Cazmanian_minx's new MF diary

GDB2222

Can I ask the BIG question that has been bothering me for a while? If you want to reduce the debt, why did you buy a new horse? I know that's part of the quality of life, but it's all being funded at 20% interest.

GDB2222

Sorry, it's a pony. To us town dwellers it looks like a horse, and I'm sure it eats like a horse!

cazmanian_minx

Mr Minx paid for him with his annual bonus and is refusing to take any repayments until I've paid off the cards (he's actually insisting that Finn is a gift, but I'm determined to pay him back one day). It's not really fair to keep horses on their own, they're herd animals - we were OK with Merlin because there were two ponies on the croft next door who were turned out 24/7 and kept him company, but their owner took them to join her others two villages away and he was getting really quite stressed, as the neighbours on the other side only put their horses out on nice days, so we had to find him a companion. And OK, yes, we could have paid £100 for an unregistered Shetland, but I'd rather have one I can ride - and it actually works out cheaper to have another one here than to move Merlin to a livery yard, even without fuel factored in. The dogs cost me FAR more to keep than the horses do, which is part of the reason why we're not having any more for a year or two.

cazmanian_minx

Happy Friday everyone It was mortgage payment day yesterday, so another lump has disappeared, leaving us with a couple of quid over £121,000 to go - I suspect I'll cave in at some point in the next week and and use one of my Payment A Day payments on DFW to round it down to £121,000 exactly.

The DFW diary is going well and really helping me focus on my spending, so fingers crossed that I'll be back here full time faster than I thought

cazmanian_minx

Just popping in to update the second post with the August mortgage payment - IF has obligingly added on the interest today even though it's a Sunday. Now up to 17% paid off and next month will see us go under £120k

cazmanian_minx

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Just popping in to update the second post with the August mortgage payment - IF has obligingly added on the interest today even though it's a Sunday. Now up to 17% paid off and next month will see us go under £120k

Or not :o:o

Yes, we've lowered the mortgage payment. We always knew that we had to come up with £10k for May 2013, which is when our croft becomes available to buy, and last year (or it might have been early this year, I can't remember) I rang up IF to check that we could borrow it back from our overpayments. Computer says no. Why? Apparently the value of our house has dropped by about £40k, leaving us with a 97% LTV. They did offer us the opportunity to have their surveyor come out and revalue the place, but he would have been coming up from Edinburgh and it would have cost a fortune, so despite the fact that we don't believe their valuation is correct (which would appear to be borne out by my neighbours just selling their 2 bed holiday cottage down the road for the full asking price of £3k less than we paid for this 3 bed plus 1 bed annexe), it's not worth splashing out £500+ to be told we're wrong.

At the time, I suggested to Mr Minx that we lowered the mortgage payment by £500 and put it into the offset instead. It would have the same effect of lowering the interest paid and the money would be there when we needed. "Oh no," he said. "I don't want to risk not paying the mortgage off in time. Don't worry, once I've finished paying off this card, I'll be able to put £1000 a month aside and it'll all be fine."

Fast forward to last month when I discovered that the card in question's balance had increased to £9.5k and he'd spent all his savings on building a shed and buying the pony (I would NEVER have let him buy Finn if I'd known where the money was actually coming from!). I threw a bit of a strop (understatement!) and £500 a month is now going into the offset account that's in my name to stop him being tempted. We'll have £500 in the loose change account by May (£385 at the moment), we have another £500 my brother gave us for a wedding present and I'll either have to max out my overdraft facility for the remaining £4,500 or my mother has offered to lend us the money for it (without knowing that we messed up on the saving for it front) - but I'd feel really bad about doing that, even though she says she can easily afford it (and she's not kidding, she has about five holidays a year).

It's why I'm currently dithering about signing up for the next MFi3 challenge - I think I'm going to be sorting this mess out and continuing to pay off my debt for at least the first year of it.

cazmanian_minx

Mortgage payment day

Not much to report other than the non-mortgage debt is reducing nicely and the guy we're buying our croft from now wants the money in March rather than May, which shoves a bit of a spanner in the works, but we'll work round it somehow

cazmanian_minx

A day late with the mortgage update thanks to the IF website playing up, but it's working this morning. Daily interest is down to £5.10 thanks to us having nearly £8000 in the offset - this is down to my lovely mother who refused to hear of us borrowing any money to pay for the croft and has lent us £7,000 interest free.

We're quite close to two small milestones: paying off £25k which should happen next month and dipping under £120k left to pay which will be January or February.