FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

Weather in 2012 - was jumping around the BBC site last night and spotted this link - article of weather in 2012:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20898729

Picture at the beginning of the article is a video clip - watched it and a section of my cycle commute is on the clip - flooded, if I needed to mention that. Go past it every day!

Second wettest year on record was 2012. :eek:

FB.

diadeb

Happy New Year FB. Well done on all your 2012 achievements and may 2013 bring you success towards your next goals.

Thanks for keeping the rest of us going on the MFit-T3 challenge, especially as we do not specialise in the spreadsheet !!!!!! as well as you do.

financialbliss

Evening. Quick post as I wanted to turn in by 11pm.

Bike. Nearly got knocked off the bike last night. Was on a single carriageway urban road. Cycle lane marked out at left of road. Car up ahead stopped and indicating to turn right into a side street. Had read the road ahead and spotted that.

So, due to car ahead blocking lane, I'm tootling along the marked cycle lane doing a steady 25mph or so. Traffic slowing, due to lane blocked but I'm overtaking the traffic, albeit in the cycle lane, as I'm clear to go. Gets close to the stationery car and the car immediately behind decides to try and squeeze through the gap. May have been just enough space to get through, but that involved ignoring the cycle lane completely.:eek:

As I was almost alongside the mini, I would have been forced up onto the kerb at best - knocked off at worst, so I applied brakes. New bike with disc brakes- rear end locked up and as it was also wet, I skidded a bit. Managed to stay upright, but it shook me a bit. Lots of 'effing and such like - suspect the mini driver wasn't even aware of his/her actions.

Possibly me partly to blame, but as a driver, I wouldn't even have attempted to squeeze through. Mentioned to Mrs Bliss - we don't have secrets.

Other than that minor incident, I'm really loving the new bike. Is faster than my old bike and considering it's still dark when I'm doing the commutes, I'm getting some half decent times:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnhcWfGMRVgddHJyVnE2eGRoX0tIODdxVHpSMzdCb1E&hl=en_GB&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Credit card. Tesco card was due for payment and I put a whopping £1,500.00 towards the balance. Will leave £3,250.00 outstanding once it clears.

And that's about me just now. Did want an early evening, so am going to leave it there. Challenges need some attention, but one for tomorrow now.

FB.

financialbliss

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS wrote: »

Happy New Year Financial Bliss. Good luck with the saving/paying off stoozing cards. Do you think once you are backing the black, that you will continuing stoozing to help you save?

Looking forward to your cycling stories, at least the weather has been fairly kind recently so safer for cycling.

Best wishes Tilly

Tilly, if I transferred 0% debt onto further cards instead of paying them off, I'd incur balance transfer fees. As these are typically around the 2.5% to 3% mark and with instand access savings accounts dotting around the 2.0% to 2.3%, I don't think I'll be able to make much in the way of savings via that route. Best best I think it to just pay them off.

Cycling stories - hopefully not any horror stories. First one of year above. Hope I'm not mentioning many of those.

FB.

pavlovs_dog

financialbliss wrote: »

Possibly me partly to blame, but as a driver, I wouldn't even have attempted to squeeze through. Mentioned to Mrs Bliss - we don't have secrets.

Poor woman is probably having kittens every time you leave the house :eek:

Glad you're ok FB

financialbliss

OK. Lost in the internet slow lane.. (or in other words - haven’t been on MSE for a while). Been trying to get our house in order…

Firstly the snow. As per much of the UK, our locality has been ether very cold, had a blanket of snow or both. Took stock of the weather last Monday (14th Jan) and decided it would be unwise to cycle in the snow, so got a daily ticket @ £4.20. Repeated this process all week – total cost £21.00

This week, wimped out straight away and purchased a 7 day pass on Monday at a lesser cost of £15.00 :j

Hope to get back to cycling next week and that may actually be possible, as it’s forecast to get up to the dizzy heights of 7c this coming Sunday which should melt any residual snow.

On the topic of cycling, purchased some overshoes this week – BBB ultraflex overshoes – nylon reinforced neoprene. Hopefully will go some way to keeping my feet dry and a bit warmer. Nothing worse than turning up at work with wet feet, doing a shift then having to put your feet back into the same wet shoes for the cycle home. A bit of a treat for me, but not too bad at £25.29 due to being reduced stock.

Need to do about 250 miles a month to hit my objective of 3,000 – just done 96 so far this year, so about 150 short for January.

