FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

setmefree2

financialbliss

Mortgage. My January overpayment cleared on Saturday, but the monthly payment took until today to clear. Just updated signature – mortgage today now stands at 58,338. :j

Also updated the graphs and the months elapsed on post #1. Does anyone ever flip back to post #1? – if not, I’m now 13 months in to a 60 month challenge, with 47 months remaining. Currently attempting to commit 1,200 a month to the mortgage, although to guarantee being mortgage free in December 2012, I need to commit 1,360.44 each month to the mortgage!

This 1,360.44 has actually gone down slightly from previous months due to base rate reductions - I'm assuming I drop onto a SVR after the fix.

I’ve also updated the two graphs on page 1. This year should see mortgage interest in the region of 2,525, but it’s a tiny 38.42 as of today.

House price index. You may recall that I use the purchase price of our home and month by month apply the house price index to the previous value. As the site I use has today published the December 2008 Halifax house price index, I can report the final 2008 value of our home:

A sobering 232,022 compared to a December 2007 figure of 286,046 – a massive 57,643 drop in the value over 2008 – about a 4,803 drop every month in 2008.

Note that this is the only year where I’ve seen a net fall – I suspect we’re not at the bottom of the market either, so there’s a real possibility that the house value will drop below the purchase price of 200k.

Base rate. Rate setting results due out at midday on Thursday 8th January. I’m no economist, but I suspect it’s going to be one of either wait and see or a further 0.25% cut in rates, basically as there’s not that much room to cut rates further when they’re already at 2%.

Regular savers. The Abbey regular saver finally got off the starting blocks this month – I’m feeding this with 250.00 a month. Now have a commitment of 1,200 a month to regular savers and NatWest e-Savings – this is out of existing savings being moved around. Mainly feeding from the Nationwide e-Savings, now at the poor rate of 1.95% to better accounts at 6%, 7.75% and 10%

Financial Bliss.

Lynn11

You are certainly an expert when it comes to figures and moving money about it. Good luck on your goal and I love and will continue to read your journey to mortgage free.

SmlSave

Happy New Year! (bit belated)

StuartGMC

Lynn11 wrote: »

You are certainly an expert when it comes to figures and moving money about it.

FB,
Take care with comments like this, HMRC may be interested in your "expertise" in moving money around accounts

Seriously though, well done and best wishes with such a significant target per month. My efforts pale in contrast and if I had been able to do more in years past maybe we'd have cleared in 10yrs not the 15yrs it looks likely to be....

financialbliss

Stuart, Lynn,

The monthly saver rates are not really that good – just headline grabbing really, but this isn’t a problem if you understand the product.

Take the 10% account – Halifax regular saver. Feeding this at £500 a month, totals of 500 in month one, 1,000 in month two, 1,500 etc. Average balance over 12 months is 3250 and 10% of that is interest of 325, or about 5 and a bit % on a full 6k of savings, ie very roughly half the headline 10% rate.

Compare Halifax regular saver with 6k in, say e-Savings @ 1.95% which only gives 117 a year in interest and I’m better off using regular savers.

Note that I’m trying to play the savings market to get the best rates and this is starting to get increasingly difficult to get rates to better my 4.79% mortgage rate. Another key point is that I’m not growing savings – just re-circulating them.

Still, I must be putting out the impression that I know what I’m doing :rotfl:

If you can come up with something better, do say and I’ll buy you a virtual beer :beer:

FB.

StuartGMC

FB
I understand that you have a reserve of savings at a level which meets your emergency needs and that any "extra" is being taken into the mortgage. So as you note, there is no real room to improve significantly.

If you were looking over a 5-7yr period you might have thought about risking some monies in 2009 to buy into the stockmarkets via Stocks & Shares ISAs (equities if you have the time to research and monitor them, funds (OEIC/Unit Trusts) if you have limited time like me) as they should be good to buy now and in some years will grow again. I do recall you have been burnt though with previous shares! However, yuor timeline I think precludes this unless you run with a lower accessible savings budget working on getting growth later?

