Hurrah, my MFW quest has started

abouttimetoo

Hi all

Well since my last post I got my £93 cheque back from Tesco credit card. On the downside I've had a small problem with my boiler which cost £80 to repair

I normally would make my OP to-morrow but I had enough in my account today to pay it so have done so - updating my siggy is my next task and then I'll do some posts to the MFiT and also the 2010 challenge.

My american express card arrived so I've just started to use it so I'm hopeful that I can reach the £2000 in the first three months to get the £100 cashback but it's not paid until the 1st anniversary. I must say I've had very impressive service from Amex and I also got a £4000 limit which was good and will certainly cover my monthly needs.

I think I'll be sending another £48 OP over the next month as this will make my total o/s balance drop a few pennies below £165k

abouttimetoo

Hi all

I've not posted for a while so thought it past time that I did an update

• Received £40 of vouchers from cashing in my Goldfish points before the changed the points scheme
• I've made this months OP early so as to have Septembers OP included in the MFi3 T2 challenge (signature updated to reflect OP only and I'll change it again on the 20th when my normal mortgage payment comes out
• Been using my amex card for as much as possible, I only get the 5% cashback for the first two months (capped at £100) so I'm frantically trying to spend £2000 on it in two months. SO far I've spent £900 but my work expenses haven't been as much as normal which is where the vast majority of my spend comes from
• Got new tenant in BTL for 6 months so that's ticking over nicely
• Savings building up by about £500 a month but that is to go towards the stooze payback and when that's done it will be extra money for OP's
• Checked my Topcashback account and in the last year will have earned £217.85, I've claimed £65.65 and the rest is still pending, why oh why did i not know about this sooner!

The only planned expenditure coming my way will be car tax, MOT and insurance which will be due at the end of November.

Hope you are all doing well with your plans

Regards
ATT

abouttimetoo

This month I'm planning to use this years ISA entitlement in full - it will be used via shares rather than cash though.

My brains in such a muddle about my shares, I just can't seem to decide whether to sell some or not, I would like to sell some but, with the intention of buying the same amount back but hopefully at a lower price, I'd like to do this off and on but as everyone knows this type of call isn't easy or we'd all be millionaires

As well as it being good sense putting more shares in my ISA it's also with a view to selling and re-buying within the ISA so that I'm not taxed on profits etc

I think I'll decide on a fixed amount of shares to play with as I want to keep the majority of them for a long term hold. It's Lloyds shares I'm talking about and I'm sick of seeing them go up and down and up and down; I've not been brave enough to take advantage of these swings but think I'm just about resolved to do it now. I think I might use 10,000 of them to play with, I'm thinking of putting a sell order on for around 77p and a buy order on for 73p, this would mean that for every penny they drop I would get £100 so a 4p drop would mean £400 (excluding dealing costs)

I keep a close eye on the shares and various bulleting boards and think that at the moment the two figures I've mentioned are entirely possible.

Does anyone have any views on Lloyds shares and what I'm planning?

abouttimetoo

Well, I'm still prevaricating about the shares so still haven't sold any and they seem to be pretty stable at the moment so I think I'll keep sitting on this one for a while.

I get paid on Monday and for some reason it doesn't feel very long since I was paid - odd it never feels like that does it.

My Amex balance is over £1000 so racking up that nice 5% is going well but I really want to amke that magical £2000 figure

abouttimetoo

Hi all

I've just done my favourite task of the month - updating my signature :j:j

Since I first took my mortgage out I've paid of £25, 768 although it looks a bit less on my siggy as I only count since I started to OP so I'm really pleased at breaking through the £25k barrier.

I've got a couple of days hols this week so need to get some jobs done in the house as well as sort the shares ISA as I've now got the forms to do this.

Spending on Amex card creeping up - just over £1300 today, their on-line statements are really good as you can see the cashback accruing alongside your balance.