Cineworld. Still kicking back and relaxing, and with our nearest Cineworld within a few minutes walking distance, we treated ourselves to a 12 month unlimited pass each. I'll not mention the price :eek:

Purchased via QuidCo and used a referral link for second purchase. If you’re pondering over a 12 month pass yourself, feel free to use one of the referral codes I’ve posted on the referral board:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=58656753&postcount=124

Florida #1 – car. After a weekend of pondering and research, we have now booked a car for use when over the other side of the pond. Needed a 7 seat car and opted for a Dodge Grand Caravan, which came in at what I thought was a very reasonable £352 for 14 days. Mind, you it has a 3.6ltr engine, so I’m sure it will guzzle the gas.

SatNav. Accidentally (well deliberately) managed to put a winning bid in on a brand new Garmin SatNav on Eb@y. To my shock, it not only included full UK coverage and Western Europe, it also includes North America.

Never having driven an automatic, never mind the “wrong” side of the road, getting lost is one less thing to worry about. Much better spec than our existing model and for just a few pennies more…

Florida #2 – attraction tickets. Still working on these, but the quotes we have had for these are coming in at around £3,200 – includes Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, Legoland, Busch Gardens, Kennedy space pass and also includes free air boat ride, kids eat free in Orlando, planet Hollywood voucher and a Walt Disney world destination guide.

Needs to be booked by 31st January to get the "freebies", but the cost is due to there being 7 in our party.

Passports. Took the kids for passport photos last weekend (£5 each) and managed to get the completed passport forms off today. Total cost of £115.50 – oops on the credit card again.

Credit cards. Have now paid a total of £2,000 off the cards this month, but due to other spending, eg SatNav, Cineworld and the Florida car, the balance hasn’t dipped that much. Keeping an eye on the balances, statement dates, payment due dates etc. All but the NatWest card is fully up to date – NatWest need balancing against the statement and I’m expecting an e-mail within the next 24 hours to advise the next statement is available.

Savings. Got an e-mail from the Post Office saying our rate has dropped from 3.17% to 2.67% half of one percent. Need to take stock of how this sits in the current range of accounts, but gut feeling without doing much in the way of checking is that it's still not too bad as despite the post office being top of the instant access list on Savings Champion, their current rate is only 2.1%
http://www.savingschampion.co.uk/best-buys/tables/easy-access/


So, in short, I’ve put some time aside to get ourselves in order. Needless to say, I’ve been neglecting this diary and the MSE challenges, so I can only apologise for that. Should be getting back up to speed shortly.

Hope you're all keeping well and not frozen - it was -7 here the other morning...

FB.

Calfuray

Sorry to butt in on your thread, but just had to say - was watching BBC News the other day and they were filming someone trying to cycle in the snow, and I immediately thought of you :rotfl:

Also, nice to see how you are enjoying your money after becoming MF, we're all dreaming of it, and it is very encouraging to see how it may be in the future. Cheers! :beer:

financialbliss

Calfuray wrote: »

Sorry to butt in on your thread, but just had to say - was watching BBC News the other day and they were filming someone trying to cycle in the snow, and I immediately thought of you :rotfl:

Calfuray,
I lurk on some cycle sites, eg http://www.cyclechat.net/ and there was great outrage at a BBC weather article where the top picture in the article was a cyclist trying to cycle in the snow. Just had a quick look and can't find the article just now, but the comments from the cyclists was that we're safer, did the author not contemplate we're using the right kit, eg studded snow tyres, we won't abandon our bike in the middle of the highway etc.

Turning in - MFiT challenge tomorrow.

FB.

golfiematt

A belated congratulations on clearing your mortgage! great to see you making progress since I last logged in. Take it easy on your bike. Lots of car drivers dont look out for bikes having never ridden them

financialbliss

golfiematt wrote: »

Take it easy on your bike.

Cheers golfiematt. Was a bit over enthusiastic last Monday. After being bus bound for two weeks, I returned to the bike on Monday. Started off on the road and got to the bit where I can drop onto a cycle path and it was still covered in snow / ice. So I turned around, deciding to do only a road route into work, avoiding cycle paths completely.

Got back to the entrance of our estate, saw a cycling pulled over onto one side and decided to slow down and check he was ok. No sooner than I did that, I was on a heap on the ground. Patch of black ice - front end slipped out from under me.

After I composed myself and got out of the middle of the road, we had a laugh as he had fell off literally moments ago too. Nothing hurt, bike and kit ok too luckily.

We've had 60mph+ winds these last few days. Nightmare at times, but I managed a tail wind last night and clocked 34.7 mph on the way home!

FB.