Statement of intent

StuartGMC

Just updated page 1 briefly to reflect present situation. I'll do a more thorough job at year end. However, I am very surprised at progress made since 30 May when I started this thread, and never thought I'd keep this up. Thanks to those of you who read it and regularly contribute, you keep me motivated.

EssexHebridean

There's nothing like impressing yourself to keep motivation going is there Stuart - remember that feeling for when things get more difficult. Very well done to you - your progress and organisation is an inspiration to many on here. :T

Lynn11

Well done and you are an inspiration to lots of people.

StuartGMC

EH and Lynn
Thanks for your support.

StuartGMC

Late last year I was considering dropping our redundancy cover for the mortgage as we have a low amount remaining and the £25.47 per month could be added to the OP. However, with the economy diving I chose not too, and so we continue to pay this for now.

So, with that cost and the life cover at £17.86 per month, I thought I'd look at what we would still be facing to the point where we make the final payment. Assuming we do so in Feb 2010, then we'll pay some £407.52 for redundancy cover and £285.76 for the life cover (level term).

However, this will be 9yrs and 8mnths early, so to make me feel better about the above costs, I will save £2954.52 on the redundancy cover and £2071.76 on the life cover by paying back early. A total of £5026.28 all of which will of course be part of our savings contributions over the time we have saved on the mortgage.

shirlgirl2004

You are doing so well and it'sgood to see that you are saving more than just interest but OP and offsetting. Well done

StuartGMC

Shirlgirl, many thanks for your kind words.

I have retaxed the car online having received the reminder today; and at last they have moved the date forward in the month so you can get the tax disc, fairly important in December with the Christmas post. You can now tax from the 5th of the preceding month. All very smooth (I think improved a bit over last year) and they even have a prize draw for one of two Seat Leon diesels - very MSE! (they do state in several places this is not at any cost to the tax payer :rotfl:)

The disc should arrive in less than 5 working days too.

Best of all, it was still (only?) £210

However, not such good news on the varifocal glasses; have been wearing for a week, but towards weekend started to get eye ache which got worse over weekend. Not sure if it is lens for left eye or adjustment on fitting (my expectation is that it is the former) so will stay on my previous ones and go back on Saturday

SmlSave

Best of all, it was still (only?) £210

Sounds a good price to me!

Hope you can get the varifocal's sorted and your eye ache has gone away now. Wouldn't it be nice just to have 20/20 vision?

StuartGMC

SmlSave wrote: »

Hope you can get the varifocal's sorted and your eye ache has gone away now. Wouldn't it be nice just to have 20/20 vision?

I'll be off to opticians PM today; 20:20 well I've had glasses since I was about 11 or 12 and had my dreams of being a pilot flattened by the first optician I saw!

Update: Back from optician; they double-checked all information and I saw the optician again. It seems the centralisation of the lenses is the cause of the problem. So, they will send them off to be remade. Not sure if these will be ready next weekend though, but reassuring that the issue was identifiable rather than my inability to wear varifocals.

StuartGMC

A quick interim update.

Our effective interest rate on the mortgage has peaked at 1.79% with the credit card bill payment going out of the account. It did process as a Faster Payment, so may choose to pay closer to the due date in Jan....

OH pay is scheduled to hit current a/c on Monday (showing online now), so this means our effective interest rate drops back to 1.51%, and mine will be paid early this month, so we'll be around 1.04% then. This shows the benefit of using offsets which include current accounts especially in the latter stages when your current account balance is a reasonable proportion of the remaining capital outstanding.

I've also moved a further £213 into the savings pot, so with the DD of £101 which will go on 28 Dec (this should get us that £50 free in July 2009 for setting it up with NatWest) then we will actually hit the monthly saving requirement even though it is December. This is a good thing as we failed in November, but it tends to be this way as we have dd birthday at start of Dec and also get a range of the Christmas presents etc then.

Presently our total net position on cash (savings, current account), investments (S&S ISAs) and the mortgage mean we only owe the world £2532 Now, I had hoped to improve on this as per early plans, but the S&S ISAs are down £4500 at the moment, otherwise we would have been in positive territory. When my pay goes in, in consideration of other bills etc going out, we will be much closer to the net zero position, depending on the international markets though!

Anyway, once paid I'll give a clearer update including the monthly interest position on the mortgage; hoping to see very little charged this month!