FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

JonnyBravo

ali007 wrote: »

FB I go for the fingers crossed insurance method . TBH

Snap.

Extended product warranties and insurance for my boiler/cooker etc are not worth it.
I'm sure there are a few people who come out of such arrangements on top but the majority don't..... that why companies offer them.

It all comes down to your attitude to risk I guess.

setmefree2

Hi:hello:

We had a contract with BG when we lived in our previous house- it was for boiler and CH. Our system was quite old and we did quite well out of the contract as we had our boiler checked every year and had quite a few jobs done - including a couple of new rads.

I didn't bother to renew (as we have new boiler and CH) in our present house...but must say, we haven't had our boiler checked for ages and I must get round to organising this.

I think these contracts can be good value perhaps if you have an old system....

Regards

SMF2

SuiDreams

We've got a British Gas Contract and there is no excess to pay on ours, the Price includes the yearly servicing as well. Its saved us a lot of money as every part in the boiler seems to have been replaced at least twice, plus new control panel, 3 themostats and some of the parts in the airing cupboard and the loft. Going to start saving up for a new less problematic boiler though.

financialbliss

Thanks everyone for the boiler contract replies…

I guess if you’ve a 15-20 year old boiler, then perhaps a maintenance contract may be a good idea, but there again, these old boilers could be massively inefficient. Perhaps swapping to a new efficient condensing combi is a better idea, although at a much higher cost.

Still, ours is only 2 years old – I’m not worried about it yet, nor am I considering a maintenance contract any time soon.

Thanks again,
FB.

financialbliss

Good news (for us). After jumping through many hoops, ie requesting a card reader, creating a payee and then paying the money back to us, both our £100 standing orders that are required to receive the £50 savings cash back have turned up on our current account today.

Just about to move to Nationwide e-savings.

FB.

TighterThanTwoCoatsOfPain

I have a contract with British Gas, but found them totally enept at dealing with problems...

I arrived back from Holiday to find half my central heating system across my kitchen and the leak showing no sign of stopping...

After a blazing row they finally came to stop the leak after 3 days!

Treacle_Toes

I just wanted to say a quick Hello! I've been reading the whole of your diary over the past couple of weeks and I want to say how entertaining and inspiring it is, so thank you for taking the time to write it so regularly.

I'm a new MFW, the biggest hurdle has been persuading the OH that it's a good idea. After reading a lot of the information in the forum I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago to arrange a small overpayment which would take my mortgage payment figure to a nice round number. I got a letter back from ING to say that the minimum I can pay is £1000! Needless to say I found this amount a bit scary, so my o/p money is sitting in a savings account until it grows (a lot) bigger.

One thing that did work out for me is opening a Cash ISA, but it still only has it's initial £1 deposit in it so far - every little helps!?!

Thanks for your entries - keep them coming - and good luck!

financialbliss

Treacle_Toes wrote: »

I just wanted to say a quick Hello! I've been reading the whole of your diary over the past couple of weeks and I want to say how entertaining and inspiring it is, so thank you for taking the time to write it so regularly.

Hi Treacle Toes,
Many thanks for your comments and thanks for saying hello. I try and post regularly, but I'd rather attempt to post something relevant / hopefully interesting than simply get on my soap box and churn out posts.

I must be doing something right, as I get the occasional - "I've just read your entire thread and I've decide I want to chip away at my mortgage too" - (which you've just done), which is a real inspiration for me to keep posting...

Do keep posting, either here or elsewhere in this mortgage free forum. Keep chipping away at that mortgage (or putting savings away for now) !

Regards,
Financial Bliss.

financialbliss

Ok. This has absolutely nothing to do with the mortgage, except perhaps it was free, and it has not impacted on my budget / mortgage free plans.


A few weeks ago, we picked up a heritage weekend brochure. This is a list of attractions and buildings that are open to the general public for free – it got a mention in a recent MSE e-mail (2nd September), but we were on the case before then

Well, today we went to visit the Nissan car manufacturing plant in Sunderland and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m sure any comments I put here won’t do it justice, so I’ve found a Wikipedia link here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Manufacturing_(UK)_Ltd

If you open the above link, but don't read through the entire text, just look at the two pictures at the top of the page to try and appreciate the size of the site.

They’re currently manufacturing the Micra and Qashqai here. Quite a few mentions were made to the new 7 seater Qashqai, which they have recently started manufacturing.

Tour started at 1.30pm with a background, safety briefing and the opportunity for a few general questions. After that we walked through a number of assembly lines within the plant:

Body shop. We visited this first. The sheer number of shells being made was slightly overwhelming at first. We watched mainly automated lines collect and build pressed out body panel into car shells.

Paint shop. From the body shop, we saw the shells get cleaned, treated, under coated, colour coated and clear coated. After that they’re baked in an oven for 45 minutes before being queued for further fitting.

Trim and Chassis. Here, we saw all aspects of the interior, eg flooring, cabling, dashboard (which only takes 3 seconds to fit), front and rear windows and headlights / font bumper. Further down that line, the completed engine mounting plus chassis was attached, along with the wheels.

Final line. Here, the car is fuelled, checked for water proofing, ABS brakes, steering alignment etc are all checked before the car is driven off to a holding area before being distributed.

I’ve probably massively over simplified the process, but the tour was 3 hours non stop information overload, either visually, or via the headsets we were wearing. As we finished, I said to Mrs Bliss – I would have paid for that :eek:

Anyone else planning on doing or have done any heritage open days?

FB.

abouttimetoo

Hi FB, great to see your latest posts, I miss your updates when you are not around:o

My own combi boiler is only 18 months old so I'm not yet prepared to think about service plans etc.

I've had a nice bit of MFW news today - I cancelled an old IPP policy only to find it had a £306.33 surrender value - I did think about leaving it there and then thought well it's not mega bucks and the stock market is not exactly booming at the moment so I'm taking the money and I'll pop it into my savings account with a view to making an extra lump sum on my mortgage at the end of the year

Regards
ATT