FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

clarew

Glad to see you are back around...thought we'd lost you for a second! I like reading the "bliss blog", its more addictive than soaps!

I am proud of myself at the mo as i have upped my overpayment so we are regularly paying £40/month more (not much i know but as am on unpaid mat leave at the mo, i am pleased i have managed this much!-particularly as i have had 4kids to entertain cheaply over the summer holidays too!!!!!!!!).

Keep the inspiration going....

StuartGMC

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You certainly have set, and worked very hard to achieve, a difficult target as JohnnyBravo notes. I think you should look at the achievement and then work forward from there. Don't let an excessive target lead to a feeling of underachievement, and perhaps in the current climate you would be better planning a conservative case for no increase in salary, which means you can then improve on it?

IF OH returns to work, have you thought about how you "sell" the out-of-school club etc needs to the little ones? We found DD responded well when told that accepting she had to be at this mum could work part-time to pay for the holidays, treats and similar.

Personally our target is softer than yours by a long shot, but how I wish interest was calculated daily etc back in the 1990s, in the early stage of our mortgage for the overpayments made whilst OH was full-time as this would have made much more impact!

I no longer contemplate a main holiday in UK in the "summer" preferring the guaranteed weather elsewhere. Whilst initial costs look higher, it can be cheaper than "paying" to be out of the rain in good old Blighty! Hope you get some improved weather now with the family to enjoy and do keep us updated, your original postings inspired me to start logging a diary.

financialbliss

I’m finding that now that #2 is a little bit older, she want to be involved in a lot more things and therefore life is often getting in the way of putting time aside for this diary.

@StuartGMC – appreciate what you’re saying about the holidays. At the tender ages of 4 and 2, the kids aren’t exactly too demanding at present, although I can only see the holiday budget needing to grow as they get older. Plus, with #1 starting school this September, we will most likely be tied to out of term holidays, ie greater prices.

Regarding my target, I’m not about to give up just yet though...:eek:

I was actually on-line looking at my historic mortgage details today....

In 2006, Nationwide estimated the mortgage completion as December 2023.
In 2007, Nationwide estimated the mortgage completion as April 2021.
2008 to date, Nationwide are estimating the mortgage completion as September 2015.

I’m currently estimating that I will complete in September 2014. That’s only 21 months behind my target.

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financialbliss

Way back in post #110 on page 6, I jotted out some aims for 2008.

My intention was to review these aims at the end of June, ie about the half way stage, but, ahem, haven’t got about to this just yet!

One of these was the feeding of monthly savers. We had at the time two Lloyds TSB 8% two year products. Mrs bliss doesn't pay tax, so that’s the full 8%, then I pay tax on mine so that’s 6.40%

The aim was to feed these @ 250/pm until they mature in October this year. We’ve done ok for mrs bliss, as we’ve maintained the 250 every month. Cash being a bit tight, we trimmed back my monthly saver, as I’m getting taxed on this.

The monthly cycle is get paid, feed in to e-savings (mrs bliss) @ 5.05%, then feed to the two monthly savers at 6.40% and 8%. Apart from trimming my transfer, this was going well until I noticed that Halifax were offering a limited availability 10% monthly saver.

Opened one for mrs bliss back in June, but couldn’t afford to fill all three. So, since June, the monthly cycle has been get paid, feed into e-savings, then feed from my Lloyds TSB monthly saver to the Halifax monthly saver and / mrs bliss monthly saver.

As a result, my monthly saver has been reducing month on month, but going into higher interest accounts!

So, today with about £750 remaining in this account, I decided to close it. Got 257.08 in interest and taxed at 51.42. To my surprise, they gave me almost 1k in cash. Nice, as it clears instantly.

Decided to make a token 125.00 payment to the mortgage today, with the remaining cash being used to feed the Halifax monthly saver and the remaining 8% Lloyds TSB monthly saver in September.

