FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS wrote: »

Hi FB, sorry to hear that you have things whizzing through your mind and it is frustrating. However, once you have sorted things through, no doubt you will be back to sleeping longer.

Dozed off watching TV last night, so didn't get a change to update graphs and signature.

Then was chasing objects around garden with the winds we have had. Part of one of our fences has took a hammering and willl need replacing. More on that when I have costs. Don't really have the time to sort that our myself.

Anyway, here this evening to report that graphs have been uploaded to photobucket. Just about to update signature

FB.

financialbliss

financialbliss wrote: »

4. Cycle commute into work.
This isn't something I've just conjured up on New Year's Eve or today. I've been pondering over this for some time and (on paper) looks like a very sensible option.

Of the list of objectives, this could actually be the most difficult - probably in the initial motivation, so in the spirit of (20)12 and my 12/12/12 target, I've broke this down into a bakers dozen, ie 13 sub-challenges:

• 4.01 : Cycle into work at least 12 times.
• 4.02 : Cycle into work at least once per month in 2012
• 4.03 : Cycle into work on 12 consecutive working days
• 4.04 : Reduce my commuting spend to 1/12 of previous spending
• 4.05 : Commute with an average speed of 12mph or more on commute into work
• 4.06 : Commute with an average speed of 12mph or more on commute from work
• 4.07 : Cycle more than 1,212 (two twelve's) commuting miles in 2012
• 4.08 : Commute for more than 12 x 12, ie 144 hours into / from work
• 4.09 : Cycle more than 52 (weeks) * 12, ie 624 recreational miles
• 4.10 : Included in the 624 recreational miles, cycle 12 recreational routes of 12 miles or more
• 4.11 : Attain a maximum commuting speed between two and three twelve’s, ie 24 to 36 mph
• 4.12 : Loose 12 pounds or more in weight
• 4.13 : Do a longer recreational cycle route of 3 x twelve's - 12 + 12 + 12, ie 36 miles

Decided to make my dozen (12) objectives for objective '4' into a bakers dozen... :rotfl:

Just added 4.13 - do a 36 mile recreational route. :eek:

Haven't got a 12 x 12 x 12...

Could potentially change 4.07 objective of 1,212 to 1,728, but lets not get ahead of ourselves...:o

I've also added a point '7' to make sure I'm managing the current and credit card accounts effectively:

financialbliss wrote: »

7. Balance current and credit accounts.
This objective is for better money management. Balance the current accounts within 7 days of the statement dates and balance the credit card account(s) by the payment due date.

FB.

financialbliss

Just a quick end of week post.

Weight. As part of 2012 objective 4, I weighed myself on 1st January and intending to do so each weekend this year. Weighed myself again today and stayed exactly at the same weight. Hoping to make some inroads into the weight in the coming weeks and months. May end up graphing this, but I can relate to stones, pounds and ounces much better than kilograms, despite kilograms being a much better value to graph than the imperial value. Our (digital) scales have a range of options.

Anyone know of a conversion website than can convert stones, pounds and ounces, eg 10st 3 1/2 lb to kilograms accurately? Guess I could weigh myself twice, but that involves taking the battery cover off and flipping a switch.
Note: Not my weight - just chose 3 random values.

Cycling. To help out with the above and my cycling challenges, I treated myself to a cycle computer for Christmas. Purchased a pretty basic one considering the various products on the market - a Cateye Strada wireless computer.

For those not in the know, these display / measure the time, current speed, cycle time, has two trip distances, calculates average speed and maximum speed, determines if I'm cycling below, at or above my average speed, plus has an odometer. Managed to source it via the internet for £21.

I headed out for a little cycle on Saturday and managed 8.55 miles without too much of a problem (headwind on the way back was the biggest problem). It may be a little extravagant, but I feel I will need this to push me onwards and achieve some of my objectives in 2012 task 4. It will certainly make recording them much easier.

Still, cheaper than gym membership, and £21 isn't going to break the bank. I'll mention the other items in a separate post...:eek:

FB.

uzubairu

I use the Cateye Strada Wireless on my bike too.
It does the job fine and is easy to use.

I'm thinking about a sporting challenge for 2012 (given that it is Olympic year).
I've not decided yet.

My OH has recently upgraded his bike (65% off) so that he can commute to work.
Parking can be £25 - £30 per week.

You are well organised and set up to have a good year.
Good luck.

