Mortgage Free - so good they'll do it twice! Wynnvegas aiming for the big house

ztan

Blimey Billy... it does always seem to be the way doesn't it?!

I hope that all figures itself out

wynnvegas

Morning Folks,

Haven't updated in a few days so here's the tale of the tape!

Moyra's car. Some sort of pipe had managed to shear some sort of part off some part of the engine. If that sounds a bit layman to anyone who knows anything about cars, it probably just about gets across our collective ignorance about cars (and most things technical). I tend to just shout at people for help instead of doing anything about my own level of understanding and (lack of) skill. Anyway, the repair came to £200 which, embarrasingly, we didn't have to hand. For the first time in a good few years, we had to borrow some money. I may need to kick off a new debt repayment plan to take account of the shame! This is entirely my own fault as my paying the credit cards off mid-month (for no particular reason) and Moyra's car breaking in this two week window and it being repaired at a place that doesn't take any sort of card is pretty much the only sequence of events that could have led us to where we are. Anyone not believing in sods law needs to attend my most recent MSE sermons! Ask for it and ye shall receive... not the original intention of that passage I'm sure but, in true MSE fashion, I resisted the opportunity to take a credit card cash advance, swallowed my pride and borrowed the £200 until the end of the month. After going on for so long about being mortgage free, my entire family won't let me live this down for a while yet!

My car. Some silly woman hit my car last week and left a couple of holes in my front bumper (even more stupidly, it was parked at the time, I wasn't there and she left her details). There is no easy cosmetic repair for what is fairly minor damage. The garage estimate for the repair? £700 for a full new front bumper, colour matching and new parking sensor jiggerypokery! This is ok as it now saves me concentrating on cleaning the existing bumper too vigorously as there's a new one on the way but the woman will doubtless be unimpressed with the bill when she hears of it. I doubt she'll be quite so honest next time she hits someone either!

Shopping. In happier events, the Christmas shopping (this year for 97 people) is more or less done! We've got about 12 big boxes of sweets to get (waiting for Tesco to price match £4.50 per box on any of the usual suspects), a toilet sign for Moyra's Auntie Anne (it's modeled after the bellagio toilet so we're trying to get a Bellavio sign made up as a stocking filler), an ipod for Moyra's mum, a phone for the mother and Black Ops for the PS3 for her little cousin. We'll take care of these over the next week or so but the spare room is currently best resembling Santa's workshop. We bought the new celebratory Christmas tree at the weekend with a few more lights and a bit more tinsel so, come the first of December, we'll get that up (as is Moyra's rule) and get all the presents wrapped and underneath it. The living room will then take on the appearance of Santa's grotto for a few weeks! In fairness, it should look pretty good so I'll share the pictures here when the time comes.

Went to a 30th birthday party at the weekend and watched the boxing (British boxing - rubbish - American boxing - amazing) in the birthday boy's new theatre room until about 6am so still recoving a wee bit from that - must be getting old myself! Plan to aid the weight shifting campaign by starting 5-a-side football this week and then, to counterbalance that, I'm off to Champany for lunch on Friday and up to St. Andrews for the weekend where we'll also try Nahm Jim - it's got a lot to live up to with it's fancy reputation!

The big house. Spoke to a design consultant at the 30th birthday party who is going to do a few drawings for us (what of, I'm not sure). He's estimated somewhere in the region of £1,000 per square metre of house which puts my initial drawing at a little under £600,000 to build. We redesigned and pared it down to the bare minimum which is coming in at £180,000 so we've now got the fun part to do as we think we need to hit a figure roughly in the middle of those two so we can start building it back up in addition to adding in things like lights, flooring and furniture again!

Aside from that, not much going on....waiting for payday to get back to being debt free!!

Cheers,

Billy

black_taxi_2

best of luck in next venture

remember massive house means massive running costs

what area are u looking at

wynnvegas

Hi Black Taxi,

We're looking around East Central Scotland at the moment although I'm doing all I can to insist on a move abroad. If we were to have a good crack at moving abroad (which Moyra's dead against at the moment), we could plan for something close to retirement in the next 5-10 years. If I can swing us both retiring before 40 in a fully paid self-built house in the sun, I'll be quite happy!

Cheers,

Billy

black_taxi_2

try california---you can name your price at the moment

also spain next year when it defaults---strong rumours in serious trouble

yukkibear

*waves* thanks for popping into my diary. Your plans are amazing and from reading this diary I have no doubt you'll achieve them. Not at all jealous of the sex and the city wardrobe at all!

Accountant_Kerry

i never intended having kids either, in fact was dead set against it. until one day at 31 i just decided it would be a good idea. life is strange. good luck with the self build.

*Jellie*

Exciting plans! Good luck with it all- looking forward to reading all about it!

wynnvegas

Hi Yukkibear,

Likewise! I got so much from this site and the mortgage free wannabe boards in particular so it's really good to see new people coming on board - and even better when people are able to transfer from debt free wannabes to concentrate on their mortgage free wannabe status! In v.2.0, I think the only thing that is 100% staying is the massive wardrobes as Moyra has vetoed any alteration to their position or size.

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Morning Black Taxi,

Seriously, given half a chance (and a decent dollar rate), I'd hop a plane tomorrow and wangle a green card somehow to live on the West Coast of America. Spain doesn't grab me quite as much but I've much more chance of getting Moyra to agree to a 2-3hr flight away as opposed to an 11hr trek. We've won a wee bit with the interest rates going the way they did but if a total global meltdown could hang off for a few years until we've got a decent wad of cash saved, that would be grand!

Cheers,

Billy