Beginner's Questions-Now Shirlgirl's updates

shirlgirl2004

Hi Everyone

I've been ploughing through the threads here and it's raised some questions for me (as well as answering loads). As it stands today we owe about £57,300 on our mortgage with about 14 1/2 years to run. Our mortgage is with the Woolwich.

Some people talk of seeing their mortgage details on line. I'd love to do this. Does anyone know if I can do this with the Woolwich? I have a Barclays account. When Barlcays took over Woolwich they set up an online account so I can see the current account attached to our mortgage but it's empty because we don't use it! I don't know our interest rate all I know is it's a lifetime tracker.

Also how do other people budget? We've been used to spending willy nilly and never having to check what is in the account because of substantial savings. Most of this is now paid off our mortgage. We don't want to go too close to the wire and find ourselves going overdrawn but we don't want to leave spare money sat around doing nothing. Should I pay a monthly amount into a seperate (higher interest) account to pay for annual costs like car insurance etc?

They probably sound like really daft questions but I'm new to this.

Thanks

poppyoscar_3

Hi Shirlgirl,

I'm relatively new to this too, but what I have found is I need structure, so I have a fixed pot of money that overpays my mortgage - in my case it's any travel expenses I get, plus as the rates/payments drop, I pay the difference between new rate and the payment at its highest. Then I also have a mortgage pig, although as I don't use cash much, he gets pretty hungry!

I like the high interest account idea for insurance etc - might pinch that one myself, if you dont mind!!:o

My mortgage is with the Halifax and I can't track it online, but if your current account is on maybe you can? Ask next time you go in. Also if you can't find your interest rate online, check that too. Although if the Woolwich changed it's rate recently you should hav had a letter telling you what the new rate is and the new payment - I had one a couple of weeks ago from the Hali.

The main motivation for me is to look at mortgage overpayment calculators - it's great to see how much interest I'm ultimately not going to pay!!

Anyway - welcome and good luck!!

PO xx

sdooley

When you say 'current account attached to the mortgage' do you mean an offset current account - if so you should use this - putting your spare money in there (rather than overpaying the mortgage) will pay down your debt just as quickly but if you need access to the money you can withdraw it (although then it won't be reducing your mortgage any more).

shirlgirl2004

No it's not an offset it's literally just a current account but we have a large overdraft on it (something like 30% of the original mortgage) which we can use and it is charged at the same rate as our mortgage.

getmore4less

Woolwich/Barclays have a mortgage reserve account which they have converted to a Barclays current account.


If you have some saving you might want to consider moving to an offset arrangment the mortgage is low enought nat any fees to change regularly will make the cheapest deals comparable to a long term tracker/offset.

With this you get monthly mortgage statements and can see the mortgage balance on-line through the standard Barclays interface.

You can offset in joint accounts, accounts in individual names and cash ISA money as well.

Once setup you will probably never need to change again.


As for budgets I plan all my spends for the year ahead and know how much I will be saving/investing each year and track the spends to budget
I do make some adjustments mainly on holidays where we do tend to go over budget but there are some catagories which are nearly always under like the computer/boys toys one.

moominyak

Hiya Shirlgirl,

Thought I'd return the courtesy and look you up

I've been budgeting month by month since the year dot (firstly on paper and in Excel for the past few years), and although I'm not quite as skint as I used to be I can't stop (although now I'm glad I didn't as it really does make keeping track of things much easier).

I have my main current a/c, which I keep an I&E record month by month, so mainly salary going in and then mortgage, council tax etc going out. I move a set amount to a savings a/c every month which is my Accruals for the car tax, insurance, fuel bills, phone etc etc (so similar to what you do I think). I also reconcile this to the bank on an almost daily basis, as there's usually things I haven't budgeted for (like Ebay purchases!). Like getmore4less, I set this up almost annually - I tend to do it for the next 6 months or so to try and anticipate what's going to happen, so I just insert a few more columns and copy the figures along (assuming my salary and mortgage payments aren't going to change etc).

I keep track of the Accruals account on a separate tab in Excel, that one's broken down into columns by "car tax", "TV licence" etc with a specific part of the monthly lump sum being allocated to specific things, and the dates down the LH side. That way I can schedule in when things are due to be paid out to make sure I have enough in that column to meet it.

Any oddments left over after bills are paid get moved to yet another a/c (Mortgage Pig) and then thrown at the mortgage once there's a reasonable amount in there (say, £4.99! )

Yes, I am sad, I know . Still, keeps me off the streets...

Bet you wish you hadn't asked now.

