Hurrah, my MFW quest has started

abouttimetoo

abouttimetoo wrote: »

So, so far this month I've made total OP's of £745.83 and I'm anticipating making another next week which I will round up of course:D

My car insurance is due next week and I've decided to pay for it all in one go rather than monthly as the interest I would have incurred was a bit more than I was prepared to pay. This means that I won't be making the extra OP this month that I had anticpated but I'm going to send the £4.17 to round it up to £750 this month:rotfl:

My contents insurance is also due next month and my renewal figure states that there will be no increase at all:T I've shopped around and I'm going to stay with my current insurers and as they don't charge any interest for monthly installments I'll go with paying them monthly.

Also, my gas situation is still not sorted:eek: I'm now going to contact the Ombudsman as BG has let me down far too many times now and it's getting ridiculous. Besides the fact that I've been paying for someone elses gas for two years I haven't had a bill since March and it means that I can't shop around for potential new suppliers as I've no idea what my own usuage is grrrr.

One other thing that is not resolved is some of my shares - I've mentioned it on an earlier post but basically I own some shares that the registrar is not showing on my on-line holding - so far they are not replying to letters or phone calls; I get soooooo mad at the time we customers are expected to waste trying to resolve things on behalf of companies who seem unable to get things right in the first place.

Oops, this post is getting a bit long now, rant over

setmefree2

abouttimetoo wrote: »

however, I've smashed my original OP target of £2700 in 2008 so I'm still really pleased:T

Well done

StuartGMC

ABTT
Looking very good on the OP this month and this year; well done on the achievements.

abouttimetoo

Thanks SMF2 and Stuart, yes, I'm pleased with my OP's this year:j

I've just spent the last 2 hours listing 17 books on Ebay - phew! They are doing a free listing weekend and although I've said before that I don't normally part with my [STRIKE]babies [/STRIKE] errm, I means books I do have some that I won't read again as I've not particularly enjoyed them first time round. It just takes so long to do and I suspect made worse by other people taking advantage of the weekend off so slowing down the site.

On the MFW front I've written a letter to my PEP provider (yes I know they don't do them anymore but I've had this for ever and never merged the hodings with my S&S ISA as I've never been able to see any advantage) to withdraw £350 equity cash - when PEP's ceased they stopped using the dividend money to re-invest in shares so the cash just goes in and I withdraw it every now and again and as I've bought so many shares in the last couple of months I'm going to keep the cash this time:rolleyes:

abouttimetoo

Hi all[

I can't make my overpayment until to-morrow but I've been chomping at the bit to update my diary so thought I'd do a few updates before my 'proper' post to-morrow.

I see on the 11th April I had worked my daily interest as

• £14.21 on the repayment part
• £14.46 on the interest only part making a total of
• £28.67 (although at it's highest before I started OP’ing it was £29.30).

I'm expecting the daily interest for this month to be £7.48 (Repayment) and £7.51 (IO) and in January when my rate drops to 2% :j I think it will be £4.99 and £5.02 making a total of £10.01 - woohoo!

So far, since April, I’ve made OP’s of £4095.83 and I’m going to round this up to £4900 to-morrow. This was against and initial target of £2700 and then a stretch target of £5900. The reason that I’ve fallen short is that I’ve a confession to make.....

I’ve mentioned a few times that I thought I might have to change the car or pay a few hundred pounds in repairs for my old runaround. I only do c.2000 miles year so I had to think long and hard about spending money changing the car that could perhaps come off the mortgage, versus changing the car now when there are some really good deals to be had. To cut a long story short I suddenly spotted a second hand car I liked on a forecourt and saw a couple of weeks later it had been reduced by £1000 so I went in to the garage and they came down a further £700 (including my car as part ex which was probably only worth 50 pence lol.) so I’ve now changed the car and I’m really pleased, I’ve no regrets and driving a ‘better’ car has made me realise how bad my old car had become as you just get used to their problems and idiosyncrasies don’t you. Oh, one last confession, I also used some of my stoozed money to pay for the car but more of that later.[/font]


Gas
This is still not sorted out and I have now involved the Ombudsman and as yet there is no end in sight. I’ve not had a bill since May now (I’ve been paying a neighbours bill so they’ve suspended all bills until it is sorted out) but this means that I’ve no idea what my own usage has been EVER so don’t know what my refund will be and can’t shop around for alternative suppliers until it’s resolved.

Shares
My share situation is also still not resolved and the complaints department is still trying to sort it out. I first posted about this approx August time and it's so annoying that it’s still outstanding.

PEP
Although I said at the end of November that I was expecting £350 from my old PEP with regard to cash equity I only got around to doing it this week so it should be in my account in a few days, not very MSE I know as it's not earning any interest where it is

BTL
I don't often mention this and don't (yet!) count it as part of my MFW details, however, from January the monthly mortgage payment for this will drop by £110. Although I'd love to immediately start and overpay the BTL by this amount I'm concerned my reserves for this account are on the low side therefore, I'm going to save this for approx 6 months and then start and overpay by this amount (rate changes allowing). I really can't wait to start and make inroads into the BTL mortgage which is not large in the scheme of things but is always at the back of my mind...

