Learning to walk before I run

edinburgher

@LadyWithAPlan - My overdue work did have deadlines but I think that there is a decided lack of tightness due to the workload of the team, which is currently unreasonable and sees us all floundering from time to time

• £43.45 paid off the CC, plodding away and looking forward to getting paid tomorrow
• £4.70 for Prolific surveys
• 50p for a YG survey
  

LadyWithAPlan

Ah.... thats not good for morale!
Well done on getting that CC down

edinburgher

Got myself back into more of a productive mindset and logged 1.5 hours of overtime this evening creating some slides for a training session this week 

edinburgher

I have been paid this morning and am creeping closer to a positive balance - currently sitting at -£630 all things considered. I'm pleased with that as this includes budget lines that won't be required for months yet Looking forward to being back in the black for the first time in about a year.

£43.44 paid off CC.

edinburgher

I got more accomplished at work yesterday than I have done for a good while, although I'm probably still not up to speed. Sent off one report for review, drafted a couple of overdue items (still waiting on feedback from teams), led a 40-minute training session and got a group of new staff started off with some assistance that they are offering us in terms of clearing a backlog. Such a pleasure to interact with a group of fresh faces who aren't jaded yet

Finances for yesterday:

• An hour of overtime reviewing reports (falls inbetween normal time and time and a third, so probably about £28.50?)
• Earned £4.14 on Prolific and withdrew £7.14 to my personal spends account. I have a nice wee balance of roughly £14 waiting for approval

Finances for today:

• £44.03 paid off CC. I'm trying to pay off 1% of the balance each day + a few £ from my personal spends account + any cashback or savings interest that I receive on top of this. While it's the 1% payments that are doing the heavy lifting, I the Tilly Tidies most, as they feel more personal and shift the daily payment down by a few pence each day
• Moved a tiny savings account that I have for buying gifts for Mrs E (Valentine's, Mother's Day, Anniversary, Birthday and Christmas) to a "boosted" Z0p@ savings account as the interest rate is currently 2.91% vs 2.7% in Ch@se)
  
• Moved another £2,500 of general monies to Z0p@, split between the 7-day locked in "boosted" account and the regular account for an average of roughly 2.88% interest. Savings rates remain underwhelming, looking forward to using FD 7% RS when my account switches next week
  

Suffolk_lass

Happy New Year to you (far too late, but health dramas in this household)!

In your considerations of OP'ing your mortgage, we rounded our monthly payment up to the next £50, asked the BS not to reduce it when interest rates fell (we were on a tracker), and calculated the interest we were paying, aiming to reduce this over time - but the latter was only after paying off loans and credit cards that were not 0%.

Yours must seem daunting at £213k over 18 years - ours was £230k with interest rates starting at 3.75% +0.49% in 2003 when I remortgaged without changing the end date. I think it was 18 years and some months from memory. Interest increased to 5.75% (6.24% for us) in July 2007.  It was an unspectacular journey and we used both DH's DC TFLS and then finally paid it off using some of DH's TFLS from his DB Teacher's pension after 15 years and 10 months from when I started interfering with it. I don't want anyone to think we smashed it but I did persevere. I think my hatred of paying interest and more latterly, devoting the extra money as other outgoings disappeared, made the biggest differences but so did the small things as they kept nibbling away.

Unlike you, I saved all my Tilly Tidy savings and paid off £1000 at a time because then I knew they recalculated the interest and wrote to me (an old-fashioned BS without the auto-recalculation that any small OP's make. I also asked them to treat any OP as a capital OP, not advance interest payments, which was a thing, back in 2004. Providing your provider is recalculating each time, more smaller ones would have saved more.

In terms of a medium term target, I think aiming to OP the interest proportion of your monthly payment would be a good thing for you to aim for, so your capital repayments each month are wholly or nearly reducing the debt upon which the interest is calculated - I suggest this does become mildly obsessive though, if you are like me!

Also like you I am trying to reduce my weight (again) and while covid positive, I have seen the extra from December (including our trip to NL) disappear with no effort on my part. I want to gradually lose two additional stone, as it will move me firmly into the midst of the next weight category and permanently away from the prospect of obesity

edinburgher

Hello @Suffolk_lass - always lovely to see you dropping in

Yes, it is quite daunting Neither of my DB pensions feature a lump sum unless I am willing to give up income, which I am not, suspect taking one or both of them early will cost me more than enough without the crappy commutation rates offered to take a lump sum! I also think it unlikely that I will be able to use a lump sum from my DC pension, as I will retire c. 2 years before Mrs E. It currently stands at about £65,000, although I would expect this to be IRO £100k+ by the time I retire. Mrs E's DC pension, on the other hand, may be ripe for a lump sum. It's currently worth less (£55,000 or so) but should grow considerably by then due to the fact that 26% of her wages are paid into it.

Re. saving Tilly Tidies, I'm starting to wonder if an offset mortgage might work quite well for us, I'd probably view the chance to offset as having a giant savings account with an effective return of whatever the mortgage rate is, would probably be quite fun to take on that challenge

Much to my discredit, I have no idea how I'd calculate the interest proportion of my current monthly payment - Barcl@ys don't provide much data and it's not something I've really considered before as an overly relaxed MFW. Any tips?

It sounds like you are doing fantastic with the weight loss. I have got as far as having porridge for breakfast most days of the week, snacking less during the day and realising that the batteries in our scale are flat!

Finances yesterday

• Overtime for an hour (£32.50)
• Made 84p on Prolific, withdrew £8.58 to my personal spends account

Finances today

• Made £1.51 on Prolific
• £44.04 paid off CC (will pass into the £2,xxx tomorrow)
  

themadvix

Can you not view a mortgage statement online Ed? Our provider (Santander) shows the interest being added monthly as a separate transaction.

Re weight loss - I find that having breakfast (also porridge) as late as possible (I've just had mine now) really helps with the snacking - and the fasting element is supposed to be good for you too. I'm not ready to cut a meal out, as I love my porridge, but if I eat fewer calories because of less of a need to snack and have a shorter window for eating, I'm hoping that will help. And some exercise, but the weather really needs to improve for that to be noticeable!

edinburgher

@themadvix - Our provider literally just shows "payment due" next to the monthly payments and any OPs. There's no visibility of interest applied etc. beyond the total due changing. I guess I'd need a spreadsheet to show this, does the Locoblade one still exist/work?

themadvix

I have one I can send you - think it's based on Locoblade's one (Mr MV may have tinkered or found another though).