one small step for sushistar...

sushistar

So, been a while, but here to update what we've been up to...

We have found a property for £175k - woo!:j It's in a nice town with good schools, near family, and has room to grow veg (another money-saving AND sanity-saving plan of ours...)

We would like to do some building work to the house (which will hopefully improve it's value, but will certainly improve our quality of life there). We are taking money for this out of our deposit, which will mean we take a mortgage of £135k - I'm SOO happy, because making this move will reduce our debt from £215k to £135k at one fell swoop. Now I can actually imagine paying it off! We will be around £600 per month better off.

So.. as soon as we move in (hopefully May) we will get cracking with the building work. Our fixed rate products expire in Sep and Dec respectivly (they were not as bad as I thought - the larger loan is at 3.99% and the smaller at 5.45%). We will let the part that expires in Sep go on to Santander's SVR (I must look up what that is at the mo.) When the second fixed rate expires, we'll remortgage the whole lot on the lowest possible rate we can find, and put any money left from the building work/savings in to reduce the amount. Then we can start overpaying on a serious basis!

As a start I've started using cashback sites for all my internet shopping - they're great, aren't they! Only a few pounds so far, but we'll be buying some white goods and DIY stuff when we move, and buying those through a cashback site will add up to quite a bit.

Advice needed about our deposit - our sale is due to complete soon, and we will have around 70k paid into our current account (our deposit - the balence will never be so high again!)
Where's the most productive place to put that money for the 3 months it will take to exchange on our new place? obviously it needs to be instand access.

linz

Hmm, you could open 3 x Lloyds Vantage accounts, and your partner/husband could also open 3 (Maximum of 3 per customer) and put £7k in each of these. That'd take care of £49k.

With these accounts you'd get 4% gross interest paid into each one monthly providing you have between £5k - £7k and you sweep £1k into and out of each one once a month. It works out just under £20 a month interest per account, so £120 a month if you were to open 3 each.

I think these are the best out there at the moment for instant access accounts.

sushistar

soooo, we're millimeters from completion on our old house, and all the searches etc are underway on the new one. I'm enjoying dreaming about decorating it, and spending too much on interior design magazines
But we have made a resolution to get ALL our furniture 2nd hand, so I've been keeping an eye out for good charity shops, antiques shops, reclamation yards etc to visit once we've moved in. I also worked some overtime this past week, but it was a real slog fitting it in round the kids - might have to hold off on that for a while and just stick to controling our spending! When we get the cash though it will go straight into our savings account. It will be such a reclief to have our old house off our hands, the mortgage is awful - the repayments are just more than we can afford. We've never missed a payment at all, but we don't have any capacity to play with - not nice.
Will be able to report more progress once we have our new mortgage up and running I guess!

sushistar

Gosh, a loooong time since I posted, but I need a bit of hand holding.
We moved into our new house last year, did some building work, and remortgaged in January to a 3 yr fixed rate of around 3.5% (roughly - these numbers don't stick in my head!). WHen we remortgaged we out any extra cash left from the building into the mortgage, so now only owe £128000.

BUT................... last week during the rain and floods, our roof sprung a leak. Turns out the whole thing is rotten and will take 7.5 k to fix. We can't get the moeny back out of the mortgage as we've only been customers for less than 6 months, so will have to borrow 6k from family. They are charging us 2%apr, so now we're in debt :0(
We have never been in debt before apart from our mortgage and I feel totally freaked out and distressed by it. I am selling old stuff on ebay to up our income a little but it just feels like a drop in the ocean :0(

ammonite

Well done Sushistar, you made some hard decisions and they have paid off As for the 6k, can you put the work for the roof on a 0% credit card, that way you don't have to pay any interest? Not sure if this would be possible, but worth looking into.

£6k isn't too much in terms of a debt with very low interest rates like that. It's amazing what you can do when you need to pay it off.

Have a look on sites like DooYoo and Ciao to earn some extra pennies whilst you are at home with the kiddies. Some people do very well from them, I earn about £20-£30 a month on there, it all helps and I don't put much time in.

