FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

gallygirl wrote: »

18 degrees but that may rise as I am a woossy .

Having said that, we had thermostatic valves fitted last year which are proving effective, coupled with larger radiator in lounge which was always cold. We can now 'spot heat' the room we are in.

Our last house had 2 radiators downstairs and 4 upstairs with no thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs). As a result, the downstairs was always much colder than the upstairs - this lessened slightly when the hot water tank was removed when we installed a combi.

This house has 12 radiators - all bar 1 have TRVs. Great isn't it? - we can set radiators individually... and we've got upstairs set much cooler than downstairs.

To be fair, we've previously set the thermostat to 18 degrees, but we've started lower on the basis that you can always increase the temperature, but it's much more difficult to step back down once you've adjusted to higher temperatures...

FB.

financialbliss

setmefree2 wrote: »

1Our house is still warming up well during the day and so our CH hasn't come on in the evenings at all yet.

The back of our house is south facing - this means the conservatory can heat up quite nicely providing it's been sunny enough. We've been opening the patio doors to let the heat through and warm up the downstairs...

FB.

financialbliss

I've seen a lot of talk about having no spend days.

I've decided I'm going to monitor my spend / no spend days in October. This doesn't mean I'll post every day, but simply that I'll tally up my no spend days and report on 31st October.

However, I'm stuck already... :rotfl:

Is an overpayment on the mortgage (on 1st October) classed as spend or no spend day?

Is there any rules I need to be following?

FB.

gallygirl

FB, it's unavoidable, unbudgeted spends which count. So bill payments don't count, overpayments certainly don't count. Petrol is debatable - I'd not count it as we can't help but buy it. Weekly shop is difficult. I suppose if you meal plan & only buy what's on list it doesn't count.

When I was paying off debt I kept a spending diary. I wrote down everyhing I spent then colour coded it.
Pink was a no spend day .
Green was unavoidable and a good deal. for instance, diesel, as long as I'd checked prices on petrolprices.com, or when a planned lunch out (to be bought by a client) was cancelled at the last minute and I had to buy a sandwich - but from butty shop instead of Pret. Or a 'proper' BOGOF on shampoo which I did actually need.
Red was naughty - chocolate bars, going to pub at lunchtime etc.
Orange was in the middle - e.g. unavoidable but not cheapest - if I'd bought the sandwich from Pret for instance. Or cheap but not needed - when the BOGOF shampoo took my supplies into double figures for instance :rolleyes:.

I used to like getting my pens out . Especially the green and pink .

Hope this helps.

abouttimetoo

Hi FB

I'm afriad my thermostat is already in the mid-20's:o I'm usually the coldest person people meet!

I've ventured into stozzing today to the tune of £20k, £16k at 0% for 12 months & 4k at 0% until June 09. My dilemma now is what to do with it and my head is bouncing from one thing to another.....

PS feeling quite pleased with myself as I updated my siggy today and my IO has dropped below £94k for the first time:T

Regards
ATT

financialbliss

In October 2006 Mrs Bliss and I both opened a then Lloyds TSB 2 year 8.00% regular saver account.

Mrs Bliss has been feeding it at the maximum of 250 per month since we opened it. On 1st October the balance stood at 6,920.79 with the year 2 interest of 425.69 being added yesterday – grand total of 7,346.48.

The terminated yesterday and became a Lloyds TSB easy saver @ 4.50%. Needless to say, we weren’t impressed with that rate and can do better.

So, Mrs Bliss and I popped down to our local Lloyds TSB. I stayed in the car with daughter and my instructions as Mrs Bliss started towards the bank was – get as much in cash as possible so it can clear immediately.

A good 20 minutes or so later (there was an error on a 1,000 bundle), Mrs Bliss came back with a rather worried look on her face and an A4 envelope stuffed with cash – :eek: the whole 7,346.48 in cash :eek: – and most of it in ten pound notes too.

We then spend a few nervous minutes driving to our nearest Nationwide – cash first deposited in current account, then the majority transferred to Kaupthing Edge (6.55%) and the remainder in Nationwide e-savings (5.05%) for easy / instant access.

Once the Kaupthing Edge transfer has cleared, I’m now tempted to open a term account to secure a better rate as if you believe the chatter, we could be looking at a 0.5% base rate reduction next week then the BoE have their 2 day meet.

Personally, I think the rates should be going up at this point in time to attempt to slow the rampant inflation. Banks borrow from each other using the London Inter Bank Offer Rate (LIBOR). Cutting the BoE rate at this point in time is (IMO) going to do little to mortgage / other borrowing rates – all I suspect will happen (if we get a rate drop) is that savings rates will fall and mortgage providers won’t pass changes on due to reluctance to lend due to high LIBOR.

FB.

StuartGMC

FB, what a great image - you sat in the getaway car as wife comes out with swag bag! :rotfl:

I tend to agree with you that BoE base rate reduction won't ease cash flow in the market and very likely only those on tracker mortgages will benefit; mortgage rates seem these days to be quite disconnected to the base rate as you note due to the LIBOR being the driving factor.

It'll be interesting (no pun intended) to observe whether those furniture deals etc we are so used to with 0% interest free periods continue to be offered next week. Will retailers move back to preferring to be paid at time of purchase especially as it may be more difficult for them to defer the payment in terms of cash flow?

financialbliss

Hi,

Just a note to say I've updated my signature, plus the details on post #1.

There's a mere 50 months remaining or 4 years and 2 months...

I'm now committing 1,050 per month to the mortgage - slightly up on the previous 1,000 per month - this suggests that providing I keep that up, we'll be mortgage free in June 2014 (should have been March 2029). Simply got to trim a further 18 months off this finish date to get December 2012.

Ten months into the year and 2008 will be the year I've paid the most off the mortgage yet. Figures are year to date:

Gross payments: 11,075.00
Interest: 2,331.21
Net reduction: 8,743.79

With 10 months gone, I've now got a firm idea where I'd like to be come 31st December 2008 and that's a mortgage of 59,500 or less.

It's realistic and achievable and gives me a sub 60k boost to start 2009. I've already threw some numbers around for 2009 and I know where I'd like to be at the end of 2009, but more about that in my aims for 2009.

I've been meaning to review my aims for 2008 since the end of quarter 2 (June), but since another 3 months have passed, I'm now intending to do that pretty soon - in the next week-ish. I struggled to find my aims for 2008 post, so I've now linked to it from post #1.

Off to do some paperwork and receipts. Not sure if I've a desk under all that paperwork :eek:

FB.

financialbliss

Anyone else been following the financial issues with Iceland?

Icesave's parent company declared bankrupt :eek: Only closed the Icesave account at the end of September.

Still have a Kaupthing Edge account though...

According to this page:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/safe-savings

I'm 100% covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, however we're in very worrying times.

FB.

SmlSave

I've heard that the Icelandic gov will cover anything 20,000 euros and under, anything over is then claimable from the FSA - if Icesave goes under.

Apparently it was set up under the Bristish Banking system even thou its a subsidiary of Landesbanki