FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

SmlSave wrote: »

I'm on a fixed rate too, at least I know what's going out every month - its what I tell myself when they talk about rates dropping! Are you fixed for long?

I'm fixed until March 2011 @ 4.79% Mortgage should complete in 2029, and I've calculated that to drop my term back to March 2029, I should be reducing my monthly payment to 427.52 a month. I'm intending / hoping to start paying 1,200.00 per month from January - so you can see how much I'm overpaying by.

SmlSave wrote: »

2010 nots too bad. Its definatly the gas,electric and petrol that's got me the most worried.

I've capped our electric and gas, plus we're using a little less petrol (in our case diesel) now, as #1 walks to school, but I'd agree - many things appear to be going up at the moment!

Water. Now that worries me! We're on a water meter, no option regarding that - it was installed at the point the house was built. We currently pay 42.71 a month in water / sewerage fees and from a recent statement, it showed that we were slightly in arrears. In other words, the monthly direct debit will be revised upwards come April 2009.

Both kids go in the bath nightly, myself and Mrs Bliss both have showers, but I'd not say we were especially heavy water users, but our water bill just seems to go up and up. Anyone else have any concerns here?

Financial Bliss.

financialbliss

gallygirl wrote: »

As for Motorstorm 2 - :rolleyes: boys and their toys . You could get a nice handbag for that money

Hmm, was trying to show that when I do spend, I try and do so wisely, both in the amount paid and, wherever possible, the length between the spend and the payment being due.

Sorry - I don't do handbags. Fortunately, neither does Mrs Bliss :rotfl:

FB.

JonnyBravo

financialbliss wrote: »

Water. Now that worries me! We're on a water meter, no option regarding that - it was installed at the point the house was built. We currently pay 42.71 a month in water / sewerage fees and from a recent statement, it showed that we were slightly in arrears. In other words, the monthly direct debit will be revised upwards come April 2009.

Both kids go in the bath nightly, myself and Mrs Bliss both have showers, but I'd not say we were especially heavy water users, but our water bill just seems to go up and up. Anyone else have any concerns here?

Never been on a water meter thankfully. (One of the advantages of having only bought old unimproved houses)

You're kidding yourself though if you think you're not a heavy water user. You run a bath a day. A bath uses more water than pretty much anything else you do in the normal run of things.

Well if they're boys they'll eventually get tired of baths (they get boring ) and move to having a shower. If you've got girls you're going to be paying til they leave home!
Stick a brick in each cistern etc to save some pennies!

Kaz2904

Another option is to do the showers with the plug in & shove the kids in that? Do they still go in together? DD has now decided she wants to bath alone (she's 7).

evab_2

We're not on a meter but still be careful about our usage as obviously costs money to heat the water.

We don't have a shower (will do when get the bathroom done), hubbie and I have one every other day normally after running, then dd gets in with one of us or uses the water afterwards. Baby gets his own bath but isn't that full so we might do his before we go in as then we can top it up.

Is there anything else that might contribute a lot to the usage e.g. dish washing, washing machine etc or do you have an olympic sized swimming pool that you haven't told us about! :-)

Little_Mama

JonnyBravo wrote: »

Well if they're boys they'll eventually get tired of baths (they get boring ) and move to having a shower.

My boys have been having showers since they were each about 3, actually younger than that for DS2. We started them off by coming in with us for ease & speed.....plus it gets rid of morning bedheads. We're not on a meter but you do notice the difference on the gas usage for heating up baths as opposed to showers.:mad:

Now both boys have a 3 minute shower together in the morning before school, it's great.:D

LM

financialbliss

Hi,

For anyone who is a regular reader, you may have noticed that I’ve this year started keeping a monthly breakdown of interest charged on the mortgage. This is only shown as total amount for the year on-line. I’m logging the interest on the last day of the month, so I can calculate interest per month and per day.

I’ve now decided to not only log the interest, but also show the payments I’ve made that month and the net reduction (payment – interest) each month to the mortgage.