GOood luck

sushistar

Thanks for your kind words. I know 6k does not seem loads, but I just hate the feeling that after all our careful planning we end up owing my family money! I think it makes more sense to owe it to them at 2% than on a card even if we could get 0%. We are having another baby this summer, so I'd rather owe someone who I know would not send baliffs round if my husband lost his job or something!

I guess there is nothing we can do about it, it's just one of those things. We have a plan of how we're going to pay it off - we have tols my family it will be 6 years (1k plus interest per year) but we are planning to pay it off in 3. Then we can turn our attentions back to the mortgage again. I just hope nothing else goes wrong!

megela

Hi Sushistar,

What a shame and it must be so frustrating for you. But remember you are in a far better position that you were a year ago.

When you have been with your new mortgage for over 6 months are you able to draw down the extra amount again if you feel uncomfortable owing your family that much money?

Having said that I think you are really lucky to have such a wonderful generous family who are able to help you in this way.

And many congratulations on your impending new arrival.

Best wishes,

Megela.

SJ1

Don't get disheartened. You have done really well and have a much much smaller mortgage than you did have. All houses need a good roof and once it's done it won't need to be touched for ages. I imagine you have thought about this but did you have a survey done? If so you could maybe go back to them???

I saved a lovely £800 the other month. So pleased with myself and then hubby reversed into someone else's car and didn't want to claim on the insurance as we were just renegotiating the deal, all my lovely money....,gone! in 5 minutes!! But these things happen and that is life. Sometimes its good and you get more money and sometimes it's bad and you have to pay out!

I know that it is nice to see the mortgage going down but have you thought about putting some money into an emergency savings account first? It would protect you against things like this. This is what I want to do this year before paying off the mortgage. In some strange way I would much rather be paying off debt but I know that I will feel better if we have it in place.

SJ

sushistar

Thank you everyone for your replies - what a nice supportive forum this is!
We did have an emergency fund, but unfortunatly need it for a car. Yes, this is a NEED not a WANT as it is physically impossible to fit 3 child car seats in our current small car so with number 3 due this summer it is a necessity. We kept out enough for the car (5K) plus a 2k buffer, and put any other savings into our mortgage. We also have £1.5 k 'locked away' with NS&I for 3 years.

So basically when the roof went, that was our £5k car budget plus £2k emergency buffer gone, just like that! My family have been very generous stepping in to save the day, I just really hope it does not cause any problems between us . With the 6k from them we will be able to pay the roofer, get the necessary car, and have £1000 emergency buffer (for if the fridge breaks down or something). Then anything extra will go to pay them back. PLus when our £1.5 k in NS&I is 'ready' as it were we can use that to hopefully cancel the debt. That money is locked in at a rate that tracks above the rate of inflation - 1% above I think it was - so hopefully it will have earnt a bit by the time it's available.

You are right everyone, it is better to be philosophical about these things. Our new baby is a different gender to the older 2, so I spent this afternoon sifting through the baby clothes to ebay those that won't be suitable. I have made £60 in the last 31 days selling baby clothes - I keep telling myself that is 1% of the debt cleared! :T

We had a full survey done when we bought the house, but I think the roof problems were not visable from inside so I doubt we have a leg to stand on. And not covered by insurance as it's general wear and tear on an old roof, not a storm or anything. Sigh. These things happen, onward and upward!

sushistar

It's a looong time since I posted here! Hi everyone!
A lot has changed in the last 2 years.

- My family helped my sibling with a house deposit, and in the interests of parity, wrote off our 6K debt. :j

- Our mortgage is now down to 116k. We are just remortgaging to a 3 yr 2.7% fixed rate, which is reducing our monthly payments by about £35. :j

- I am now working more (still part time) and earnt around £17k last year - my husband's income has gone down by £2k, but we're better off overall. :j

- Our finances are far more organised. We have been using a 'system' to seperate weekly spending from direct debits / savings etc. This has been working well for 2 years or so, and now I have just started changing some of the various accounts we use to get better interest etc. I just switched our regular payments account to Santander 123 so that should make us a few pounds every month - and I got £35 cashback too.

So... things are looking good! I still lurk on this forum now and again, and visit MSE often, and am so grateful for all the good advice here. :T