S&S
Errm, what can I say apart from doing dire! Like many of you I'm in this for the long term so don't worry about it on a day to day basis but I'll be pleased when things start to pick up a bit. I've also signed up to a £250 per month, 3 years employee sharesave scheme.

Christmas[/font]
Everything is bought and paid for, just a bit of wrapping to do.

Holiday March 09
All paid for apart from about £100, albeit this will be on departure from the hotel. I’ve also already got 275 euros left over from earlier trips this year so this is a good start on spending money; I know that the exchange rate for 125 of them was 1.29 and I think the remainder was approx 1.51 so I’m pleased about that in view of what the current exchange rate is.

Stoozing
In the end I stoozed £22,800 at 0%. £3600 of this is due to be repaid in February, £3600 in April and the remainder October next year. All in all on this front I will have broken even with a wee bit of interest earned. At the moment if asked would I do it again I would say probably not, it’s not been a great interest earner but what it did do was bring some ‘flexibility’ whereby I used some of this instead of my savings to buy some shares as well as changing the car

Sorry, bit of a long one folks, I hope you are still awake :rolleyes:

Best wishes to you all with your own MFW plans

SmlSave

I'm still awake :j Am in awe of your clear, concise update.

Have you an action plan for next year?

If I don't pop in before..have a good weekend!

abouttimetoo

Hi Smlsave, thanks for popping in :hello: (by the way, does Smlsave stand for smallsave, I've often wondered )

Glad you were still awake after my update, it got a bit longer than I'd intended lol. I've nearly decided on my action plan for next year and it's largely to do with
[*]paying more attention to where my 'spare' money goes....
[*]starting to make some inroads into the BTL
[*]getting a 0% credit card for purchases
[*]a good sort out for further ebay ventures although it will only be small things
With regard to getting a card for 0% purchases; I've recently realised that I've been missing a trick here. For a long time my work expenses went through my own credit card and I got points for the expenditure which I turned into approx £200 vouchers once a year which were really handy for Christmas shopping. However, the work rules have changed whereby they must now go through a corporate card so I only got £75 this year.

On average I think my own monthly average credit card expenditure is £300-£500 and I always pay it off in full but now I'd like to try for the 0% purchase card then put the money I would use to pay it off into a savings account and then pay it all off at the end of the term IUSWIM-it will hopefully generate a bit more interest for me.

My house is only two years old and I have everything I need so no anticipated expenditure there; I've now changed the car and that was the only big thing looming.

The one thing I would really love and I'm trying to convince myself of reasons why I MUST HAVE IT is a playstation 3 At the moment I can see second hand playstation 1's and 2's are selling well on e-bay so I'm thinking of selling mine (yes, I do have both, along with a sega mega drive and a myriad of others.....) to go towards the P3 but it's an awful lot of money to spend as the one I want is over £300

abouttimetoo

Sorry if the last post is a bit hard to read, I seem to be having problems with the formatting on MSE today and also I can't see the thanks buttons

I had intended to make a £804.17 OP today but I've miscalculated whereby I've had to only make an OP of £504.17 today and then I'll be able to do the other £300 next week.

I can't wait to get my mortgage statement - it normally comes out mid-January - wished I could see it on line like some of you do:rolleyes:

abouttimetoo

Gosh, I'm a busy poster today

I've just updated the OP part of my signature but I can't do it fully until I pay the further £300 next week and then I'll have to ring C&G and get a mortgage balance (which i love doing)

I've been trying to look for some positives on the S&S front and I think I've found one! see what you think - because the share price had plummeted so much I was able to put in twice as many shares into my ISA to use my £7600 entitlement than I would have done a few months ago - does that make sense or does it sound as if I've scraped the barrel for positives?:rolleyes:

I've made £10 on ebay recently selling a few old books abd I've also decided to keep a spending diary in January to see where the money goes, I know it's mostly on eating out so should be interesting!

abouttimetoo

Ok, think this will be my last one today, sorry all, I had some spare time and I'm having a bit of a brain download I think:rolleyes:

I've been thinking about ways to further reduce outgoings and increase income. On the increase income front; I know I've mentioned a few times my love of books but what I haven't mentioned is that I also collect books that are either already rare or ones that I think will be worth something in the future in a kind of 'try and spot the next Harry Potter' kind of way :rotfl:

I'll write more another time as I haven't got all the details to hand at the min but basically in the last 3 years I've gathered about 55 books and 10 book related items. Approx 90% are first edition/first impressions and signed. Again off the top of my head I've spent nearly £1000 in doing so but think they are probably worth a minumum of £3000, to the right buyers of course....

To be honest I wouldn't sell all of them and in some cases I've bought more than one with the intention of keeping one for myself, e.g. with a particular book which is increasing in value all the time (and the film rights have been bought with the first film due out next year) there were only 2500 books printed when the author first started out and I think I have 10 of those and most of them are signed.

I've recently had a flyer through the door from a large and respected local bookshop who do valuations so I think I will contact them and see if they can value my collection and maybe sell some of them. I'm by no means an expert and part of the fun has actually been in researching and finding the books but my big weakness is judging when is the right time to sell and what medium to use to sell them