FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

It's 31st August - already. Seems the months are flying by this year...

Quick post of month end mortgage interest details. My mortgage interest for 2008 today stands at 2,089.07

On-line, is simply shown the total amount. Each month I'm logging the month end value, so that I can get the interest for the month and then calculate per day. The 2,089.07 breaks down as follows:

• January 279.86 – 9.03 per day
• February 249.23 – 8.90 per day
• March 271.85 – 8.77 per day
• April 259.23 - 8.64 per day
• May 263.84 - 8.51 per day
• June 252.53 - 8.41 per day
• July 257.78 - 8.31 per day
• August 254.75 - 8.21 per day

I've calculated that August should be the last month where we're charged more than 250.00 per month in interest - subsequent months should all be less than 250.00 :j
I've put savings in place for the normal monthly payment of 898.03 which is on the first, ie tomorrow. Also overpaying by 101.97 in September top the monthly payment up to 1,000.00.

Hoping to get some posts in later - just flicked computer on and haven't said good morning to family just yet!

FB.

financialbliss

Mortgage. Was reading a BBC news article that tax payers are getting an extra £60.00 in their pay packet this month – tax rebate due to scrapping of the 10% tax band - I’d forgot about that - so I’ve decided to pay an extra 25.00 off the mortgage today. Total paid today including regular and overpayments now stands at 1,025.00 Intending to update post #1 and signature once the payments reach our mortgage account – normally 2 or 3 days.

Energy. You may have spotted in the news in the last few days that Scottish Power are increasing their prices – electric by 9% and gas by 34%. As a direct result of reading a MSE e-mail, I decided to fix in July. Hopefully I should now be benefiting form that fix, although I’ve not yet checked with a fine tooth comb!

Energy billing. We collect our gas and electric meter readings on the 1st of the month and have been doing so for a number of years. This allows a graph of unit usage to be plotted and to determine if we’re staying the same, going up or down with our energy usage.

Recently, it occurred to me that since I collect this data monthly, why don’t I supply Scottish Power with this monthly too? As far as I know, they only require meter readings quarterly.

As I’d supplied them with readings on 1st August, I’ve done the same again today. Having put this data into Scottish Power website they’ve created a bill for 1st to 31st August. Result was 265 units of electric at a cost of 30.28 and 9 units of gas at a cost of 14.43. Total energy cost for august was therefore 44.71. As I now know I can do this monthly, I’ll continue to do this to show true monthly energy costs and as an incentive to attempt to reduce the bills.

FB.

SuiDreams

financialbliss wrote: »

Energy billing. We collect our gas and electric meter readings on the 1st of the month and have been doing so for a number of years. This allows a graph of unit usage to be plotted and to determine if we’re staying the same, going up or down with our energy usage.

Recently, it occurred to me that since I collect this data monthly, why don’t I supply Scottish Power with this monthly too? As far as I know, they only require meter readings quarterly.

As I’d supplied them with readings on 1st August, I’ve done the same again today. Having put this data into Scottish Power website they’ve created a bill for 1st to 31st August. Result was 265 units of electric at a cost of 30.28 and 9 units of gas at a cost of 14.43. Total energy cost for august was therefore 44.71. As I now know I can do this monthly, I’ll continue to do this to show true monthly energy costs and as an incentive to attempt to reduce the bills.

FB.

I did this for about a year with scottish power then I switched to EON earlier in the year when prices went up and was very disapointed that I couldn't do this with them, what was worse was I had to wait 5 months for my first bill, and completely lost track of our useage so I've gone back to my spreadsheet and tracking my spend myself from now on.

setmefree2

financialbliss wrote: »

I’ll continue to do this to show true monthly energy costs and as an incentive to attempt to reduce the bills.FB.

Good luck with this:money:

StuartGMC

financialbliss wrote: »

Energy. You may have spotted in the news in the last few days that Scottish Power are increasing their prices – electric by 9% and gas by 34%. As a direct result of reading a MSE e-mail, I decided to fix in July. Hopefully I should now be benefiting form that fix, although I’ve not yet checked with a fine tooth comb!

FB - worth checking on both value and the exit penalties (don't get caught by the latter). As per my thread just put in to transfer from ScottishPower to BG as their fixed offer to Sept 2011 only carries a premium of 13.8% for us over the new price from ScottishPower. Assumption is that prices will go up by at least 13.8% by March 2010 which would be the breakeven point.

