FinancialBliss: My mortgage free journey…

Kaz2904

I think we will be doing the same as you FB, our mortgage expires next June/July. We will owe around £34000 then so will drop onto svr unless rates are silly by then. If they don't spiral until 2012 then we should manage to plod along. If they start spiralling 2012 then I'll have to persuade DH to use savings to clear it (not an idea he likes) and maybe do a balance transfer of a small amount onto a 0% credit card.

tim_n

financialbliss - good luck! I took out my mortgage around six months before you started this blog - about 97k. So far I've made no overpayments but now they've reduced my payments I'm going to maintain them - it ought to knock about 8 years off my repayments mortgage!

StuartGMC

Kaz
Why not look at an offset option to include your current a/c, and if suitable Cash ISAs (they won't grow but then they will offset against mortgage) as your ready cash and savings will likely be a significant portion of what you owe and then you'll minimise impact of interest rate rises. We are paying an equivalent rate of about 0.34% at the moment via offset on a mortgage rate of 3.75%. In addition, the impact of a 1% increase in interest rate is reduced proportionately for offset.

It may be worth exploring in some detail and it will provide maximum flexibility (no ERC, flexible repayments and you will have some degree of additional facility above the amount you owe if necessary). It may be you need to have a £50k offset for minimum loan, then simply only call upon £34k.

financialbliss

Good news! We’ve booked a “holiday”.

We’ve just booked a camping pitch with Haven for four nights from 31st August to 3rd September.

Get all the usual Haven facilities such as indoor swimming pool and entertainment included in the price – the only difference this time is that we’re taking our tent instead of booking a caravan.

Going to be an interesting one as daughter hasn’t camped out overnight yet. Could have taken a basic pitch, but we’ve opted for a pitch with an electric hookup included.

Price? £20.00.
That’s not per night, that’s the total :eek:, ie £1.25 per person per night. Only two days earlier the price was £104 – I think we’ve just hit the start of out of season.

Where?
Filey, North Yorkshire – Blue Dolphin Haven complex.

Ok, not a full blown holiday, but should be a nice little break and cheap enough too.

Financial Bliss.

SmlSave

Wow, £20 for four nights is amazing!

Going to be an interesting one as daughter hasn’t camped out overnight yet

I'm sure she'll be fine, surely it'll be an adventure. I always loved camping with my family, although we were never 'posh' enough to have electric

financialbliss

SmlSave wrote: »

Wow, £20 for four nights is amazing!

I'm sure she'll be fine, surely it'll be an adventure. I always loved camping with my family, although we were never 'posh' enough to have electric

Hi Smlsave,

We've been keeping an eye on various other "holiday" options, but the park we wanted - Primrose Valley is already fully booked for August / September time, and spotted the £20 pitch at Blue Dolphin, which I do think is very good value.

A standard grass pitch was £14.00 for 4 nights, so we figured, what the hell, lets "splash out" and go electric for £20.00. We recently purchased an in-car DVD player - means we could use that to keep the kids entertained in the tent if the weather is terrible.

I agree - should be fun / adventure.

FB.

setmefree2

tim_n wrote: »

financialbliss - good luck! I took out my mortgage around six months before you started this blog - about 97k. So far I've made no overpayments but now they've reduced my payments I'm going to maintain them - it ought to knock about 8 years off my repayments mortgage!

well done with that :T

setmefree2

FB - camping holiday sounds great and fantastic value :D

chunky79

FB
Thats great value. We have been to that site in the past and the kids loved it. We are looking at Scarborough this year, the kids love it there, they are always asking to go for the day out!

As for camping i haven't done it since i was 15, we did it for years as a family and we loved every minute of it!

financialbliss

Ha, No sooner that we have a bit of luck with the cheap tent pitch – we get some unexpected expenditure for the car.

Got a nail in a rear tyre which had damaged the wall, so this morning we replaced both rear tyres – Dunlop Sport 205/55/R16 at a cost of £72 per tyre - £144 in total. Not a bad price in the end, as initial internet searches suggested I could be looking at around £107 per tyre!

Gone on the credit card and will need paying next month.

FB.