FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

*Jellie*

Thanks a lot for that link. I've just checked and my journey would be about 7.5 miles. I'm impressed with your journey times......takes me that long in the car a lot of the time. Maybe I'll start cycling again and see if I can build up to it. Even if I started at once a week or did part of the journey or something it would save money- you've given me real food for thought.

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

I hope you aren't telling Mrs Bliss how fast you're going:eek: I remember the posts about near misses :rotfl:

financialbliss

Afternoon all,

I've edited post # 1840 to add in the summary and the detail cycle spreadsheets I update in case anyone is interested.

Weight, Good news today - probably cycle related too. One of my 2012 objectives in the theme of 12/12/12 was to loose 12 pounds or more in weight. Got weighed this morning and I'm now exactly 12 pounds down, which isn't too bad a thing. Don't aim to stop now!

18 months 0% credit card. Decided to apply for yet another credit card as I'm down to my last £2,000 on the Nationwide card. Was accepted this morning for a NatWest credit card with a credit limit of £5,250. Having already got over £10,000 of credit card debt, I'm quite amazed at how easily credit is to get.

This will be my fifth credit card, although two are not being used just now. Quick sum of the credit limits on the various cards - American Express, Barclaycard, Tesco, Nationwide and NatWest give a total credit of £26,050

All cards I'm currently using are at 0% so not costing my anything just yet. First card needing repaying is the Tesco card in February 2013.

Just about to put a few receipts into Microsoft Money. Am making sure I keep everything up to date so I know where I am.

Regards,
Financial Bliss.

*Jellie*

Congrats on the weight loss.
Sounds like you are really making stoozing work for you.

financialbliss

Evening all. Was on holiday last week, so didn't get a chance to do any updates and also had a busy weekend, but since it's the last day of the month, it's mortgage interest time.

Here's how it's looking from January to July:

Opening Balance: 23,172.41

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

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

January: 900.00 (887.41 / 12.59) / 47.36 (1.53) / 852.64 / 22,319.77
February: 900.00 (887.41 / 12.59) / 41.14 (1.47) / 858.86 / 21,460.91
March: 900.00 (887.41 / 12.59) / 43.71 (1.41) / 856.29 / 20,604.62
April: 900.00 (887.41 / 12.59) / 40.56 (1.35) / 859.44 / 19,745.18
May: 900.00 (887.41 / 12.59) / 40.07 (1.29) / 859.93 / 18,885.25
June: 900.00 (887.41 / 12.59) / 37.02 (1.23) / 862.98 / 18,022.27
July: 900.00 (887.41 / 12.59) / 36.42 (1.17) / 863.58 / 17,158.69

Totals: Payment / Interest / Net reduction.

Minimum: 900.00 / 36.42 / 852.64
Maximum: 900.00 / 47.36 / 863.58
Average: 900.00 / 40.90 / 859.10
Grand Total: 6,300.00 / 286.28 / 6,013.72

Balance outstanding: 17,158.69

Ring-fenced mortgage savings: 10,350.00

Net mortgage: £6,808.69

Credit card stoozing information:
Tesco CC @ 0% : 5,157.62
Nationwide CC @ 0% : 5,854.51
NatWest CC @ 0% : 0.00

Total CC debt: £11,012.13


Good news is that the mortgage is sitting at under £7k and better still, putting a further £2,250 at the mortgage / mortgage savings from tomorrow.

Bad news is that we're accumulating the credit card debt and now at over £11k OMG:eek:

Still, all being managed and all at 0% until next year. Looks worse than it really is, but tomorrow I'm putting another £1,150 into ring fenced savings - ring fenced savings is greater than credit card debt.

Hopefully another post later on.

Financial Bliss.

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Not long to go now :)

Sunnyday

Hi FB,

PHEW!!! just managed to catch up with your thread and i must say its great reading.
I can feel the anticipation building towards your MF date and its great, i'd almost forgotten what its like.

Can you imagine Mrs FB's reaction when you break the good news

Not long to go now!

SD

PS Thanks again for using my linky on the referral thread too!

financialbliss

Been meaning to do an update for… well ages, but life just keeps throwing distractions at me recently. Here’s a quick round up of where things are at present.

Cycling. Doing great guns with my commuting objective. This was to attain 1,212 commuting miles and I’m pretty sure I’ll pass through this on Tuesday 14th August. Was never sure how often I’d end up doing commuting thus I wasn’t sure if 1,212 was too much for a first time commuter.

