FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

Mumto5

Hi FB,

I will be very surprised if you don't clear your mortgage by 12.12.12. You are so much more focused than myself.

As my younger children are the same ages as your blisslings do you mind me asking if Mrs Bliss is planning to return to work when your DD starts school in 2 years time? I am planing for a part-time school hours job when my DD starts school and intend to attack the outstanding mortgage balance with my wages.

Keep up the diary. I try to read it 2 x a month and always come away thinking I must try harder!

Mumto5

financialbliss

Thanks to everyone who responded to my question will I clear the mortgage by 12/12/12, which I’ll come back to. Perhaps not this evening though.

First a bit of an update…

Fuel.
After last week’s massive 35% gas hike by British gas, I decided to make some movement on our fuel front. We’re with Scottish Power – a dual fuel on-line tariff. We’ve been on a fixed / capped deal before, but that expired and I’ve just been bumping along on their standard rate. So last Thursday evening, I registered on-line for a fixed price product – this is fixed until 31st August 2009 – just over a year!

Was tipped over the edge by Martin’s third or fourth e-mail telling me to look into the fixed deals. Also contemplated doing a price comparison to search the whole market, but decided against it while everyone is raising prices. Perhaps next year.

Christmas presents.
Got our first Christmas present last month – paid for it today, hence worth a mention. Doll’s house for daughter – 50% off in summer sale. Personalised with #2’s name. Going in the loft until Christmas.

Points.
We get points from our main credit card – Goldfish. As these were mounting up, recently redeemed a block of points for 5 pairs of Cineworld cinema tickets. As the standard adult price is 6.40 in this part of the world, 5 pairs or 10 tickets amount to 64.00, so a nice little saving. A free night out as long as you’re not tempted by the popcorn, nachos, drinks etc…

Bradford and Bingley.
Needed to make a decision this week. We’ll be opting for the cashless take up, whereby some shares are sold in order to purchase the remainder. Don’t expect to get too many, but at least we don’t have to dig into our own pockets. Haven’t actually done this yet, but will do in the next day or so.

Graph and signature update.
I uploaded a new graph at the weekend – see page 1, but got distracted and never updated the signature. Now says mortgage balance summary instead of just balance summary. Other than that, it’s not changed very much. Well, probably not that you can notice, but I can see minute changes month on month as I update the values. I’ve now updated my signature to allow for the August regular and overpayments.

Forgot to knock a month of post #1 last month – months remaining, so it’s been reduced by 2 this month to 52 months remaining.

I’ve just calculated that I need to be throwing something in the region of 1,341.18 per month at the mortgage for those 52 remaining months to achieve the mortgage free goal. Clearly as I’m just putting 1,000.00 per month towards the mortgage, this amount is/will creep up.

Off to do some sorting out of paperwork and bills…

FB.

gallygirl

financialbliss wrote: »

Well, as it's 31st July, I'll post a month end mortgage interest snapshot. My mortgage interest for 2008 today is 1,834.32
FB.

Thought I'd have a look at this.
Mortgage 1 (the MFIT challenge one)£1469.30
Mortgage 2 (BTL) £2420.33
Mortgage 3 (BTL) £1662.06
Total of £5551.69, £26.19 a day :mad:. Whilst I know from a tax point of view 2 & 3 make sense I want to clear 1 and then save equivalent of 2 & 3 in next 8 yrs & 1 payday (till 55th birthday :eek:). Then I can retire . My projections are that it can be done (currently snowballing at 1 month early :A).

FB I think you'll reach your goal. Remember that as time goes on the capital/interest ration changes in your favour, so paying the same amount as a year ago will make a bigger difference.

Is Mrs FB doing anything apart from sitting at home eating chocolate & drinking gin (or was that just me when the kids were little ). Could she do a little mystery shopping or does she do paid surveys, competitions etc?

financialbliss

ali007 wrote: »

Is Mrs FB doing anything apart from sitting at home eating chocolate & drinking gin (or was that just me when the kids were little ).

I’m sitting here with Firefox open and a handful of tabs, MSE, yahoo, the register, blog site of a friend, etc, and I just happened to switch back to this MSE thread tab whilst in the middle of taking a drink of tea #1 – nearly spat it over the screen!:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Ha, think I need to respond as to my thoughts for Mrs bliss going back to work as there’s been quite a number of requests about this in recent days…

FB.
#1 - Was drinking wine earlier. Not sure if wine would have been worse!

financialbliss

Thanks everyone so far who’s responded to my earlier question, especially JonnyBravo, who’s currently a loner in the “No” camp…

Guess it’s only fair to give my own answer. I did say in my earlier post that I currently think we have a good chance of meeting the 12/12/12 goal.

I’ve been playing around with numbers (as you do), and come up with a revised conclusion. I’m joining JonnyBravo!

No !

Clearly, I already know that, as on page one of this diary, I’ve calculated that if I continue for the rest of term of the mortgage paying 1,000.00 per month, I’d clear the mortgage in October 2014.

Projecting forward 4+ years is quite a challenge, but taking a stab at estimated salary increases, this time around doing it on the conservative side, I’ve estimated that I could have a balance remaining of anything up to 10k come December 2012.

