£70 a day's what the panda will pay!

Karmacat

Thats excellent! I know what you mean about the skint .... I need to think about what I do with the money that I do have. I've always kept by enough to pay off the next year's tax bill, for instance. But .... instead of paying down my English mortgage, should I really be finding out if I can pay off my French mortgage? And will it make any difference if I do? I'm sure the rate of interest is much higher (not sure what it is at the mo ) ... because my income is going down and down, I'm not sure if I could cope with paying off debt when I can't reclaim that money if I need it (thats the other reason I pay off the English mortgage) .... but if I paid off the French mortgage to the extent that the French rental income sustained it, then that would be a massive leak in my finances well and truly plugged. Sorry to hijack your diary, but its going round and round and round at the mo, I can't get it out of my head.

Any ideas ? :o:o

hypno06

Karmacat wrote: »

Any ideas ? :o:o

Put the kettle on and grab a bar of choccy.....

lunar

Well done for getting below 75k, I think we both need to go back to the beginning now and do the snowball calculator and get our SOA posted again. Do you have any more large expences with the house or will it all be coming off the debt again? I think we need some pictures of the house, before and after.

Karmacat, no ideas from me. I am only good with the basics of paying things off never mind adding french mortgages into the equation!!!!

Hypno, chocolate eaten, kettle is on. Thats my contribution......

Karmacat

Kettle .... check;;; choccy ... argh, allergic, strike that;;; HM flapjacks.....check;;;

Ooh, I know, I need to nab *another* idea from Hypno - you've done your spending diary, Hypno, I need to do a separate little challenge of my own for a week. Two weeks. And I'll stop hijacking Panda's thread....

retrocircles

Dooyoo is scary. I have to be brutally honest & say I haven't done 1 review yet! I don't know where to start! I've completed my 40 reviews for Qype though!

pandapaws

Back from being AWOL again, thanks to some text message badgering by Lunar yesterday - thank you, I needed it! I agree that a new SOA is definitely required, but I'll leave it until after we go on holiday (in 2 wks) as things are going to be quite messy around then.

KC, please feel free to hijack any time you like, it's not as it I'm using it much half the time anyway I really don't know what the best thing would be for you to do about the two mortgages. Can you overpay them both a bit, rather than one or the other? Then you'd have the security of being able to re-borrow the money from the UK one, and the advantage of paying off the higher interest on the French one, although only half the benefit of each, but none of the disadvantage of doing neither.

We've started to make some headway into the garage project, which we can't really afford but I desperately want done so my parents can stay more often, plus all the Ebay stuff that's in our bedroom can go in there. So we'll probably have one or two 'standstill' months, but it will be worth it. New garage doors are getting fitted next week (£1150 :eek:), so combined with the holiday I think we can safely say this will be the first of those standstill months.

We got a kitten yesterday! She's a little black one with white paws, from one of the mums at Adam's school. We were going to wait until after the hols, but she said that if we wanted to take her now, then they'd take her back again to look after while we're away. We'll get another to keep her company next month. I love cats - we had 4 when Adam was born but sadly lost them on the road outside our old house. Must try to get some photos.

I've been shop-shop-shopping the past week, and it's been fab! I decided that I've been really good at not going shopping lately, so as a treat I took all my Clubcard vouchers out to Double-Up, and have had a fantastic spending spree, almost completely free apart from the odd quid here and there, and got lots of Christmas pressies for the kids put away and a load of holiday clothes.

How's everyone else? Any gossip?

beanielou

Look forward to kitten pics

Karmacat

Hi Panda! Thanks for the message... nothing as interesting as gossip, I'm afraid. I had a good time today with a friend of mine whose in a bad situation financially, but she had some interesting ideas about finding work. I've been saying for ages I don't want to build up my business again, but she's doing work for EAPs - Employee Assistance Programmes. There's a lot of administration, which brings down the hourly rate, but its surely better than the surveys and trips out to do mystery shopping, which can bring in as little as £1.30 - £1.50 an hour. Worst case, EAP work would be £15 an hour, with one hour admin for every contact hour, and possibly up to £25 an hour. I wouldn't mind that!

The garage plan sounds good (doors!!!!) but what I *really* envy you is the kitten. I **want** pictures, so much! Please..............

chevalier

Hi panda, karma and lunar

panda am so jealous of the kitten. but they are a great way of small people learning the right way to treat animals. I had my first kitten when I was about 18 months. When I was 3 i kept on pulling his tail. I vividly remember my mum saying, if you keep on doing that he will scratch you. Well needless to say I did, so he did, and my mum had no sympathy at all lol. But it taught me a valuable lesson about treating my pet the right way, and I was heart broken when he passed away when I was 12. And I had to leave my to cats in the UK, and i miss them loads so I would love a cute piccy too.

Karma, do you have a financial adviser in France you could ask about the mortgage overpayment?

Lunar good luck with paying down your debt too.

Oh and panda glad that little ones eczema is calming down a bit.
chev

Karmacat

:wave:Hi Chev

No, I don't have a French financial adviser... its just me anyway, if there was one in France, they'd speak French, and that would wobble me even more. I was incredibly ignorant in buying this place, I was trying to do something that would just roll on without me taking much care of it - its a bit late in life to learn that you don't get something for nothing! I'd have been much better buying a small property locally and dealing with the rental myself, just like my friends do. Ah well. I'll keep on trying to investigate the T&C of the French mortgage, and look at overpayments, to a point where the rent takes care of all the payments. That'd be nice!