Energy billing.

We collect our gas and electric meter readings on the 1st of the month and have been doing so for a number of years. This allows a graph of unit usage to be plotted and to determine if we’re staying the same, going up or down with our energy usage.

Do you convert gas reading to kWh? If so I assume you "guess" the calorific value/

Recently, it occurred to me that since I collect this data monthly, why don’t I supply Scottish Power with this monthly too? As far as I know, they only require meter readings quarterly.

As I’d supplied them with readings on 1st August, I’ve done the same again today. Having put this data into Scottish Power website they’ve created a bill for 1st to 31st August. Result was 265 units of electric at a cost of 30.28 and 9 units of gas at a cost of 14.43. Total energy cost for august was therefore 44.71. As I now know I can do this monthly, I’ll continue to do this to show true monthly energy costs and as an incentive to attempt to reduce the bills.FB.

This will make the online graphs you can view for year-on-year usage from ScottishPower more accurate to gauge visually the position. (I think I'll miss this with BG, so will now have to improve energy consumption spreadsheet to compensate!)

Good luck

financialbliss

Hi all,

Took my finger off the pulse these last few days with regard to diary…Managed to update graph on post #1 (here)

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=6522393&postcount=1

plus signature on 3rd September and have been sidetracked since!

Just a quick note to let you know I’m still here!

Been gearing up for #1 starting school. He’s ready for it – he was disappointed when he got sent home after 2 hours on the first day. Until Thursday 11th, he’s only in on the afternoons. After that it’s full days. As a treat on Friday evening, we took him to Pizza Hut using the 50% off food voucher that got a mention in the recent MSE e-mail. He loved it!

Replies. Note that several people have either made some good comments or said “hi” in recent days or weeks – some of which I’m intending to reply to, except I haven’t had the time…

Was in bed before 10pm last night – felt no better for it – it’s already past 11pm this evening and I’m tired, so I’m turning in for the evening.

FB.

setmefree2

Glad your son loves school - it's such a a pain when they don't. My youngest cried going to school everyday for 18 months:o My eldest went no bother though...

Kaz2904

Yours is in quicker than mine then, DS went in for 1/2 hour on Friday. Tomorrow he starts 2.5 hour mornings, next week he's got 2 hour afternoons, the following week he's got mornings with lunch and then he's in. It's better than when DD started though, 6 weeks she was in and out for 2 hours a day, nightmare!

Well done on all your recent jiggling around, lets hope it gets there in the end!

financialbliss

We’ve a fairly new condensing combi. Was rather cold on Saturday (and raining too for a change), so we decided to put the heating on for a little while to take the chill off the house and to bleed radiators etc. Except it wouldn’t come on :eek:

There was a nick in a cable from the circuit board, but once that was repaired, it turned out that the timer was at fault. Got a replacement fitted today at a cost of £60.00 - £25 for the timer and £35 for the time spent by the engineer - about 2 hours, once you factor in two visits and sourcing part.

Which brings me on to the monthly maintenance plans you can get. A quick flick through the paper I had today and I found an advert for British Gas maintenance plan @ £7 per month and a £50 excess for each call out. Just checked their web site and they show the “Flexi 100” at £9 a month with a £50 excess.

That’s (at £9 a month) £108 a year, with a further £50 excess if you call ‘em out. Appreciate that combi’s can be horrendously expensive if they go badly wrong, but we’ve not got one at present as our combi is quite new.

So, my question in do people have any monthly maintenance plans for combi boilers / combi plus heating systems etc.?

Note: I’m not plugging or suggesting you avoid British Gas – just using them as an example as they were the first advert I found.

Just curious – is it the MSE way for saving money longer term, or should they be avoided?

FB.

gallygirl

FB I go for the fingers crossed insurance method . TBH I've always heard such bad things about insurances (though not heating etc to be fair) I've never really considered it. I just remember when I needed a new motor on washing machine - it was cheaper to pay local man to supply & fit than to pay H*tpoint to supply the part free of charge then pay for fitting :eek: .

It's a chance I can take as, like many on here, I can afford to pay if it goes wrong (ooooh, it would hurt though ), however if things were v tight I might be tempted.

PS - guess boiler will blow up any time now :rolleyes: