Hurrah, my MFW quest has started

abouttimetoo

A couple of post ago I mentioned the car was back in for repairs so that was another spend £40 grrr.

I've still not found out how long extra my tenant is staying for so I must get round to chasing the agent as it will be good to know how long that is guaranteed for. On that note I've also managed to repay 'me' some money owed from my BTL account. This was a combination of either paying the money when it was briefly empty but the bulk of it was some redecorating and insurance costs. It still owes me £728.14 but that should soon be repaid.

I did an on-line christmas gift today and used TCB so that with a nice 13% cashback.

I've also found some dollars in the house that I put away 'safely' 2 months ago until I got round to paying them back in, I put them away so safely that I forgot where they were anyway, I've now found them so will get them ($240) paid back into my account.

I also pay into a Christmas savings fund and got £240 back this month - every year I forget it's coming so it's always a nice suprise!

I've got £8k ish on stooze which needs to be paid back at the end of March, I don't think I'm going to manage it so will move some onto another card. When it's all repaid I can beef up my mortgage OP's and I'm aiming for OP's of £1000pm and this will help me get back on track with the MFiT T2 challenge as I'm currently in the red zone.

Right, now off to update my siggy with my extra OP and hopefully catch-up on some of the other threads. Have a fab Christmas all

abouttimetoo

abouttimetoo wrote: »

Well I've signed up for a Br Gas maintenance cover policy this morning. It's £12 a month and covers boiler, central heating controls, radiators and an annual boiler check. I've opted to pay a £50 fee/excess on any repairs required as without it it would have been £17 a month and I figured that if I could go 10 months without a callout it would pay for itself.

Now, why have I taken the cover and increased my monthly outgoings when I'm trying to reduce them. My boiler is only two years old and doesn't get much use with me working away, however, there I have had some problems in the past which the builder has dealt with and my neighbours have had many more problems, some of which are still ongoing 2 years after we all moved in. I never would normally dream of covering such a new boiler however, in view of history and other neighbours I think I'm doing the right thing:rolleyes:

I posted the above 11/2/2009 and in the last couple of months have had to have a couple of call outs thereby paying 2x£50 callout fees. As I have been paying £12pm (the cheaper plan) for 22 months that means I have saved 22x5=£110 but then spent £100 in call outs so I'm 'in pocket' by the massive sum of £10. I think the last couple of call outs has spooked me so I'm thinking of increasing my cover to the £17pm plan. Obvioulsy I don't particularly want to increase my outgoings but if I even have another one this year then it will become false economy to have the cheaper plan?

Hmm, decisions, decisions?

abouttimetoo

I can't make an OP until 20th of the month and I'm missing my fix

My amex card cashback is ticking along nicely and I'm now up to £130. I've also made a couple of small purchases via topcashback and recommended a friend so that will be an additional £2.50 when she first uses it. I've also done another friend recommendation for a separate thing which means I will get £50 and they will get £25 so quite pleased with that although on the negative side I've missed two previous ones of these so that's a £100 I could have had.

I can't wait to get my annual mortgage statement and see all those lovely numbers going down.

My BTL account has also repaid me another £293.51 today so that's good!

I've been absolutely rubbish at the planned saving so think that I will be rescheduling approx 6k of my stooze come March and i'm really annoyed with myself about it!

The £750 of shares I bought a few months ago are worth a few pennies more :o, some of them have dropped and some of them have increased but on balance I'm still happy witht the purchases and their prospects.

I hope to post some 2010 mortgage numbers in the next couple of days

Ok, I think that is enough of the random ramblings for now :rotfl:

setmefree2

Happy New Year abouttimetoo! Keep up the good work in 2011! :money:

abouttimetoo

Hi all

Well the good news is that I made an OP of £500 and I got my annual mortgage statement today, I don't suppose it will show many suprises but it's still lovely to see it in black and white isn't it

The not so good news is that I've needed two osteopath treatments this week so that was £60 of unexpected costs.

I've also paid £900 of the stooze money this week, the full balance is not due until the end of Mach and it's not very MSE to pay some back early but I wanted to do it so I wasn't tempted to use it for something else. I'm not going to pay it off in full in March (don't have the full balance to hand) so will definately have to re-schedule some

I've also had a small £150 dabble in an aim share I had my eye on (double )

Right, now off to look at lovely mortgage statement

abouttimetoo

Well, I did change my Br Gas homecare contract to the one with no call out charges and thank goodness I did as no sooner had I done it than I had another problem - the part that was fixed a couple of weeks ago totally packed up and needed a new one so as I'd changed the contract I didn't pay the £50. That said my monthly contract as now gone up to £19 ish a month but I feel safer having it.