Recreational cycling. This has been taking a hit. Trying to get out a bit more, but the need to spend time at work, commuting to and from work, family and friends and just having some rest time all take their toll. Did a 24 mile organised recreational route on 1st August and I’m doing another organised recreational route – roughly 30 miles but I’m not 100% sure how far, on Saturday 18th August.

Other things cycling. Spent today taking both wheels off and replacing both tyres. Front wasn’t bad but the rear has had a hammering. The weight of me, cycle rack, panniers and contents transfer a substantial amount of weight to the rear wheel and this will always wear out quicker. Could have swapped the front with the back, but I put on some thinner radial tyres instead of chunky knobbly mountain bike tyres and from a quick ride it appears to handle differently with much less drag. Will be interesting to see what the commuting times are like in the coming week!

Mobiles. Thought what the hell and purchased a Huawei Ascend G300 which I'd been looking at previously, which is an android based smartphone with a 4 inch display, reasonably fast processor, camera etc. My first venture into smartphones and is a world away from my previous phone which did texts and phone calls. Cost 2 x £100 from the vodafone website. Two because Mrs Bliss didn’t want me to have a better phone than her. Also purchased two 32Gb SD cards, two molded plastic covers and got them unlocked. I’ve just the other day transferred to giff gaff.

Mortgage. This actually cleared in August on the 2nd, but I failed to put in an appearance. We’re very close to being in a position where our savings will equate to our remaining mortgage, but this is all savings and not just the ring fenced mortgage savings. Won’t be possible to clear the mortgage in August as we would have precisely zero funds to service the debt on the credit cards, the other direct debits we have and a little bit of cash spending. September – probably not possible either, so we’re looking at quarter 4, ie October to December, which I suspected would be the case anyway.

As of today, it’s 121 days until 12/12/12 and I still have a date in mind which is sub-75 days time, so watch this space!

Savings. I’m looking ahead to autumn 2013 and the need to pay off one of the credit cards by then. Been doing some research into various savings accounts, eg regular savers etc, and I expect to be able to save between 1,250 and 1,500 a month once I no longer have a mortgage to pay. Assuming £250 a month for a regular saver, that’s between 4 and 6 to manage each month (possibly more if I continue stoozing), ensuring funds are in place etc.

Rather than have the hassle of that many regular savers, or locking my money into a 1 year bond that I may not be able to access without penalty, I’m now seriously considering a limited access account from Nationwide – MySave Online Plus. It’s currently at a rate of 3.06% AER and since we’re also banking with Nationwide, there’s unlikely to be up to a 3 day transfer window like there could be with regular savers. Once opened, you can grow the balance by any amount each month, so may actually work out better for us since we have a card to pay for in February and will still have outstanding bills for Florida. Likely to be opening this up in September, should we go ahead.

ING direct – the rate on this savings account dropped for us to 0.5% this week and a quick telephone call closed the account and transferred the remaining £2.80 interest from the previous month out.

Dropped my guard a bit. Our son has a small-ish fish tank with two goldfish in it. The filter mechanism died the other day, so we wend out on Saturday for a replacement one which should have cost around £12.00

But I started looking at tanks myself and walked out with a 64 ltr aquarium, heater, filter, gravel, a few ornaments, plants etc suitable for tropical fish. Total spend - £185 which did include filter which we originally went out for! Spent most of the Saturday afternoon setting it up. That said, I had a number of fish tanks in my youth, spanning 15 or so years starting firstly with goldfish, moving on to tropical, so it’s not all new to me and I’ve fancied another tank for a while.

In addition to our sons peanut allergy, he is allergic to cat and animal hair, so the tropical fish are unlikely to give any cause for concern. Has gone cloudy today, and shop advice was to wait three days before introducing fish, but I’m going to wait until next weekend.

Phew. Thanks for reading. Far too long for a Sunday evening. Shorter and sooner update next time!

Financial Bliss.

Thriftyknickers

Have you seen Nationwide has a new regular saver where you can make variable payments of between £25 and £250 and unlimited withdrawals paying 6% interest? I had a look at it at lunchtime. Its only open to Flexaccount holders but it looks good to me. You can open it online so I'm going to have a go tonight, just incase they're inundated and it gets withdrawn!

gallygirl

Thriftyknickers wrote: »

Have you seen Nationwide has a new regular saver where you can make variable payments of between £25 and £250 and unlimited withdrawals paying 6% interest? I had a look at it at lunchtime. Its only open to Flexaccount holders but it looks good to me. You can open it online so I'm going to have a go tonight, just incase they're inundated and it gets withdrawn!

Thanks, just opened it :T.