I've also done something with my BTL mortgage today - I suddenly realised that one part of it expired this month - I extended it by 5 years as I really hope I'll have sold it within that time frame. Got ever such good service from C&G - lovely lady, did everything on the phone and all sorted from start of my request to it being agreed and completed within 25 minutes - certainly can't complain at that!

abouttimetoo

Oops, I've spent far too much money today... It wasn't unexpected though as several make-up type things all needed renewing and I'd got to the point where I had to buy new ones. On the plus side I have used £20 of Goldfish vouchers in boots and £20 M&S voucher in for frilly stuff

Also in Boots I got extra points for the amount I'd spent and took advantage of a buy two get the third one free and buy one get the next half price voucher. There was one product they had run out of stock for so I'll have to go back to get it once it comes in. It is £20 but I've got £14 on my Boots points card so that will fo 75% of the way towards it.

abouttimetoo

Hi all

After my fairly big shop in Boots I found I'd got something in the wrong size so I took it back only to find that it had since been reduced by £5 so I got the right size and a refund.

I've just checked my Amex account on line and can see my cashback is £72.05 so it's creeping up nicely towards the max allowed for this first period of time (£100) bit annoying as I had to make a £140 purchase yesterday but the shop didn't accept Amex and that would have been an extra £7 cashback. Hey ho, musn't complain as doing quite well with it really.

abouttimetoo

Where has the last month gone

I've made an OP of £500 this month and thats the only good news on the financial front this month! I've had an expensive month and the next couple of months will be quite heavy too:

• car repairs £120
• car tax due end of this month
• car insurance due Dec
• BTL landlords insurance due Dec
• Some Christmas shopping still to do but don't think that will cost too much

My big confession is that I've also spent £800 this month on myself, the vast majority of that was on a treat for myself :eek: I know it was naughty but i work hard and rarely do anything like that.

I've also just realised that I've made my payment to American express a day late so I'm just about to ring them to see if I can persuade them to let me off but as I've been with them less than 3 months I don't fancy my chances. The other thing I want to find out is if I've jeopordised (sp?) my cashback - I'm up to £103 now, although they cap it at £100 so I reached my target spending with it.

abouttimetoo

Hi all

Well, yet again I've been missing in action from this board for a mont, it's just all work, work, work!

Quite a bit to report although not all of it good. In my last post I said I'd spent £120 on car repairs, well since then it's been back in again with a repair bill of another £440 and as we speak it's back in the garage again so don't know how much that is going to cost.

I've now renewed both the BTL landlords insurance (£120.55) and the car insurance (£425) The car insurance did include break down cover and I did it via Topcash too so got £10.10 cashback, that's far less than I got last year when it was a very nice £60. After shopping around for renewal insurance I went back to the same company but I did it as a 'new' customer as the price was cheaper than my 'existing customer' renewal price which is very annoying and I also wouldn't have got the cashback.

I couldn't get any cashback on the BTL insurance but it's a company I'm happy with and I don't think it was too expensive anyway.

I also taxed the car last month so that was another £110

I'm going to do another post in a sec and that one will be on better news!

abouttimetoo

The better news then is

• my tenant originally signed on for 6 months which was due to expire next month but I heard last week that he is going to stay on, I'm just waiting for my agent to confirm for how long so it's good to know that income guaranteed there for a while
• I've had £58.17 paid out from Topcashback and have approximately another £45 pending
• I've made some ebay and M&S on-line purchases this week both via Topcashback
  • kicking myself as only just found out ebay is on TCB!
• Got a £25 refund from Vodafone for a service I've not used for 5 months - excellent customer service I thought
• Made several small penny share purchases to the total of £750 that I've got hopes for in the next couple of years

The big news this week is that I've now gone through the £25k paid off barrier on my mortgage this figure is from when I first started OP'ing and the total paid off since I took the mortgage is actually so £27,404 so great milestones for me so I'm really pleased.

I'm behind in general on my OP targets for this year but with one thing and another I'm not doing too badly

Hope you are all doing well