My tenant is staying until the end of May so that's good (been in since June last year). The rent came in early this month so I've paid myself a bit more back so now the BTL account only owes me £289 and I'll repay that back to myself out of next months rent

abouttimetoo

I've just been reviewing the AIM shares I've been dabbling with, I normally take a snapshot every Friday of how they've been doing but the intention was to keep them for about a year - I bought them in October though I did sucumb to one more small dabble last month.

I invested £1750 in total but £1000 of that is mine and £750 is my mothers. As we speak they are running at a loss of £258 but a couple of weeks ago they were about the same amount in profit; I only note the figures above for interest as I still belive the situation will be different in 6 months time.

I used the money to buy shares in 8 different companies so as you can see not great sums of money invested and mostly of the penny type. I've not dabbled in AIM before and I'm finding it really interesting following them and I'm in complete awe of the one who day trade and seem to do it very well. If I had the knowhow - not to mention the courage - I'd do it too as there looks to be great opportunties if you trade on the swings e.g. one of the shares that I'd bought for 1p went to 3.3p though now back down to 1.81p, I only bought £200 of them but as you can see if i'd timed it right then it would have been a nice 200% profit. There may come a time when I attempt a couple of trades like that but I can see it's not for the feint hearted

abouttimetoo

Hi all

Just a few MFW updates; I've just requested a Topcashback payout of £29.12, it's mainly from an annual travel policy I took out last year and a couple of small ebay second hand book purchases.

I would normally be making my OP of £500 this Friday but I've just sent £250 via internet banking (burning a hole in my pocket/account:o) and I'll send the other £250 on Friday.

I got my gas and electricity bills in last week, £187.80 and £36.18 respectively. The gas is far higher than it would normally be for that quarter but you all know what the weather was like and being warm is something I won't compromise on. I will need to pay the gas bill in full as due to Br Gas problems previously mentioned here I don't have a monthly direct debit and TBH I prefer paying it in one go like this although I do have a monthly dd for the electric.

My spending is going well this month apart although I have just splurged on a facial and massage voucher but I bought them via Groupon so heavily discounted and we all deserve a treat don't we. I've not had them yet so looking forward to them.

The main cloud on my horizon is the pesky stooze. As we speak I owe £7,750 and it needs to be repaid by 25/3. I think now that I will be re-scheduling a max of £5k, naughty, naughty Abouttimetoo!

On nicer topic, I should be hearing about my payrise in the next couple of weeks, I'm expecting it to be around 2% so whilst not massive it's always nice to get something and I know there are plenty out there who won't get that.

Even better is I'm expecting a bonus of approx £2k and a further 2k in shares but the shares will be on a phased basis of 2-4 years, again I should hear the precise details in the next couple of weeks.

I've got no trips away (city break type things) planned yet but would like to have taken one by June so I need to start and look for offers, I'm thinking of Paris, has any of you been, would you recommend it?

Regards
ATT

abouttimetoo

Hi all, well it seems ages since I updated my diary but I have done a few update on the MFiT T2 thread


I'm going to keep this post to positive things but I need to do a separate one about less postive things... So

• American Express cashback balance currently stands at £150.25
• two Topcashback credits received £29.12 & £29.68
• £500 OP made this month
• £7044.37 Stooze repaid (more of that in my next post!)
• £2000 (before tax) bonus paid in this months salary
• a further £2862 bonus to be paid in Shares later this year
• a new milestone reached with o/s mortage balance, it now starts with a £159k rather than a £160k+
• still waiting to hear about payrise but shouldn't be too long now

abouttimetoo

Ok, so the above post was the positive things but it's certainly not all sunny in my world at the mo. I'm one of the people caught up in the HMRC problems whereby they have discovered I have underpaid my tax going back to 2008. This means that I have received a demand for £4862 relating to 08/09 & 09/10. I keep very little in savings as it all goes to the mortgage. Apparently I can arrange an interest free loan with them (don't know how long over) or pay them in full. I can't afford to do the latter in one go and although part of me things why should they have all the money in one go after the complete mess that has been made but to be honest I just want them off my back so I think I'm going to borrow from my parents (they've very kindly offered) and then pay them back instead of HMRC.

In addition to the amount above I owe a further £1819 for 10/11 and this means I've got a new tax code and it's being deducted from my salary over 12 months.

Finally, they managed to underestimate again for 11/12 but I managed to spot this in time so another tax code is being issued ot me or I would have ended up owing them again next year.

Although I reported above that I have repaid the stooze of £7044.37 I had to re-jig £5k of it but again it is on 0% but with a £200 handling fee.

All in all i want to wait to see what my new salary will be taking in account any payrise will be and the new tax code; once I know this I can then work out more accurately how long I will be repaying stooze and parents over and what impact if any this will have on my OP's.

Hope you are all well

Regards
ATT