Beginner's Questions-Now Shirlgirl's updates

shirlgirl2004

Really should look at getting a Tesco CC as we spend so much there a month.

We've had a really good month. We've paid off £2,185 plus our standard overpayment of about £500 this month. It makes we wonder what the hell we were doing with £2,000 a month because we never used to have money left at the end of the month.

shirlgirl2004

Someone recommended me a new OP calculator, anyway whilst looking at it I realised that we're paying approx £225 in interest each month so of the DD mortgage payment of £1,000 we pay £750 comes off the debt :j . It's
looking like we may well be MF by next year, possibly even by April (absolute earliest) next year which would be great.

We've made the decision that we're going to sell my car and put £4,600 approx to the mortgage. I'm also trying to persuade the OH to sell his too which would be another £7k to put towards the mortgage. He only really uses it to go to work and he may lose his free parking space soon so fingers crossed he'll agree.

zekepes

WOW! You are really going for it Shirlgirl! :T

We should really get rid of one of our cars (I refer to it as drive bling) as DH only drives it occasionally as he is based from home and when he goes anywhere on business he usually takes the train/flys and as a family we always take my smaller car for journey less than 30 mins (most of them!). I know we won't though, so I am impressed!

shirlgirl2004

Oh sorry now I feel bad. I won't be without a car. I'm planning on leasing one. I can get one on a 3 year contract for £200 a month. Given the rate of depreciation it's well worth it. My current car is nearly 7 years old and cost £26,500 new and is now worth about £5,000 so it has cost me £3,000 a year in depreciation alone and a contract car won't cost me that. The OH really doesn't need a car though so hopefully if he gives his up we'll be down to one car.

EssexHebridean

Hi Shirlgirl - if you're a big Tesco spender why not look into getting a Clubcard Plus - it pays you double clubcard points on pretty much all your purchases instore. We've had ours for years now and find it very good - we just dump our Tesco budget for the month into it by DD once a month and that's the shopping sorted.

shirlgirl2004

Is clubcard plus their credit card? I've never heard of it before.

gallygirl

shirlgirl2004 wrote: »

Is clubcard plus their credit card? I've never heard of it before.

More like a prepayment card - you load cash on in advance, then use for Tesco purchases. You get double points, so that's good (& probably get extra till spots etc), but you either stick a decent amount on so they get the interest before you spend, or you put money on before you shop each time which would be a hassle. DK if you load up in store or can do on line.

EssexHebridean

We feed ours by Direct Debit - £150 each month. What we don't spend gets yanked back out again and paid in somewhere else that DOES give us better interest!! We're not by any means massive supermarket spenders - as my signature says we're trying to buy as little as Possible at Tesco and the like now and more and more of our shop comes via the farmers farkets, farm shop and veg box. I'm pretty chuffed that our supermarket spend has now gone under £100 a month, but will still be working to get it lower. (Next month will be substantially lower I suspect). The Clubcard Plus has still been well worth it though - on tight months we know that the money for the shopping is there as it goes in automatically and there has been times that has been helpful too.

shirlgirl2004

As we probably spend about £700 a month (coming down slowly) in Tesco it is proably worth it for us. I'm going to have a look into it. I need to work out if it's better than getting cash back on the CC.

The OH has agreed we will sell his car but he will buy a moped to get to the station. By the time we have bought & insured a moped it should give us about £6,500 to use as an OP. I'm also certainly going to get a lease car too so although it will cost about £200 a month it will give about £5,000 to use as an OP. We won't be selling them until September when we have had our UK holiday where a large car is useful and the OH will lose his free parking space at work in September so his will go then too.

With these 2 overpayments it means we'll be MF in April 2009 :j .

StuartGMC

shirlgirl2004 wrote: »

We won't be selling them until September when we have had our UK holiday where a large car is useful and the OH will lose his free parking space at work in September so his will go then too.

With these 2 overpayments it means we'll be MF in April 2009 :j .

Shirlgirl, good to hear of the news and that you are in a locality which allows you to downsize to one smaller car and that annual mileage will be low enough to make leasing viable (penalties of course are very high for excess miles).

Very impressive repayments, well done.