The "Grand Plan" - Phase One well underway!

cazmanian_minx

Good luck! We've just managed our dream move from Croydon to the north coast of Scotland, so I completely empathise with your plan to live in the Western Isles. Which island are you looking at?

Caz

EssexHebridean

Welshlassie wrote: »

Wow what a plan, and you sound so motivated to get there. Well done.
We have recently started OP'ing and, as Stuart has said, got myself addicted to spreadsheets. I was looking through my money folder the other days and there must have been 6 or 7 different spreadsheets in there, all for various different things, but the one that gets opens the most is the mortgage OP one. I'm always plugging possible figures in there to see how much of a difference I can make before our fixed rate ends.

Best of luck getting your loan OP sorted before Feb, have a look at some of the challenges on the Up Your Income and DFW board such as £10 a day extra (some people have made £300 extra for the last 10 or so months) that would really help towards your target.

Yes, it's fun playing "ifs buts and maybes" with the figures in the mortgage spreadsheet isn't it! I've been gradually working my way through some of the options people have suggested on here for making extra cash - it's nearlybas addictive as the spreadsheets!

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Good luck! We've just managed our dream move from Croydon to the north coast of Scotland, so I completely empathise with your plan to live in the Western Isles. Which island are you looking at?

Caz

Wow - sounds fantastic - whereabouts have you settled then? I drove right along the north coast a few years back, it's a stunningly beautiful, wild and rugged place. We've fallen in love with North Uist - such a wonderfully friendly place and the people are very accepting of incomers which doesn't apply everywhere. I hope your new life proves to be every bit as wonderful as you wish.

EssexHebridean

Sat down this evening and made a list of everything I/we have done so far towards the plan....

The Grand Plan – what have we done so far


1) £60 per month OP on mortgage – reducing remaining term by 2.5 years.
2) Worked out that an early payoff of the car loan in Feb 09 will reduce the interest payable by over £700.
3) Transferred outstanding £400 lump sum balance from Egg Money card onto Abbey Zero card – this is now being paid off at £80 per month over 5 months.
4) Set up Egg Money card to pay the full outstanding balance each month.
5) Cancelled Payment protection on Egg card – no sense in having it if balance is being cleared in full.
6) Applied for and got a Capital One card – EVERYTHING possible is now being paid for through that to maximise the cashback available on it whilst it’s at 4%. Debit cards are now just for taking money out of cashpoints, nothing else! Cap One card is also set to clear the full balance each month.
7) The cashback on both the Egg Money and the Cap One cards will be payable just before we go on Holiday next year, meaning that we will have a bit of help standing by for the cost of the holiday.
8) Joined Quidco – can’t believe it’s taken me so long to do so! Already got £46.70 showing as tracked – some validated too – so that’s building up nicely. Anything that can be bought through there, using the Capital One card is earning us a fair whack back at the moment. Absolutely amazed how many of the companies I buy from regularly are on there too.
9) Joined Pigsback – anything I can get from there will be converted to Boots vouchers for use as and when I need toiletries etc.
10) Tracked down an old Post Office investment account book which turns out to have £100 left in it and just sitting there! That has now been sent off for interest to be added and the balance to be paid out to me – another £100 for the car-loan fund!
11) Opened an Egg Cash ISA – this will now become the destination for ANY spare cash we can lay our hands on.
12) All expenses paid from work for mileage are now being transferred straight into savings.
13) Joined the lightspeed panel for surveys – looking good so far. Fingers crossed I get lots more to do!

I'm certain there's more - I'll keep thinking!

cazmanian_minx

EssexHebridean wrote: »

Wow - sounds fantastic - whereabouts have you settled then? I drove right along the north coast a few years back, it's a stunningly beautiful, wild and rugged place. We've fallen in love with North Uist - such a wonderfully friendly place and the people are very accepting of incomers which doesn't apply everywhere. I hope your new life proves to be every bit as wonderful as you wish.

We're in Armadale, it's midway between Bettyhill and Melvich. We've been here just under 4 weeks now and it feels like we've been here forever, everyone's been so friendly and welcoming.

North Uist looks gorgeous - I've never been there, but have seen pictures. Great surfing beaches in the Western Isles

Caz

virgin_moneysaver

It definitely helps to have a 'grand plan' in focusing on the job in hand to whittle away at the mortgage

I don't know how much impact it'll have but I'm 'op'ing by £40 p.m on mortgage of £29k - doesn't sound a lot I know but it's all we can afford & it equates to between an extra 20 & 25% of the monthly dd

our GP is to buy a Motor Home (I'm not a good flyer) & spend time in it when we can whilst working & spend our retirement traveling as much as possible (I have told dh to set me down in the Chianti region of Italy & pick me up on his way back thru) - but before all that we have 2 sons who are looking to go to uni so even though they'll have to stand on their own 2 feet as much as poss I want to help them out when I can

no car loan but have about 6.5k on credit cards which are all at 0% & will keep tarting whilst possible , if not find a low lob - luckily we have an excellent credit rating

earthgirl

North Uist looks lovely! Good luck!

EssexHebridean

Cheers all!

Virgin moneysaver - any OP, no matter how small, makes a big difference in the long term - get yourself one of the mortgage calculator spreadsheets to see how much time you can take off. It gets addictive though - warning!! Before yoiu know where you are you'll be whittling away tiny amounts of cash where you can to add to the OP!