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setmefree2

Well done FB:T:T

financialbliss

Hi everyone,

Feel an update was warranted this evening, so here goes.

Receipts. I’m finally completely up to date with keying in / analysing receipts into Microsoft Money. This means that I can now do analysis by various spending categories with the outcome being accurate.

Eg, I’ve just done a car fuel spend check and we’ve spent 608.93 on diesel so far this year. As I don’t expect to need any more this month, I can divide this sum by 8 to give a current value of 76.12 being spent per month on diesel. We filled the tank in August and this cost 50.16. I’ve budgeted 60.00 per month for diesel. Suspect the current “blip” above the 60.00 was due to the two UK holidays where we did quite a bit of driving. Expect this monthly value to reduce over the remainder of the year.

Now hoping to keep on top of the receipts as they come in. Providing I can find some time to complete my statement of affairs (SOA), I’ll then cross-check with my actual spend, fine tune and post on-line. The SOA is one my my aims for 2008.

Natwest. Finally got the account numbers for the £50.00 cash back savings accounts (one each for me and mrs bliss) this week. Not yet had anything through from either Natwest or Nationwide saying the standing order is in place yet.

Increasing income. Spent some time lurking on the “Up your income” board and the “Freebies” board this week. As I’m going to need to shore up the mortgage repayment shortfall if I want to hit my goal, I thought I’d give the on-line surveys a go to see how I do with these. I worry slightly that the payout won’t be worth the time needed to generate the income, ie a very low hourly rate, but unless I try it, I won’t know.

Spoke to Mrs bliss about this and she is currently very sceptical about this. Still, I think it’s worth trying out. Registered this evening with OnePoll – seems to get quite a few good mentions on the above boards. Received 2.50 for registering and did a few surveys – total currently at 2.75.

If anyone else does surveys, I'd be interested in any recommendations to sign up or stay clear from them - appreciate I need to continue reading up on the two boards above.

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financialbliss

Further to my last post regarding increasing my income, I've had a e-mail referral for Pinecone Research. I've completed my details and suspect this will take a few day to be vetted and approved or rejected.

I understand they can pay up to £4 per survey, so it would be nice to be able to use them! I'll report back the outcome.

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DawnW

I belong to Pine Cone Research, and have found them very good. The surveys are not that frequent, but each one pays £4 in luncheon vouchers (or i think you can have PayPal now if you prefer). They keep you in touch and well informed. I also belong to YouGov, who seem quite good. I have 'dumped' Ciao though, as, although they send surveys every day (sometimes several times a day), almost every time you go to start the survey, and you suddenly get the message 'you are not eligible for this survey' (and thus do not get paid). I just delete the emails now, as sometimes you have to answer quite a number of questions before they decide you are ineligible, and it is a waste of time. I think they are aiming at a particular demographic (though do not state which). They also manage to gather a certain amount of information without paying due to 'ineligibility'. Others may have found them very good (perhaps they fit the demographic), but that is my experience.

tinkerbel

Hey, I always read your thread but as i have no experiance with most of the things you talk abouat and I am years away from getting a mortgage I never post but now there is something I can help with!!
On onepoll, put in some email addresses on the reffer friends bit and you get apound nomatter if they sign up or not (or even if they are real email addresses!)
Globaltestmarket is a good one too, you get paid in the form of a cheque for $50 US converted to £ (so approx £24) every 1000 points you get! If you have any questions pm me or just ask here

financialbliss

Hi DawnW / Tinkerbel - thanks for the survey info. I'm intending to do some further reasearch regarding surveys soon.

In the mean time, continuing to chip away at small changes to make the best use of our resources. Have an icesave savings account at 6.30%. Applied for a Kaupthing edge savings account (6.55%) and have been approved.

Intending to close the icesave account, plus two Nationwide instant access ISAs with £100 in each at a rate of 4.80% with the intention of putting this all in the Kaupthing Edge account, ie making sure we can get the best rates.

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