – all four of us, but daughter got a little tired, expected I suppose. Went to see a free firework show this evening ran by our local council. Got back, put kids to bed and just crashed. Was going to turn in before 10.30, but decided to put a quick update in.

SipderOak. Decided to sync more data between laptop and PC and crippled the broadband on Friday evening committing 1.2Gb between the two. Took about 5 hours to upload and then sync. I guess I could have probably just used a memory stick, but I wanted to see the process in action and now the two are sync’d, it appears to be working fine. Got another free Gb today, which now puts me at 10Gb

Coins. Done quite well this week – I’ll always pick up a penny, two pence five, etc if I spot one lying around and was doing ok at 7p this week until I spotted a pound coin on Saturday. Would have kept this myself, but had our son with me, so I let him have it.

Tesco. Got the PINs for these cards on Friday and the actual cards on Saturday. Activated them straight away, plus registered for Tesco credit card internet banking. Have stopped using the American Express and Barclaycard cards with immediate effect. More on that later.


Haven’t found the time to cut charts out of Excel, paste to paint, save, log in to photobucket and upload them at all this weekend, so the promised updates to come on Monday evening.

Sure I had something else I wanted to mention, but I think my brain has already shut down for the evening.

FB.

someday_soon

Hi FB

Remember to swipe your new Tesco credit card for points whether you pay with it or not, rather than your standard clubcard if you buy fuel from their garages. Full point rather than half that way, something that escaped me until a helpful staff member pointed it out..

Loving the coin collecting

Every little helps.

Someday Soon

Twiddy

Great tip Someday, thank you for that. We've recently acquired Tesco credit cards and have been swiping the standard clubcard - nice one!

FB, thats a brilliant idea from your son, if only!! It just goes to show that Martins quest to have Finiancial Education stuck on the curriculum can only be a good thing. If your boy at 7 is beginning to understand it, just think when he gets to Uni age and has been taught all the rights things to do. Priceless.......

Good work again so far FB......

Cheers
T