It's so, so easy to play and project numbers in a spreadsheet - if you add a few extra pounds here and there, you suddenly find you've got your mortgage paid off, but with a repayment plan you can't keep!

Still, as many of you have noticed, I’ve got a card to play in the form of Mrs Bliss.

More about her in a post soon…

FB.

financialbliss

No time like the present to tackle projected mortgage shortfalls…

After reading this week’s MSE e-mail, I’ve this evening read the entire Natwest £50 savings cash back thread – 9 pages of it.

After deciding we can afford £200 – we’d probably cycle each £100 in and out again monthly – the small amount of effort is worth 2 x £50 cash back.

Just attempted to open an account on-line and was rejected On-line applications only available between 6.30am until 9.45pm.

Will attempt to open two accounts tomorrow in order to get 2 x £50 cash back.

FB.

Floxxie

Hi FB,

Did the same as you - will have to try and apply again tomorrow although £50 x 2 is a lot of hassle when you can open an ING account and deposit a £1 for a return of £25 (see referral board) but free cash is free cash afterall so will put some effort into it.

Will be very interested in your plans for Mrs Bliss We have managed to pay off a lot more with me not working than we did when I was working. Mind you, I can't say I have had much of a maternity leave but if I can return to work in a few years time mortgage free, it will have been worth it.

I am still very hopeful that you can clear the mortgage in the 'deadline' and I am hoping that you will stay positive as we are hoping to clear ours not long after yours!

Floxxie

JonnyBravo

financialbliss wrote: »

Thanks everyone so far who’s responded to my earlier question, especially JonnyBravo, who’s currently a loner in the “No” camp…

Guess it’s only fair to give my own answer. I did say in my earlier post that I currently think we have a good chance of meeting the 12/12/12 goal.

I’ve been playing around with numbers (as you do), and come up with a revised conclusion. I’m joining JonnyBravo!

No !

Thanks for the nod FB. :dance:
As I stated at the time, I don't want to be seen to be the "spoilsport" I just know from experience how hard it is to keep up high levels of overpayment. "Life" gets in the way sometimes.
I didn't want to just say "yes" to support you.... you can support people and still say "no".
Plus, as you've stated before, goals should be stretching. No point setting a target you can reach easily and I've always got the impression you've set yours to be stretching but achievable.... at a stretch.

financialbliss wrote: »

Clearly, I already know that, as on page one of this diary, I’ve calculated that if I continue for the rest of term of the mortgage paying 1,000.00 per month, I’d clear the mortgage in October 2014.

Projecting forward 4+ years is quite a challenge, but taking a stab at estimated salary increases, this time around doing it on the conservative side, I’ve estimated that I could have a balance remaining of anything up to 10k come December 2012.

Indeed it is hard to look so far into the future but your "more conservative" estimate is still a heck of an achievement
You won't be paying too much interest on £10k a year if that is where you end up on your target date.

My main reason for saying "no" was the current shortfall you have... it has more impact in the early months IYSWIM. Putting a payment down to £1k from your target of £1.25k in the early days is much more telling cos of compound interest etc etc
I s'pose I can sum it up with..... playing catch up is always disproportionately harder than staying on target. And you're in "catch up"

financialbliss wrote: »

Still, as many of you have noticed, I’ve got a card to play in the form of Mrs Bliss.

More about her in a post soon…

FB.

:T

Indeed so. This really is the trump card and as I alluded to in my "no" post this really could make me change my mind.... depending on the obvious details.... i.e. her earning power and childcare costs.

Looking forward to hearing all about the plans!

financialbliss

@JonnyBravo – excellent post. Do intend to address this though, as I suspect you’ve guessed!

@everyone else – any easy money generation (or saving) tips? Do post them here please.

Just a quick update, as I’m really tired this evening.

Bradford & Bingley. Completed our votes this evening – both for cashless take up. Least risky option. Not 100% sure how many additional shares we will get. I’ll do a quick post as soon as we find out.

Natwest. Got an agreement in principle for both our £50 cashback accounts.

Work. Finished work now for two weeks. Not back until after the August bank holiday. Looking forward to some time off, even if we don’t get away camping.

Despite now being off, I’m hoping I can keep to a regular-ish update to this diary.

Thanks,
FB.

financialbliss

Now into the second week of my two weeks off…

I can say that the weather has been appalling and has varied between heavy rain, heavy showers and showers. Had a few hours of sun last Friday, but other than that we’ve had really poor weather for August.

Car. Got a puncture last Friday. Changed tyre and put spare on, while I got the puncture fixed. Swapped back around and in my haste to complete this, I managed to “misplace” the alloy nut key. Had to pop into a Nissan dealer to order a replacement. Cost of 12.38 but I expected this to be much worse. A bit annoyed with myself, as this is a cost that could have been avoided completely.

Bradford and Bingley. Got a rights issue confirmation letter today. The sale of our 380 rights (each) at a quarter of a penny, netted us 94p, which added 1 share each to our Bradford and Bingley portfolio. Total shares now at 570, ie 285 shares for me and 285 for Mrs Bliss.

FB.