FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

mrs_miser

love this thread......
just a couple of things not related to paying off the mortgage , but relevant none the less to a couple of recent coments.......
1. my mum rang me proudly today to report that she has bought all 3 grand daughters 40 presents each. great , i know its the thought that counts, but still...
2. I know its all reative but had my house valued last feb 429k decided not to sell, had it valued yesterday 350k... if only we had a cristal ball we would have sold and rented. still dont know if to try could pay off mortgage, buy somewhere to do up (oh is a self employed builder)DECISIONS DECISIONS

financialbliss

mrs_miser wrote: »

love this thread......
just a couple of things not related to paying off the mortgage , but relevant none the less to a couple of recent coments.......
1. my mum rang me proudly today to report that she has bought all 3 grand daughters 40 presents each. great , i know its the thought that counts, but still...
2. I know its all reative but had my house valued last feb 429k decided not to sell, had it valued yesterday 350k... if only we had a cristal ball we would have sold and rented. still dont know if to try could pay off mortgage, buy somewhere to do up (oh is a self employed builder)DECISIONS DECISIONS

Thanks for saying hi mrs miser!

Our kids are pretty good. They haven't (yet) got the grasp of money properly, although I'm certainly going to try my best to make sure they do in the fullness of time.

#1 He's pretty good and if we say that's too expensive, he'll generally take that as the answer.

#2 Believe it or not, when our daughter who is only 2 asks for money for her toy purse she generally asks "Have you got any paper money!". Guess that one's going to come back to haunt me... :rotfl:

Both kids are well looked after with toys / treats by the grandparents. As mentioned earlier, it's sometimes the box that keeps them amused rather than the present. Think we've done ok with the Christmas spending on our two.

Haven't spoiled them, and I'm sure, no they will enjoy Christmas. #1 went to see a Santa on Saturday and Santa asked what he wanted. He couldn't reply - despite "suggestions" from Santa. They're both non-demanding on the toy front, but a day will come when that will change.

On to your second point - property. Ours has lost over 50k this year and it's now sub 250k, according to my own house price index estimates. I'm genuinely not bothered about this theoretical loss, as this has been across the board (generally) and we're not planning on selling any time soon.

FB.

financialbliss

Been plodding away with the receipts and paperwork. Current accounts are balanced and up to date - it's the credit card that's wearing me down.

Had an e-mail over the weekend saying November CC is available to view. Checked in MS Money and I've got August, September, October and November to cross check against statements. Hoping to get these done today (Monday) - although I'm about to turn in shortly, so I've still another 23hrs 30m or so

If you've not noticed, it's December :eek::eek::eek:

24 shopping days left until Christmas.

Logged into Nationwide internet banking and I've made my December overpayment. This is the last overpayment for the year of any significant value, at 156.97. This rounds the December payment to 1,055.

Now have 48 months remaining in my challenge, ie 4 years. As ever, will update signature and graphs (plural as I now have two) on page #1 once the payments clear.

Financial Bliss.

setmefree2

This rounds the December payment to 1,055.

Well done FB - fabulous.

SmlSave

Sounds like you've been doing well financialbliss

24 shopping days left until Christmas.

You make it sound soo feel :eek: I've been floating around picking bits and pieces up and now you given me a right kick to get propably orgainised.

48months/4years doesn't sound long does it?

financialbliss

Credit card. Got August checked and balanced, however I did mention I was aiming to check August to November. I generally don’t attempt to balance a month unless I think all receipts are in for that month, otherwise I seem to spend ages going over statement / MS Money looking for lost amounts.

Latest aim is for September this evening, October tomorrow and November on Thursday. Mrs Bliss rolls in this evening with a fist full of receipts – I tell you, it’s a full time job :rotfl:

Mortgage. Payments haven’t cleared yet :mad: I’m hoping they’ll clear tomorrow – the mortgage at that point should be 59,283.43 give or take a little interest. :j

Base rate. December UK rate setting meeting starts tomorrow with the results being published at 12 midday on Thursday. Record decline in manufacturing - BBC news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7758215.stm

and a similar economic news article in this is money:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=458761&in_page_id=2&ct=5

seem to suggest we may have another large cut in the base rate. A quick google search finds predictions varying from a 0.5% to 1.5% cut this week. Good for standard variable and tracker mortgage products – not so good for fixed products.