RosieTiger

Always surprised more people don't have a go at challenges. They can be set as low or as high as you want and any group ones are brilliant. Already have a couple planned this year, good luck with your cycling.

skint_spice

Not sure of any websites but couldn't you use the CONVERT function in Excel to convert pounds to kilos? I only have the cut down works version on this laptop but I'm sure I've used it at work for similar - this would mean all the info was readily available for graphing too

financialbliss

Yet more about objective four. I have cycled into work before, so it’s not like I’m going from zero to hero in one go. Had previously cycled a few times in the summer months, so I need to adjust from being a fair weather cyclist to being an all weather cyclist.

I’d started considering the cycling seriously last summer but kept it to myself – not even a mention to Mrs Bliss. With Christmas approaching though, I asked Santa for a few items and got: front and rear lights, mudguards, decent water bottle and clip, padded cycling gloves and the previously mentioned bike computer. Also got a hi-vis back pack cover.

I also got some cash at Christmas and I also treated myself to some… wait for it… proper cycling shorts and longs, a short and long sleeved cycling top and a hi-vis cycling jacket. :eek:

The bike itself is a fixed frame mountain bike of quite some age, but will do for now. If I can get away with the cycling I may treat myself to a new bike once the mortgage / credit card debt has gone.

Onto the challenges - Some of the sub-tasks in objective four will be completed naturally over the course of cycling into work, but some I may find a little more difficult to do and may have to push to attain. Ice and snow excepted, I’d like to eventually build up to cycling every day.

I currently have an annual travel pass that doesn’t expire until April, although I have investigated and I can cash this in early and get about £50 back, which is after an admin charge. Undecided on what to do here – depends on the winter weather. Excluding a work discount, I would be spending about £80 a month on a pass and it's due to go up, so that's a saving that probably goes directly to the mortgage (or more cycling gear...:rotfl:).

The objective four tasks are there to spur me on and hopefully once I’ve completed one sub-task, this will push me on to hit another.

In classic Financial Bliss form , I’ve popped out two spreadsheets to help log my efforts.

The first is an overview, just so I can see when I’m cycling and when I’m not as a summary:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnhcWfGMRVgddFpTWDZIbnRTSnFDMlhKTHJhQS1aR1E

The second is a more detailed view that will log each individual to or from leg and I can them compare distances, times, speeds etc.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnhcWfGMRVgddGNmWGhidkNhWFZBLUZkeUNKeE5qM2c

Don’t quite know what’s going on with Google Docs. Previously you could publish sheets as a web page, but as these are new documents, I appear to only be able to publish the whole sheet. Never mind – information still present.

FB

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Goodness FB you are organised. Good news on the high vis kit, that worries me when people are cycling in the dark. Saving £80 a month is a huge huge amount and you get the health benefits as well - marvellous.

Good luck with your quest, Tilly x

financialbliss

Being looking at a weight loss sheet - you can never have too many spreadsheets...

Well,with the power of Wikipedia (the mass section near the bottom):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units

I managed to get my head properly around stones, pounds and ounces and have devised a spreadsheet where if you enter your weight in stones, pounds and ounces, it will convert it twice - to pounds and also to kilograms.

Lost two pounds today. If you reach towards your nearest jam jar, that's 454g to one pound, so that's 908g for two pounds. My sheet shows I lost 907g due to the accuracy I've used taking the conversion values from Wikipedia and is a small benefit over our scales which measure kilograms to one decimal place - I'm measuring to the gram

Can't go far wrong with a graph either - I've graphed out two reduction plans - one for loosing 12lb and the other for loosing 12kg. Expect that it's inevitable that I will loose some weight due to the cycling - aim was to loose 12lb, but thought I'd put a 12kg option in too to see how close I get to that!

Finally, the red line is actual weight. Oh, and I've masked my weight so that at the start of the year, it was at the zero point and I've also converted the pounds option to kilograms to make graphing easy.



Will add as a graph link into the 2012 objectives. Won't necessarily upload every week, but I will be tracking the weight...

Note: Don't actually like the version of Paint I'm using (using the laptop) as it makes the graph look a little washed out. I'll have an experiment tomorrow on main PC with WinXP and that version of Paint.

Financial Bliss.

financialbliss

Credit card are my new friend. If you've been following recent pages, this is my grand plan to become mortgage free...

Spend on card - pay some but not all of statement balance each month, which frees up cash for the mortgage - pay off mortgage and then clear the credit card.

Well, already got a Tesco card and today spotted an article that indicates that Nationwide are launching a massive 18 month 0% purchase credit card tomorrow (18th January).

There's a requirement to have a Nationwide current account, but as I've got that, I'm already over one hurdle. Will keep an eye on this over the next few weeks as this does look tempting (for me).

TiM article:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cardsloans/article-2087417/Nationwide-launches-market-leading-18-month-0-purchase-credit-card--s-catch.html

FB.