Had a nice productive evening today. We've been meaning for ages to take a look at sorting out our gas & electric accounts. Not necessarily to change suppliers, but initially to get the readings up to date so at least we know we're all square. We rarely get our meter read (it's probably several years since it was last done) so it tends to run a bit wild.....this time was no exception. On checking I worked out that we were about £75 in debit on the day reading, but some £380 in credit on the night one!! :eek: :eek: :eek: Have now spoken with a very nice man at British Gas who is getting our account processed and corrected and will then be sending us out a refund of the overpay. They are also reducing down our extortionate DD (set up to sort out arrears that had built up as a result of it being set too low in the first place) to a slightly more reasonable level! The gas account owed us a £50 refund too - we only use somewhere about £6 of gas per quarter so it permenantly runs in credit - in fact, the dual fuel and DD discounts more than pay for the gas we use! :rotfl: Woo Hoo - another £250 at least to go into the ISA! :j

setmefree2

Hi EH,

Are you on paperless billing with BG? Apart from saving you money, it's actually a really good system too. It stores your bills for years, and therefore shows consumption clearly and you can send "actual" figures to them as well. I would recommend it if you haven't got it already and it's cheaper.:money:

Also think about getting a "capped" rate. I took one out in 2005 which lasts until 2010 and it has turned out to be a very good deal.

EssexHebridean

Hi smf2 - I do intend to either swap tariffs with BG or change supplier in the long term, but with our readings having been in such a mess I suspect we will need to let it settle a bit before we - or they - know how best to proceed with it now. I'll look into the paperless billing idea though, I'd not realised they offered a saving to go paperless I must admit, so cheers for that. We're paperless with BT, and made a good saving by doing so (We barely use our landline - I spend a lot of time in the car so tend to call people handsfree from the mobile rather than waiting until I get home to ring them.) and I'm certainly happy to do the same elsewhere if it's going to save us ££'s! The other problem we have with our gas usage is it's so low there are some companies who actualy won't take us as a customer as we come close to costing more to administer than we make for them! :rotfl:


Spotted on the clubcard points today that the £10 worth of points for two mobiles sent for recycling have now gone on. Every little helps, as they say! Must try to get some more envelopes for those now as we have another couple of old phones to get shot of yet. I need to find out when eBay have a cheap listing day as we have some bits and bobs to get on there.....we bought a whole load of camcorder batteries and stuff for 10p each when our local branch of Jessops closed down......

EssexHebridean

Right - I decided that the next logical step would be to work out how I can reduce expenditure across the board, without feeling hard-done-by or as though we are having to go without. I've broken this down into categories:

1) Grocery & Household shopping
A quick scout through the kitchen cupboards, larder and our storecupboard revealed that I have plenty of cleaning stuff to be going on with, so no spend needed there for the next few months I would estimate, with the possible exception of some bleach. I have two boxes of washing powder tablets in, but have a Tesco voucher for 100 clubcard points when you spend £4 or more, so I have put another couple of boxes on the list for this weeks stock-up shop. That will then see us through for quite some time. We've given up buying meat from the supermarket some time ago - the quality is poor and origins largely unknown, so all our meat now comes from the farmers market. I stock up once a month, divide the spoils into portions or batch cook them up, and they go into the freezer. Monthly meat spend is approximately £25 - £28, and I definitely spend less this way than if I bought weekly from tesco.
2) Toiletries.
My previous habit has been to wander into Boots for a tube of toothpaste and come out having spent £20! I do religiously use my advantage card, but tend to be swayed by the "150 points when you spend XXX" vouchers, and end up buying stuff I either didn't need, or already had plenty of in the cupboard. I would guess I have enough shampoo in for a good six months, probably quite a bit longer! From now on I need to take the same approach that I have to food shopping - make a list, price up the items, and then go in and buy only what is on the list. I also need to make sure that I use up the stuff I have before going in for more, and if I want to do a minimum spend, do it by stocking up on items that I will use up that are also on a BOGOF or other special offer. To help me along with this my friend arrived here on Friday evening with four part used cans of various hair heat-defence sprays for use with straighteners etc - I accepted them gratefully!
3) Utilities & household running costs:
As I said before, I have just taken control of our electricity spend - it will be interesting to see how things pan out on that now over the next few months, but either way I am confident that the Direct Debit will be reducing. At the same time we are actively trying to bring our electric costs down - just little things here and there but hopefully it will make some difference. The water rates are a fixed cost - it is possible that for us a meter might work out cheaper but frankly we're happier with the fixed cost as currently - if we had a meter we woud be conscious of every extra few minutes stood under the lovely hot shower! I have a year left on a mobile contract, which also gives us free broadband - we pay £30 for that but we're tied to it until next year anyway - we've already decided that once it's up we're going to shop around for a better deal. We have contents insurance due next month - that will being done through quidco and I already know we can make a good saving on what we've got at the moment. Car insurance is a few months away yet - but I always shop around for that anyway - then tell Diamond how much they're going to charge me this year!

I'm sure more things are going to occur to me as I go along - the mortgage pig is still getting fed and we got our refund of the Direct Debit that nationwide paid out in error through so that's gone straight into the fund. I've also sent a message to Pigsback asking about the Lovefilm points so will be interesting to see the outcome of that.....