pippa80 is a mfw!

pippa80

Well another not very mse month, but an eventful one! New boiler is installed and fab - apart from damage to the ceiling in the bathroom :mad:. There's a thread in the DIY section if you're interested...

But something fairly big has happened. I received an inheritance of several thousand pounds - enough to pay the balance of the boiler and then probably enough to buy the curtains we were hoping to get + renovate the bathroom. And well lots of things really! Or could pay up to our remaining annual limit of overpayments and just get the curtains .... Lots of options really :eek:

Anyhow, that was just a few days ago, so going to take a little while to decide what is best. Part of me wants to pop it straight into the mortgage (minus the boiler) and part of me wants to bring forward the renovations to the flat and then can concentrate on making overpayments while enjoying the renovations!

Lois_E

Pippa, I am sorry for your loss - assuming you've inherited because someone has died - but how exciting to have the extra money! You are very wise to take your time deciding what to do with it. Feel free to bounce ideas around on here - we're all interested in that sort of thing.

pippa80

Thanks Lois - it was my grandfather's sister (great aunt?) who passed away but was actually more than a year ago and has taken this time to settle the estate. I heard that our generation was included but wasn't really expecting much money. So it is a lovely bonus for us as we set up our first home

Yes - will definitely mull over the options here. The OH (jokingly) suggested that we buy a 'leisure craft' with our newfound wealth

pippa80

Well another month goes by! I would say this one has been quite MSE minus going to a charity ball and our best mates' wedding!

Finally had the dramas of the bathroom ceiling fixed so now to pay the engineers!

Our idea with the inheritance money is to buy some of the little (but quite expensive things) that we've been saving for/putting off. These are curtains for the lounge and bedroom as well as getting our pictures framed. This will leave us with roughly £7,000-8000 (after paying the balance of the boiler). We want to get the bathroom renovated and will get some quotes. I think if we were to just get fixtures replaced it would be about £5000 but if we were to move things around it would be closer to £10,000. Do those figures sound ball park right? If we went for the former then the balance would be for overpaying if the latter then we'd put the £7000 in the mortgage for now and save up the balance.

No leisurecraft unfortunately for the OH

pinkteapot

We did the following last year:

Bathroom - replacement of suite, tiling of walls and floor, addition of an electric shower over the bath (no shower there previously)
En-suite - replacement of suite and changing existing shower to electric shower, tiling of walls and floor
Cloakroom - new toilet and sink with cabinet underneath

All of the above came to £7,500. My brother is a plumber and tiler so charged us a mate's rate labour charge, but it wasn't *that* mate's rate!

Depending on the size of your bathroom and how high-end you're going with your suite, taps and tiles, I would have thought £5k should be the upper limit even with moving stuff around!

pippa80

Ah thanks Pinkteapot! Not sure where you are, but we're in London ... I guess we'll see once we get some quotes.

Very exciting to have the place looking and feeling lovely much sooner than we'd expected (and OP more quickly!)

pinkteapot

Ah, so add the London premium. We're in Essex.

Get some quotes and work from there. Check what suite is being supplied and ask on the DIY forum for advice on the brands in question. B&Q, Bathstore and other chains like that are to be avoided. The quality for the price is shocking. We got fabby quality suites for much less than Bathstore etc charge.

pippa80

Thanks pinkteapot!

We're in the bit of London that used to be Essex though we will still have to pay the premium!

pippa80

Well - we've received a quote for boiler insurance along with our warranty. I'm thinking that we will self-insure: the boiler should be reliable as it's brand new (and under warranty!). The premiums will save us interest on the mortgage but are accessible if there's a problem. I got a quote on Uswitch and it came out as £89 for a year. So will possibly save £10/month into the mortgage. Does that sound reasonable?

Weirdly, this is the first month of our mortgage that we've not made an OP. That's because we've 'withdrawn' money that we'd saved for the boiler.

pippa80

I received our mortgage statement today summarising the first year of our mortgage.

The outstanding balance is £144,994.89

According to my spreadsheet, without any overpayments, our balance would be £156,592.25

However, there are £8,200 of savings in our overpayment fund, so our real balance is £153,194.89

Therefore, we owe £3397 less than we would have with no overpayments. This is made up of £2980 of overpayments and £417.36 in interest.

It seems less that I was hoping, but still pretty good. I'm so glad that we started overpaying from the very start