FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

gallygirl

financialbliss wrote: »

One quick question - does the date you apply become your statement date? It did for the Nationwide card, but I know not all card providers are the same.

FB.

I don't know, but I've always found lenders flexible about moving dates so don't be put off.

I'm sticking with Tesco (can exchange for Monarch points and points make holidays :T) and Halifax for £5 a month.

financialbliss

gallygirl wrote: »

I'm sticking with Tesco (can exchange for Monarch points and points make holidays :T) and Halifax for £5 a month.

Previously, I was wanting the longest 0% deals I could get and ended up with three 0% cards on the go at once.

Now I'm mortgage free and I want a change of plan, I'm finding the pickings are a bit lean just now. I looked at Aqua - no longer offering cash back and the Halifax Reward card that gives £5 per month for at least £300 spending requires a Halifax current account and two direct debits, thus it is a lot of hassle for a fiver a month - not planning on switching wholesale to Halifax - further info in my forthcoming current accounts post

FB.

gallygirl

financialbliss wrote: »

Halifax Reward card that gives £5 per month for at least £300 spending requires a Halifax current account and two direct debits, thus it is a lot of hassle for a fiver a month - not planning on switching wholesale to Halifax - further info in my forthcoming current accounts post

FB.

So open a Halifax current account, set up 2 DD's, feed the account each month and get £5 on that as well. Now, £120 for an hour at most per year is not a bad hourly rate :T.

financialbliss

Hardly posted in October, so here’s another update – again on the subjects of credit cards.

Nationwide select. Firstly, by pure stupidity, I managed to get charged some residual interest on my Nationwide select credit card. :mad:

This card was attracting a 0% interest rate for purchases for 18 months. I’ve had these sorts of cards in the past and managed to pay them off without incurring any charges at all, so I was being pure and simply stupid here. Statement date was 12th September. In hindsight, I now know I should have paid the balance off by then. I left the funds in a savings account earning 6% until the end of September, emptied the savings account and paid the card. Job done, or so I thought.

Except on the October statement, I was charged residual interest, which covered dates from 12th September until 30th September on a balance of £4,000 – interest of £22.80. Not being too happy with this, I got on the phone to customer services, to see what they had to say. They weren’t budging. I accepted my error on not paying soon enough to not get charged interest, but my beef was their vague wording about when the 0% term would end and exactly when I would need to clear the balance to avoid interest.

So, after stewing over the call all day – I fired up the laptop and drafted up a complaint, which made a point of accepting the fact I’d made a mistake, but complaining about the wording on the statement interest information. Around 24 hours later, I got a call from Nationwide apologising profusely – after reading and analysing my details, they agreed with my points and refunded the £22.80 interest on the account. Really pleased with that outcome. While a loss of £22.80 by your own error isn’t clever, it’s not financially back breaking. They could not do enough to apologise!

NatWest CC. I paid off £2,750 in October. This is the only card I’m spending on just now and it’s balance is around £2,250 as of today. This should be able to be paid off in November, clearing our mortgage credit card debt completely. :T

Additionally – while I took this card out for the zero percent on spending, it has a points programme attached to it. Having never cashed in any points, I took a look at what our 24,000 points would get us and last week ordered £120 of Amazon gift vouchers. Still waiting for these to arrive, but should take a little of the pain out of Christmas! Will be closing this card in due course.

American Express CC. Today, I registered for the American Express platimum cashback everyday card and was accepted. No idea of credit limit just yet, but hoping that this is up and running within the next week or two so that I can take advantage of the 5% cash back in the run up to Christmas. Oh, also used QuidCo to grab a tenner for registering for the card. After the 5% runs out, I’m hoping to be in the 1.25% cash back tier.

Amazon CC. Today, I also registered for the Amazon credit card. 2% at Amazon and 1% elsewhere, plus a £5 gift voucher once accepted. I got a credit limit of £4,800 and they have already allocated a card number and added it to my list of credit cards within Amazon.

Plan is to switch to Amex / Amazon cards as soon as they arrive and clear the outstanding NatWest balance before the 22nd November statement, which I’m expecting to be in the region of £2,500 to £2,750 and that’s the stoozed mortgage debt well and truly paid off.

So that nearly rounds off October with a review of the credit cards – will still keep an eye out for good cash back deals and switch if I can find any.

Hoping to post something on bank accounts later in the week...

FB.

financialbliss

Well, I did say I was going to do a top to bottom review of our finances. I've been reviewing credit cards in recent days.

As you may have spotted above, I've already applied for and been successful for the following cash back credit cards:

• Amazon credit card - 2% at Amazon, 1% elsewhere
• American Express everyday card - initially 5% then up to 1.25%

Have a couple of emails off each of them, but nothing in the post just yet. Hoping to start getting things through next week.

Was a little disappointed that I missed some other offers such as the Aqua 3% cash back - were not relevant to me at the time, as I was trying to slow stooze to save up cash and pay off mortgage, but spotted this last night:

http://www.luma.co.uk/cashback-credit-card/

A massive 4% cash back on supermarket and petrol purchases, up to a maximum of £9 a month, ie cash back on the first £225 spend each month. Card is run by Capital One.

