Moving onwards, the family home and making it MF. LP diary pt2

greent

I have 4 Only the 4th was planned - and was born when I was 39 (am 41 this weekend - eek!!!) Ages range from 13 to 21 months. Have since had a hysterectomy (and a pregnancy scare 3 weeks before I had it!), so no more babies for me! Dh had planned to be snipped after DS1 was born (almost 11) - but I wouldn't let him. I then gave baby things away when DS1 was 4 (we were moving house) and found out I was pg.

We also moved when I was pg - 7months with SPD and 7 weeks before Xmas. This is still a house, not really my home.. It was bought as a compromise because we needed to move and there was nothing (and I mean nothing) else for sale locally that was a similar size

LilacPixie

isn't it weird how many of us have been uprooted while pregnant.... I do like this house but I thik it was all such a shock.. literally we had an offer on ours, we viewed this in the afternoon and it was the only thing that we found to be acceptable and in budget considering my maternity leave.. we offered and had it accepted within 90 minutes literally.

LilacPixie

arrggghhhh dreaded counciltax bill arrived today... £143 a month!! Also in the post was a letter from child benefit saying they have sorted it out. I have dealt with switching suppliers for utilities at last...

lincoln-potter

LilacPixie wrote: »

isn't it weird how many of us have been uprooted while pregnant.... I do like this house but I thik it was all such a shock.. literally we had an offer on ours, we viewed this in the afternoon and it was the only thing that we found to be acceptable and in budget considering my maternity leave.. we offered and had it accepted within 90 minutes literally.

wow that really was fast.

My OH dragged me round 20+ houses, although we were for sale since Feb of 2010 and only had an acceptable offer in Nov.

KimmyCustard

Hi LP

Ours is £145 a month, but I think the council have decided its staying at that for this year, thank God. Its like having another small mortgage! Although I do wish our mortgage payments were £145 a month

Onto nights tomorrow night then off for 4 days, DH has built the chook run, so I just need the electric fence put up and to buy the feed etc, then we're all set to go and choose the girls - yay!! Also need some inspiration for chicken names.......

DH has just bought a van as a stop gap before we get him a decent car, its hilarious, looks like an old builder's van and it even has a sticker in the back with 'Old Git' written on it. A bargain at £700 but needed a new battery, only £97 :mad: Flipping cars.

LilacPixie

I know Kimmie... we had to buy a 55 plate (feb 06) MPV days after baby arrived.. She is actually an alright car and was a trade special using family trade connections so I am happy and she will do 4-5 years as she has just turned 5 years old..

Agnes, Peggy and Mable, for the chickens.. we had geese called agnes mable and peggy

LP we had viewed quite a few houses before but there was always an 'issue' mostly work needing done to the place or location.. I was brought up rurally and wanted to move to villiage life in a old stone built house but DH is a city boy and wanted to be more suburbs of city in a new build type thing etc. Our viewing was 2pm here, that morning we had received an offer on our then home but it was slightly too low to be acceptable without some consideration. We viewed this and went to my parents to collect our 2 kids, and then go home to talk about it, my dad kindly offered to loan us cash for solicitors fees so we could get a mortgage LTV deal we wanted so we accepted our offer on our then home and I instructed our solicitor to make an opening offer as a starting point for negotiations and we offered about 4.. 4:30 it was ours much to my husbands shock.. Seller of this had bought a new build off plan and signed missives without being sold so was facing huge financial penalties and we were good to go with a proposed move date of 6 weeks ahead just a week after they should of moved so basically they jumped at it. We got a V good deal.

I have been looking at Pammys diary again and she has motivated me with the whole survey thing.. I am now logging into my survey accounts and seeing what is what this week. I have also lined up a small MS for later in the week. It is at an electrical store walking distance from my house so I will have a walk up and do it while DD1 is at nursery leaving DH and DD2 &3 in the house in pj's... should be an easy £25 for probably about an hour audit.

Been looking at mortgage posts.. as I have moaned about before you can't pay a halifax mortgage online from a bank of scotland current account only by calling them and paying with my debit card which puts me off paying over little bits and pieces.. Quite a few people are saying you can set up a bill payment from current accounts that are not part of the HBOS group and pay little bits by faster payments.. I need to really symplify what accounts we have and why.. close unneeded ones and basically streamline our finances.. I think i will post about it in a moment to crystalise thoughts..

LilacPixie

OK here is the 'scores on the doors' with regards what accounts we have.

Santander joint account (A&L) my wages
Santander joint (Abbey) - my DLA
Bank of Scotland joint reward - DH wages
RBS DH's account - child benefit (this has his student overdraft)
RBS Joint - empty, mystery shopping goes here
Nationwide joint - empty used for holiday spends abroad but not free now
Halifax reward mine - cycle 1k for reward from BOS joint
HSBC mine - opened for £50 cashback. TCB/Qu1dco etc pays into this and use the debit card for online buys/glitches. monthly savings for gifts goes here too.

Now it is no wonder I have no idea how tight the month will be as I have zero idea what money is availible and in what account..

We need a simpler plan.. Off the top of my head I am thinking of closing both santander accounts and shifting my wages plus DLA money to my halifax account.. If I did that I could set up a FP to the RBS joint account and use that to OP mortgage back to halifax. I could also use the RBS account for matched betting if I ever get around to doing it..

Nationwide joint account will be closed too. it means rather than having 8 accounts in either joint names or single names we would have 5..

gratefulforhelp_2

Blimey that is complicated. We have one functional bank account between us (mine) DH has one deposit account...

LilacPixie

GFH - I am a bit anal about sectioning up cash etc but it really is getting to the stage where I am just confusing myself and DH who struggles anyway is just totally confused... I do think we need to keep the christmas gift money seperate and having that in a seperate account is good. We are on the path to clearing DH's student overdraft so we will keep child benefit feeding that account to reduce interest paid each month until hopefully we can just remove it all and close the account..

wantabetterlife

Hi LP, just catching up on your diary. Our mortgage is also with halifax but i dont have my main current account with them and can therefore transfer over really small amounts if i have saved money on groceries or used coupons etc.
I find this really useful as i know if i had to phone them up to make a £5 o/p i wouldnt do it.
Also i read your post on another diary about halifax charging £10 to change the term of the mortgage. We have changed ours twice in the last 12 months and havent been charged, i checked with them on the phone and its not on our mortgage statement either. I know they definately used to charge £10 to change the term as this happened to us in 2005 but as i say i think they have changed this now. Hope that helps