Building The Burrow!

Hello lovely MFWs!

I thought it was about time I joined you all! Erm, technically I'm still a mortgage wannabe (despite coming agonisingly close to buying several months ago), life's changed a bit since then (will get to that in a moment!), but I hope it's ok to join in with all the fun and games as I head in the same direction as your lovely selves.

At the moment it's just myself and Mr Merle living in a one bed flat (no room for even a little kitten, alas!) and since Mr Merle is looking for a new job (which is now highly likely to involve relocation to some far flung corner of the country), it seems best to hold off on buying until we know where we're at. My parents were kindly going to lend us money to help us with a deposit, but the more I can save in the mean time to reduce anything we need to borrow etc the better, so that's going to be my plan of action for now. Ultimately we'd love to build our own house one day, but that's a long way away... so I may be here some time! *gets comfy/tries to resist temptation to pick our curtains & save the pennies instead :money:*

So, a bit more about moi - I've had some quite rubbish health issues over the years, and have also done the whole debt thing, all of this was scary enough to make me realise that budgeting/being in control of my finances can/does make such a difference. Also knowing that I have a roof over my head that no one can take away from me is the major motivating factor for kicking a mortgage into orbit. My health tripped me up again this year in a pretty major way, so now I feel ultra focussed to get things going - the sooner I can get myself into a better financial position the calmer I'll be about any other nonsense occurring in future. Needless to say, things being rubbish over the years also means I don't have any sort of retirement provisions, so I would also like to look into working towards taking on a BTL (or three :rotfl:) in the future.

At the moment I'm self-employed, but I've been reviewing things this year and I've decided that I'm going to change the nature of my business somewhat in the new year. I'm cutting off the dead wood and getting more focussed on how I can bring more money into the household. Things are definitely going to get interesting in a few weeks.. I just need to remember (or rather, cling to the thought!) that life is an adventure and is there for living etc! I'd like to look into returning to college/university and finding a new career path, but I probably need some time to ruminate on this and have a good long think about what I want to do.

Oh, I should say, in regards to my diary title... it's not just a little motivation to myself to focus on getting to the glorious self build stage, but also about making a happy home (aww, I love the Weasleys, I want my home/life in general to be as joyful as it is in The Burrow, it is the quintessence of a homely home!). I'm quite used to not buying things, but I can see that I've developed a bit of a poverty/fear mentality about it, so I need to ease myself out of this a give myself & Mr Merle the odd little treat! When I really think about it, I realise that I'm actually surrounded by lovely, happy things - if only I would make the most of them! So part of the plan with this diary is also to get myself into the way of taking advantage of the wonderful (and free to me!) things life has to offer as well.

We're pretty clued up here when it comes to making our money stretch. Mr Merle is insanely good at finding the best deals, basically doesn't buy anything unless it's on offer (I'm not even allowed to buy chocolate unless it's on offer... but I waaaant some dairy milk, ahhh!), and we tend to buy things we know will last/get our moneys worth out of; (when we moved into our new place it was entirely unfurnished, so a lot of my savings went onto high quality fridge/washing machine/bed/sofa bed etc, so at least we won't have to worry about furnishings when finally get our own place, and nothing should break down any time soon - if it does, we have long warranties, whew). I do surveys etc to build up the pennies. Mr Merle's Christmas was completely offset with vouchers this year, so that's the aim for next year as well, it's made such a difference. Hmm, what other good stuff have we done? Oh yes, entire flat is now LED lighting (considering there were six lights in a teeny kitchen it's made an insane difference to our energy bills! It paid for our heating during winter last year, madness!).

My main aim at the moment is to build up my emergency savings again (first get up to £1,500 then up to £3,000), and also save as much as possible for the house deposit - having a larger fund won't mean getting a bigger place than we intended, as we're both quite sure we don't want to look after something huge, or have something that we'd have trouble affording to run, it'll be more like OPing in advance

Blinking heck, I bet this post is long! I'd best meander and go find some pennies to adopt!