Hopefully, this gives a more rounded picture. I’ll probably be using this format from now on. I've put the interest in red to hopefully make it stand out a bit. Columns are:

Month / Payment / Interest (per day) / Net reduction / Balance.

Year starting balance: 69,653.22

January: 900.00 / 279.86 (9.03) / 620.14 / 69,033.08
February: 1,250.00 / 249.23 (8.90) / 1,000.77 / 68,032.31
March: 1,250.00 / 271.85 (8.77) / 978.15 / 67,054.16
April: 1,250.00 / 259.23 (8.64) / 990.77 / 66,063.39
May: 1,250.00 / 263.84 (8.51) / 986.16 / 65,077.23
June: 1,000.00 / 252.53 (8.42) / 747.47 / 64,329.76
July: 1,000.00 / 257.78 (8.32) / 742.22 / 63,587.54
August: 1,125.00 / 254.75 (8.22) / 870.25 / 62,717.29
September: 1,025.00 / 243.06 (8.10) / 781.94 / 61,935.35
October: 1,050.00 / 247.84 (7.99) / 802.15 / 61,133.19

Totals (Payment / Interest / Net reduction):

Minimum: 900.00 / 243.06 / 620.14
Maximum: 1,250.00 / 279.86 / 1,000.77
Average: 1,100.00 / 258.00 / 852.00
Total: 11,100.00 / 2,579.97 / 8,520.03

Good news is that the daily interest dropped to 7.99 this month :j The balance of 61,133.19 is the mortgage balance of today.

Just about to put some funds in place to cover direct debits and mortgage for the month ahead. Planning to top up regular payment to make a monthly payment of 1,050.00 tomorrow.

Financial Bliss.

Little_Mama

financialbliss wrote: »

Good news is that the daily interest dropped to 7.99 this month :j

Well done on another milestone........I must get my figures to see if I've managed to break the £21 per day barrier.....it's little things like this that keep me going on the quest!

Best wishes
LM

financialbliss

Mortgage. First this I did this morning was overpay to mortgage account by 151.97 - this tops up the payment to the mortgage to a monthly total of 1,050.00. I'll update my signature once the standard and overpayments have cleared - normally 2 or 3 working days, so perhaps not until Wednesday.

Electric and gas. Recently realised that I could enter my meter readings into Scottish Power website monthly. I've been doing that in recent months. As it's the first of the month, I've entered meter readings for October. Figures are units then cost. I’ve also done a combined total so an overall comparison can be made.

Electric:

• August - 265 / 30.28
• September - 273 / 30.74
• October - 312 / 34.38

Gas:

• August - 9 / 14.43
• September - 21 / 17.06
• October - 51 / 34.18

Electric and gas:

• August - 274 / 44.71
• September - 294 / 47.80
• October - 363 / 68.56

I'm quite shocked by our gas usage for October. Since January 2005, we've been taking gas and electric meter readings on the 1st of the month, so I've quite a bit of history to compare against. We've been historically averaging 30 units of gas for October. I've no idea why the gas, at 51 is so high?

Apart from the combi and a fire in the living room, everything else is electric. We've had the fire on a few times when we didn't want to heat the entire house, plus we have had the heating on, but we're burning it at 17c, it comes on and off throughout the day to maintain the temperature, rather than staying on all the time... Need to keep an eye on the gas.

I'll hopefully come back to the water usage later today, plus I'll reveal the result of counting my no spend days for October later.

Financial Bliss.

financialbliss

financialbliss wrote: »

I'll hopefully come back to the water usage later today, plus I'll reveal the result of counting my no spend days for October later.

Oops. Haven't yet got around to that. Don't know if anyone noticed by times of posts - I pretty much make nearly all my posts on an evening - but I've been off work this last week, ie half term.

Some days I've managed to post something on MSE, some not. The weekend has been pretty busy just trying to keep the kids entertained, but I'm not quite sure where the last two or 3 days have gone. I'm back at work in the morning, so back to evening posts for the time being...

Financial Bliss.