Better, still, I've applied and been accepted, so that's three new credit cards I'm waiting for in the post. :j

Will take a little careful card choices for spending each month, but I'm confident I'll be able to manage. Mrs Bliss not too happy just now, but when the cash back comes rolling in, I'm sure she will change her mind.

FB.

gallygirl

Well done FB :T. I'm tempted, but juggling £300 a month on Halifax to get £5 and then switching to Tesco so I can get points for Monarch flights is enough for my brain .

financialbliss

Quick update from me.

Of the mortgage debt that was transferred to 0% credit cards, I’ve just £2,250 left as of today. If I was very careful with cash withdrawals, I could just about squeeze paying off the balance in it’s entirety and also, more importantly, leave enough cash to cover direct debits at the start of December. That was plan A.

But, doing that is going to leave us very short for around 10-15 days – fortunately, we have a regular saver maturing on 28th November. I’m not 100% sure yet how/when we will receive the funds – direct transfer or a cheque, but I’ll assume the worst and work on 15 days.

So plan B which is the one I’m now going with is pay a further £250 off this month, and pay the remaining £2,000 balance sometime in December. And that draws a line under out mortgage / mortgage debt.

So what now? Well, I’ll be honest in not having a huge personal interest in the MFiT challenge so far, mainly due to not being able to contribute / add to my target much. BUT, I’m rather excited to be able to start saving in earnest from December onwards and also hope to be able to put a balance update in showing some movement in savings… :j

In recent days I have been working on a new and shiny savings spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnhcWfGMRVgddGxYR3ZqWXRUVnhCM1ZVaUMxeVJSVEE&hl=en_GB&single=true&gid=0&output=html

One column per account, with a grand total on the left. For each account, I’m calculating: difference in balance, interest each month, balance and the percentage spread of savings of each account within the overall savings. For the totals column - across all accounts: difference in balance, monthly interest, balance and the effective savings rate using the percentage spread data and net interest.

All accounts are using the net interest apart from the Santander 123 account which has a tiered rate, which gets factored into the effective savings rate using the Santander 123balance and this little formula:

=(IF(AND(F13>=0,F13<1000),0,IF(AND(F13>=1000,F13<2000),0.009,IF(AND(F13>=2000,F13<3000),0.01782,IF(AND(F13>=3000,F13<=20000),0.02664,))))*F14)+($G$8*G14)+($H$8*H14)+($I$8*I14)+($J$8*J14)+($K$8*K14)+($L$8*L14)+($M$8*M14)+($N$8*N14) :eek:

All accounts are work-in-progress, which I’ve taken from highest to lowest net rates and could well change. Figures are just there to check percentages and other formula just now…

Why have I done this in google docs?

I’m very much contemplating a savings diary to push me along for the last two years of the MFiT challenge. Keeps me focussed and keeps me on MSE. Not 100% that I’ll be doing this just yet, as there’s a lot of traffic in the savings forum and I’m quite unfamiliar with that area of the site / how friendly the regulars are / how a new savings diary is going to be received etc…

Jury is out, but should I start, it’s likely to be sometime in December as this seems a logical progression after drawing a line under this diary.

Watch this space.

FB.

black_taxi_2

saving dec, a new start for you FB sounds good

someday_soon

Loving the spreadsheet FB, can't say I understand it though, still I have until May when my second stage of MFiT begins to work it out:rotfl:
Incidentally, why the PS4 as opposed to the Xbox?

Someday Soon

financialbliss

Spreadsheet. OK. I’ll leave figures that are in there as-is just now.

Each column is a bank / savings account with the left most column with AER / Gross / Net / Totals at the top being the grand total column. Each month has it's own set of rows.

Due to the fact Mrs Bliss pays no tax, I’m better off with her holding all the savings, ie tax free. The exception is the Santander 123 account, which I need to have as a joint account so that I’ve got access to a current account. The other columns are the current / savings account I’m planning to open over the next 12 month, sorted by decreasing NET interest rate.This may yet change.

For December 2013 I’m showing Santander as having a balance of £1,000 and Nationwide FlexDirect having a balance of £2,500. So 71.43% of my savings are in FlexDirect getting a net interest rate of 4.89%. 28.57% of my savings are in Santander getting an interest rate of 1% (Santander is tiered but not shown on the chart – I’m hoping I’ll have £3,000+ in to get the best rate which would be 2.66% when partially taxed).

So 71.43% of the 4.89% rate and 28.57% of the 2.66% rate means I’m effectively getting 3.75% on my savings for December 2013 overall. For each month when I add a balance to a column or adjust a balance, the effective percentage is recalculated.

In short, it just provides a way for me to try and manage savings account to get the best interest.

Playstation. Mrs Bliss kindly bought me a Playstation One for my 30th birthday. I’ve since had (and still got) a Playstation two and three, so the logical progression is a Playstation four. Also, I have this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Driving-Force-Steering-wheel/dp/B0018E281Q/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1384805711&sr=8-4&keywords=driving+force+gt

And this should still be supported on the PS4. Not sure it would be supported at all on the Xbox One.

More importantly, while I could theoretically just go out and get a PS4 next week – launch date is 29th November, I’ve never had a console at launch and can wait until next year. I’m going to buy it out of savings interest, thus this gives me incentive to make sure I’m getting the best interest on the savings in order to accumulate the £349 price, and not just blow the unallocated money each month.

FB.