FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

financialbliss

Said I’d update on the regular savers situation so here goes.

1) Barclays. Funny one this is. Barclays must “profile” you as a customer, as Mrs Bliss spent some time in the interview getting asked questions about herself. When it came to income, the Barclays system decided that she wasn’t eligible to open a savings account as she had zero income. :rotfl:

After much faffing around – her monthly “income” was put down as child benefit - this account was opened on yesterday.

As far as I understand, the 12 month term starts as soon as the first payment hits the account. My thinking was to standing order £250 next Tuesday (25th), and then standing order another £250 on the 1st December and the 1st of each month after; thus we have £500 credited to the account within a few days instead of taking two months. Does that sound reasonable? I’m allowing a few days between payments to make sure it only gets one credit per calendar month.

2) Abbey. Less success here. Telephoned Abbey last Monday who assured us that the application form would be in the post on Monday and we should received it on Tuesday. As it still hadn’t arrived today, Mrs Bliss chased them this afternoon and was told you need to wait at least a week before re-requesting another form.

Not 100% sure about Abbey. May look into another regular saver to replace it.

Financial Bliss.

gallygirl

Good news on Barclays and rats to Abbey. I really do not like their lack of customer service.

OK, I've posted my graph on my thread! Almost worked..... I had to cheat to get it to save as a jpeg file & I couldn't resize, so it has exploded the page - but at least it is easier to read!

I already had the graph FB, it is my favourite bedtime viewing. I too have experimented with different formats but a line is the only one which looks right. What do you think?

financialbliss

gallygirl wrote: »

Good news on Barclays and rats to Abbey. I really do not like their lack of customer service.

OK, I've posted my graph on my thread! Almost worked..... I had to cheat to get it to save as a jpeg file & I couldn't resize, so it has exploded the page - but at least it is easier to read!

I already had the graph FB, it is my favourite bedtime viewing. I too have experimented with different formats but a line is the only one which looks right. What do you think?

GallyGirl, I'll be right over there in a mo to check it out...

Both Barclays and abbey are fixed rate monthly savers. Barclays @ 7.49 and Abbey @ 7.25 - me being drawn to them due to their fixed rates. Other regular savers are variable rate. Perhaps give Abbey a few more days before I look elsewhere!

FB.

Lunar_Eclipse

First Direct's Regular saver ISA any good at 7%? It is a fixed rate, but an ISA.

Vouch for them as a company and you can apply very easily online.

financialbliss

Lunar_Eclipse wrote: »

First Direct's Regular saver ISA any good at 7%? It is a fixed rate, but an ISA.

Vouch for them as a company and you can apply very easily online.

Good tip. I've just had a quick look and the detail on the account says "savings can only be paid by standing order from your first direct 1st Account for the first 12 months".

Presumably, as we won't be able to afford to fund this with £1,500 + a month, looks like they would charge £10 per month for current account operation: "banking with first direct usually costs £10 a month, but it's free when you pay in at least £1500 to your 1st Account each month".

Still, I think it's worth sending them and e-mail just to confirm that the above is the case.

Thanks for the tip.

FB.

Lunar_Eclipse

financialbliss wrote: »

Good tip.

Ah sorry FB, I hadn't realised that. We have that ISA product, but bank with them.

Incidentally, although we don't have to pay a fee for our account, I think we have effectively opted to do so by joining up for First Directory (I'm not 100% sure they're the same thing, but fairly sure.) We do this (£10/month) because it includes annual family travel insurance and mobile phone insurance, amongst other benefits. We used to pay more than £120/year for our annual travel insurance. Just thought I'd mention it in case you do the same and the banking fee is actually First Directory. Thus you could justify the charge. Slim chance I know, but thought it worth a mention.

financialbliss

Lunar_Eclipse wrote: »

Ah sorry FB, I hadn't realised that. We have that ISA product, but bank with them.

Ah, I can see why you thought that - you bank with them. I e-mailed them earlier this evening to confirm if the £10 a month charge would still occur if a current account and regular saver ISA were both opened at the same time.

Still a good tip though. Thanks.


Still on the subject of banks / savings, I'm contemplating if I should close the Kaupthing Edge / ING account since they dropped their rate. Basically, we were using this account as a temporary instant access store of funds before they were fed into higher rate accounts. Was an ok idea when the rate was 6.55%.

As KE and Nationwide eSavings AERs are both currently 4.55% and that a BACS transfer from KE to linked account takes 3+ days, I'm now wondering why wait 3+ days when I can have the money instantly - our current account banking is also with Nationwide and we can transfer to/from eSavings immediately. A recents BACS transfer out of KE took 5 days :eek:

Only thing stopping me is that I know the KE rate has dropped 2%, but eSavings has only dropped 0.5% so far. Perhaps I'm analysing it too much - as we'll be feeding the likes of Halifax, Barclays and possibly Abbey regular savers, this account won't have much in for long.

If I do decide to close this account, I'll probably do so before the end of the year.

Financial Bliss.

canne_2

Hi Financial Bliss,

I found your diary about a month ago and spent quite a few days reading it from the beginning. I am in Australia not far from Sydney in NSW. I currently have a mortgage which is $133 967AU. Household income is about $48 000 a year. I am hoping to have the mortgage paid off by 2015 ... hopefully earlier.

Anyway, I just registered so I could say how much I have enjoyed reading your diary and I will keep reading!

financialbliss

canne wrote: »

Hi Financial Bliss,

I found your diary about a month ago and spent quite a few days reading it from the beginning. I am in Australia not far from Sydney in NSW. I currently have a mortgage which is $133 967AU. Household income is about $48 000 a year. I am hoping to have the mortgage paid off by 2015 ... hopefully earlier.

Anyway, I just registered so I could say how much I have enjoyed reading your diary and I will keep reading!

Hi canne,
Many thanks for registering just to say hello. My wife is originally from Wellington, New Zealand!

I'd be interested to know if you discovered my diary when browsing the moneysavingexpert.com site or you discovered it some other way, eg via google or another search engine. It's sometimes easy to forget that while we're using a forum in a site, by the very nature of the internet, it's visible all over the world!

I keep peeling back the layers in that I'll occasionally write up "feature" posts - these are specific areas I want to expand on, rather than everyone having to put up with my normal waffling. Once of these is to write about things I'd like to achieve once I'm mortgage free - travelling is part of that. I'd like to visit both Australia and New Zealand.

Once again, thanks for registering / saying hi and I hope you keep reading.

Financial Bliss.

canne_2

I belong to a forum on simplesavings.com.au which is a paid membership site and someone posted a thread asking what forums they read and someone posted this one. So I had a look and looked at the mortgage forum and your thread was at the top of the list so I started reading that! Funnily enough, your thread has been the most interesting so far, I have read a few others as well...

The pound is worth about $2.30 Australian dollars but I just look at the pound figure and don't worry about converting it as the numbers work the same...