Income. Back in January I estimated our annual income for 2008. Bad news is that we’ve spend in excess of that figure last week. Good news is that I’ve under estimated our income. Despite that, we’re still going to have overspent. The main area of overspend is on the mortgage from savings – we’ve ploughed 13,210 this year into the mortgage, 40-odd percent of our income for the year.

Worried? Not really. As savings rates are quite literally going through the floor, a little bit of “investing” in the mortgage is helping in reducing the interest charged and I’m perhaps getting a better (or soon will) mortgage rate than I may be able to with a variable rate savings product.

Off to do some more receipts... Let's hope we don't have a repeat of the gallygirl thread here

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1187259&page=6

Post 108 onwards, in case you missed it...

Financial Bliss.

StuartGMC

FB
Your dedication to MS Money is impressive; personally I'm happy with the spreadsheet and just a few "updates" but accept that you should get more from mining your data....

House price falls - as you say, not an issue unless selling... it has no bearing on the debt you need to clear, and to secure the roof over family.

Economy, looking poor I agree. Interest rate reductions will help some of us, until we are MF then we'll moan like anything!

Your net income contribution against the mortgage is massive, well done. If we had contributed such an amount we would be close to MF now, but have a slightly different balance to you on the allocation of funds. We're running at 16.72% net income to mortgage with 26.56% towards savings (both S&S ISAs and offset saving). Whilst Oct to Nov savings increased £900, presently not hitting the saving amount for this month (who will?) but should recover in Jan-Mar period. Very much a focus for me, to ensure trend line (regression) on the savings graph retains or steepens the slope vs. time.... we 'll just have to see if this is the case.

Good to hear Christmas is all in hand for the kids; we find our daughter is (at 11 now) quite savy about money and has full awareness of advertisers and what they are after... I do also need to give her about £100 as she has not used any of her mobile phone top ups of £10 per month allowance since March. This will probably be very different once she changes schools in Sept 2009 and all that comes next :eek:

Clear those receipts FB!

financialbliss

Bit of good news. The mortgage payment and overpayment cleared today.

Mortgage today is: 59,283.31

I’ve done a bit of housekeeping on post #1:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=6522393&postcount=1

Decided it may be of interest to try and keep a few things together, as this diary is getting so large I’m beginning to loose things, so I’ve put links to my “Aims…” so that they can all be kept together.

Also, anyone following this diary in it’s early days may remember that I was paying off a car loan in 2007, hence I only really started my challenge in January 2008 despite starting this diary in October 2007. So, with January 2008 to December 2012 being a nice round 5 years or 60 months, I’ve added a months elapsed and a months remaining. With the December payments taken, 12/60 months have elapsed or 20%.

Starting from January 2009, I’ve estimated that I need to pay 1,363.98 per month to be mortgage free by 12/12/12. I’m going to attempt to commit to 1,200 a month from January 2009. This gives a mortgage free date of August 2013.

I’ve also updated my signature and the two graphs on page #1

Financial Bliss.

setmefree2

financialbliss wrote: »

Bit of good news. The mortgage payment and overpayment cleared today.

Mortgage today is: 59,283.31

I’ve done a bit of housekeeping on post #1:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=6522393&postcount=1

Decided it may be of interest to try and keep a few things together, as this diary is getting so large I’m beginning to loose things, so I’ve put links to my “Aims…” so that they can all be kept together.

Also, anyone following this diary in it’s early days may remember that I was paying off a car loan in 2007, hence I only really started my challenge in January 2008 despite starting this diary in October 2007. So, with January 2008 to December 2012 being a nice round 5 years or 60 months, I’ve added a months elapsed and a months remaining. With the December payments taken, 12/60 months have elapsed or 20%.

Starting from January 2009, I’ve estimated that I need to pay 1,363.98 per month to be mortgage free by 12/12/12. I’m going to attempt to commit to 1,200 a month from January 2009. This gives a mortgage free date of August 2013.

I’ve also updated my signature and the two graphs on page #1

Financial Bliss.

Sub £60K - what a milestone:T:T

StuartGMC

FB
Great progress, well done to you and the family.
Noting your reassessment for the next year, that's still a high target, but sensible to have made it realistic. Good luck in hitting £49.9k soon!