StuartGMC

Shirlgirl
Welcome to the MFW. I use a spreadsheet to give details on monthly spend, plus annual items and the amount needed to be saved (eg for holiday, car replacement etc). Then dial in data from bank account and in our case credit card (we are offset so virtually everything is bought on the cc which is set online to deduct 5 days before scheduled payment date to be certain it clears). This contributes a healthy amount to the average current account balance.

In our case it also shows the effective mortgage rate through offsetting; presently it is pretty bad as it is 3.96% but should pull back to 2.5% later in the year.

Also, spreadsheet has inputs for petrol useage (need to average only over last 2months or so with price rises), clothing and shoes, groceries etc all of which feed real data to the outgoings sheet for budgeting.

It really helps to get things under control with a knowledge of spend, then you will find ways to improve.

I'll PM you.

Good luck

shirlgirl2004

I have, since I originally posted put together a very basic spreadsheet of Income & Expenditure. It's suprising how many regular DDs there are. I haven't actually started setting money aside for annual payments which I must do especially as car tax & insurance is due in November when I should be xmas shopping. (Sorry for mentioning it in July )

EssexHebridean

Hi ShirlGirl - welcome to life as a MFW!

For us our chosen method of budgeting is to set up as much as possible on Direct Debits - that way we can be certain that things get paid on time. We've currently increased our monthly mortgage payment by nearly 10% as a regular overpayment, whilst we try to clear a car-loan a full year ahead of time. Once that's done that overpayment figure will increase substantially we hope. We're fortunate in that our mortgage is with Northern Rock and at the moment (fixed rate deal runs for another 3 years yet) and they are happy for us to overpay as much as we like - well they would be really wouldnt they, their finances are worse than ours! Other than that, we have taken steps to reduce grocery spending to offset the effects of the current price rises, to reduce utility bills (by batch cooking, changing lightbulbs for low energy ones and making best use of our cheaper electric overnight for things like running the dishwasher, washing machine etc) to make things like credit-cards work for us by using cashback cards and paying off the full balance each month and also to topping up income where possible with cashback sites, Pigsback etc, and finally to maximise income from our savings by using an ISA to set aside the cash which will pay back the loan in February. On their own, all little things, but when they all work together it makes a big difference.

Good luck with it - I look forward to following your progress!

shirlgirl2004

We're lucky because we don't have any loans except the mortgage. We do pay everything we can by DD except those that charge extra for doing so.

Our food bill is huge (about £180 a week) but I have 2 small children and buy everything I can organically. I also have 2 adult sons so there's 6 people to buy for. We have taken some steps to reduce the food bill by dropping a level on adult yoghurts and only buying 1 bottle of Coke a week. These 2 things alone will save about £40 a month.

Our utility bills are high too. We pay £180 a month for gas and electricity but we still owe them money :eek: . In fact we had a new meter put in in February and since then they won't let me give them a reading because they keep saying it's too high. It isn't though . We do have low energy lightbulbs everywhere except in the bathrooms which would require a change of transformer or whatever the spotlight use.

We've stopped using our credit cards quite so much to help with budgeting but we might start using them again soon. We do have cashback cards so should aim to get them upto the max on cashback. They are set up to pay the full amount off each month so there isn't a worry there.

I do have an ISA and other saving schemes which pay more interest than we pay on the mortgage so we won't be cashing them in to pay the mortgage.

I started using Quidco at the end of last year and have earnt about £95 most of which has come of the mortgage.

The OH doesn't actively do much towards being MS but he has started making sandwiches for work so that's about £100 a month saved. He also earns all the money so I can't give him too much of a hard time:o .

My next aim is to start selling things that I have hanging around and don't use. Like about 6 pushchairs that I bought in my spendaholic days. I don't even use a pushchair for DD as I arry her in a sling everywhere .

Thanks for the ideas everyone.

EssexHebridean

If the utility company have fitted you with a new meter and are now claiming that it's reading can't possibly be right because it's too high, then I would suggest that they need to come and inspect it to make sure it's calibrated properly etc. Assuming that they discover that it is, then they need to accept the reading and adjust your bills accordingly. It's not helpful at all for them to simply refuse to take your readings, is it!

The use of cashback cards might not make that much difference, but my personal view is that if someone is prepared to pay you for using a credit card, then that can't ever be a bad thing! We use a Clubcard Plus for our tesco shopping but at the moment are using the Capital One card to pay instead of the CC+ while the Cap one card is still on 4% cashback. Once it goes back to 1% then we will swap back to paying on the CC+ as there will be no difference in the return and we may as well have the CC vouchers and have the option to use them for deals.