Learning to Live on Less!

White_Iris

Yay, we've saved enough to wave goodbye to September 2013's loan payment!

White_Iris

I think we've finally reached a decision about our house. After nearly 18 months on the market, we're realised it's not going to sell for what we need it to and if we do manage to sell now, it'll be a loss and we'll end up owing more money. So we're going to take it off the market and after Christmas (once we've saved some money) get some minor repairs done and rent it out for the next two or three years. In the mean time, we can move to the town we want to live in, concentrate on paying down debt and get on with our lives. By the time we're ready to buy a house, the market will hopefully have improved and we'll be able to sell ours (maybe even make a small profit!).

So over the next few months we need to...
1 - Pay for the minor repair work (approx. £300)
2 - Pay for a "consent to let" from our mortgage provider (£295)
3 - Allocate a small contingency pot for the inevitable crossover period of paying both mortgage and rent (£600)

White_Iris

The house is now off the market and it does feel like a weight off my shoulders. I can take a few months off and not think too much about the appearance of the house. I am starting to have a tiny panic about the prospect of packing up and moving to a potentially smaller place in about 6 months though! Time to go through everything and be really ruthless about what we keep.

I've finally got around to photographing the first batch of things to go on eBay, so I'll hopefully get those listed today (14 items) and tonight I've got about another 10 items of clothing to iron, so I can photograph and list them tomorrow.

Still no progress on the surveys (other than the sporadic ones I get from YouGov, Pinecone and Ipsos), I just can't be bothered Must try harder next week!

White_Iris

Phew, just finished listing my 14 items. I'd forgotten how tedious listing items was, it had become such a habit before the summer I didn't really think about it. It's a bit of shock, starting "work" again! I've also listed the writing desk, that I had intended to sell in July - lets hope we can get rid of that soon.

White_Iris

Hope everyone had a nice weekend, we were really productive here. We had a big purge of our two sheds and have recycled/thrown away/ Freecycled loads. I also got another batch of things listed on eBay and even DH managed to get a few bits listed to take advantage of the free listing days. :j

Not all good news though, DH needed some repairs to his car on Saturday and it came to a little over £300 :mad:. Plus he will need a new exhaust system before long, so that may be another £300 ish (unless he can fit it himself - we're currently debating that option, in which case it will cost about £120) . It will all get transferred on to a 0% card before long so the repayment won't cost us too much but it's still more debt to repay .

White_Iris

Boo, just had to pay another £435 for DH to get the exhaust on his car fixed (decided it was too much work for him to do himself) :-(

Need to have serious chat with DH about money plans for the next few months, especially with the mortgage going up in November.

White_Iris

The oil tank got changed over the weekend although we haven't had the invoice yet as they're not quite finished tidying up. It came with an electronic reader and much to our surprise the oil the transferred from the old (enormous) tank more than half filled the new (sensible-sized) tank, so we're wondering whether we need to top-up the oil at all, especially since we plan to move in the spring. We've decided to be extra frugal with the heating and see how long the 600ish litres will last us - hopefully we won't need to pay for any more and we can use the money we save each month towards our moving costs.

My return to eBay was quite successful. My items ended over the weekend and I sold 16 of the 26 for a whopping £90! Plus DH sold one of his items for £80! :j I'm a bit nervous though as two of my items went for a lot more than I expected, especially as one of them was damaged (which I did describe in the listing but now I'm second-guessing myself - did I described it clearly enough?). Just have to wait and see I suppose :cool:

And now for the housework, the place seems to have fallen in to wrack and ruin over the last few days, so as well as lugging a big bag of parcels to the post office later, I also need to squeeze in three loads of washing, a top to bottom vacuuming and a thorough clean and tidy :eek:

White_Iris

Hmmm, got some quotes to get some minor repair work done before we rent the house out - do we go with the local guy, who DH and I both liked, or with the larger firm who quoted £70 cheaper?

White_Iris

Ugh, contemplating the decorating we need to do to get the house ready for rental and I'm feeling hugely de-motivated :-( I never realised how many things we have on the walls, how many holes we need to fill, how grubby the walls are around the edges of the furniture. I think I'll list it, room by room and hopefully it'll actually be less than I think :cool:

Living room
Repaint three walls
Touch up two walls

Hall/Stairs/Landing
Fill in 18 holes
Repaint walls
Repaint coving

Kitchen
Fill in 8 holes
Repaint one wall
Repaint alcove

Dining Room
Touch up one one wall

Bathroom
Repaint one wall
Paint radiator

Bedroom 1
Fill in 3 holes
Touch up one wall

Bedroom 2
Fill in 11 holes
Touch up three walls

Bedroom 3
Fill in 2 holes
Repaint two walls


Nope...just as much as I thought :eek:

CarolynCh

White_Iris wrote: »

Ugh, contemplating the decorating we need to do to get the house ready for rental and I'm feeling hugely de-motivated :-( I never realised how many things we have on the walls, how many holes we need to fill, how grubby the walls are around the edges of the furniture. I think I'll list it, room by room and hopefully it'll actually be less than I think :cool:

Living room
Repaint three walls
Touch up two walls

Hall/Stairs/Landing
Fill in 18 holes
Repaint walls
Repaint coving

Kitchen
Fill in 8 holes
Repaint one wall
Repaint alcove

Dining Room
Touch up one one wall

Bathroom
Repaint one wall
Paint radiator

Bedroom 1
Fill in 3 holes
Touch up one wall

Bedroom 2
Fill in 11 holes
Touch up three walls

Bedroom 3
Fill in 2 holes
Repaint two walls


Nope...just as much as I thought :eek:

Could you make everything add up to 100 (each wall which needs painting and each hole which needs filling etc.) and then join the 1% thread? https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4016713
Might make it easier to manage?