We'll face this in real ernest once mortgage-free as we will then be racking up savings at a rate which will have me focusing on trying to improve the returns. Meanwhile, as you know, we're offset and overpaying, plus some monies to S&S ISA and increasing savings.

In summary, I think you are not able to do much more than the (very good) present position in your overall portfolio of mortgage debt and available funds.

financialbliss

Each year, normally about this time, ie January sales, we “treat” the house to a Christmas / January sale present. This can vary wildly from year to year.

This year, our cordless home phones were on their last legs – batteries not retaining their charge. We costed replacement (specialist) batteries, and in the end decided on some new handsets as the batteries were hard to source at a decent price – we needed four sets. We ordered a set of Panasonic KXTG8323 Colour DECT Trio With Answer Machine - 3 handsets, which arrived yesterday.

We got them from Amazon @ 72.99 – they’re on sale elsewhere, eg Argos at 107.69, so I think we did ok to get them at that price.

By coincidence, our telephone provider – Talk Talk also called us yesterday informing us we’re out of contract and subject to month by month price variations exposing us to potential increases.

We pay 19.49 a month which includes line rental at 10.50, any time calls at 8.99 and the broadband is “free”. Just signed up for a further 18 month contract at 19.49 – the equivalent price as a new customer is 20.49 – 1.50 a month more expensive. As a goodwill gesture, we’re getting half price calls for the next two months for staying with Talk Talk. As we’re not in a cable area, this still represents the best value package for us, as far as I know.

Note: I’ve just spotted this evening that due to December VAT reductions, Talk Talk are passing on the reductions, but you have to register for the reduction, which is to be paid around the April time. See here http://www.talktalk.co.uk/vat

Finally, our snazzy new home handsets can vet calls against the stored phone book details and accept/reject them. Trouble is that this needs Caller Display enabling by your telephone provider.

Talk Talk change 1.50 a month – that’s 18.00 a year :eek:, which I think is a little on the steep side, simply for presenting the telephone number as the call comes in.

Haven’t yet decided if we should take up Caller Display…

Financial Bliss.

Kaz2904

I read with interest Stuarts comments and was thinking NO NOOOOOOOOO!

We also seem to end up uying something fairly expensive housewise in the January sale period. This year (so far) we've not because we bought the carpet and underlay and table plus plaster paint etc recently which dented our savings significantly (see sig!). However, I will admit to having spent £93.95 on the French connection website on clothes. I've also spent at least £30 on ebay on myself and DD on clothes. I was wildly egged on by SiL to buy the FC clothes. I then thought about how much I have spent on clothes this year. £20ish on undies. £90 on 2 pairs of shoes. Nowt on clothes.
Usually I would think that the shoes were costly enough but having checked out my wardrobe an seen that the best looking stuff in there is years old FCUK stuff and knowing that my boots will last aaaaaaagggggeeeees, I caved.

Oh and I bought a new battery for my car today at a cost of £65. Guaranteed for 3 years.
None of this is info you are interested in!!!!!!!! TTFN, Kaz.

financialbliss

Kaz2904 wrote: »

I read with interest Stuarts comments and was thinking NO NOOOOOOOOO!

Ha, one of aims for 2009 could have been - "Don't loose any money via shares in 2009" and I'd get a tick in the box for that one - as I've got no shares left :rotfl:

Kaz2904 wrote: »

...I then thought about how much I have spent on clothes this year.

None of this is info you are interested in!!!!!!!! TTFN, Kaz.

On the contrary - with the mention of clothes, I can slip in that the new washing machine is getting delivered this Friday.
No longer need to keep turning the smalls inside out. :eek: Hope setmefree2 doesn't see this post - no idea what she'd post as one of her picture paints a thousand words graphical posts ! :rotfl:

FB.