Mouche’s adventures with her first mortgage (while coping with her first baby)

tootoo

fab news!
A friend used to bus trip to an from work for around 1hr.
He was soon used to it, hopefully the same will apply for you

And I second the cleaner!!

poorbutrich

Congrats to your OH Mouche!

mouche

Thank you very much everyone - don't know why my thanks got chopped off my last post! We are very happy in the mouche household and as you say tootoo, I daresay we will get used to the new routine soon. I wish my OH had a 9-5 job but I'd rather be married to him with his all hours job than be married to someone else with normal hours.

On the MSE front, Friday and Saturday were very expensive thanks to celebrations! Out grocery shop included a bottle of wine for the people who invited us for lunch on Sunday – we almost never buy alcohol because we drink at home very rarely so the cost did surprise me a bit. Plus we stocked up on nappies and wipes. The nursery provides nappies and wipes so our consumption has dropped dramatically. We may have enough now till toilet training. Grocery shop wasn’t too bad – now that we have started using the local Saturday market, fruit and veg costs much less. We managed in £26 odd - £6 odd on fruit and veg. We then proceeded to spend £25 eating out on Saturday plus £6 on getting the car washed! But I guess we needed to let go a little after being very restrained for a month. It’s not like we had dinner at the Ritz!

Sunday lunch was very pleasant. These are people we met recently so was nice to get to know them a bit better. Will need to return the invite soon but need to get the house cleaned first! I will take the advice of all of you get a cleaner in for a one off clean at any rate. Also, our sofa is falling to bits. We have three sofas but each piece belongs to a different suite! And individually they are well past their best. But sofas are expensive and OH has his heart set on a leather automatic recliner. Should we buy a cheaper suite so that guests don’t injure themselves sitting down? OR should we buy the suite-of-dreams and blow the bank. (I would never take a payment plan on anything other than a house – I prefer to save up and pay for things up front in case things go horribly wrong and I can’t repay.) Decisions decisions!

My ISA has now transferred over to one paying 1.1% more interest – it was quite quick so I need to get OHs done now. I wonder why I dithered so long previously? It’s been earning next to nothing for years. My regular mortgage payment has gone out so I have updated my signature. Did a small TT as well. We are under 178K now. I wish we could get to 175K by the end of the year but I think it will be too much of a stretch. I think I’ll try to set an ‘unofficial’ target of getting the mortgage down by ‘a year’ by the end of the year. This is not as ambitious as it sounds as all I mean is that currently the mortgage is due to finish in Feb 2036; I’d like to get it down to December 2035. Which is ambitious enough given the state of our finances!

mouche

Well OHs first day at work went well. My first day on nursery duty went less well (train cancelled; standing room only for first 30 min in alternative train). Did manage to get there in time but took a taxi home with LO as I was tired and LO has a chesty cough. So £4.50 gone there. In fact I have decided that we will be taking a taxi every day as I don’t see how I am going to manage a heavy work bag (need to carry laptop everyday as I never know when I will need to work from home and care for LO), a handbag and LO on a bus and then on the walk home from the bus stop. I will attempt it in the summer if I haven’t passed my driving test by then but I can’t summon up the enthusiasm at this time of year. I know it’s a big expense but my mum has offered me £300 towards it and I will pay the rest from my personal spends. I’d rather eat less chocolate than take the bus home! Fortunately, it looks so far like OH will be able to drop LO off on his way to work so fingers crossed.

Have also bought a monthly parking permit for the station for OH to park – he won’t be able to drop LO if he has to come home and leave the car at home – he won’t have time. But that expense is budgeted for so not worried.

I need to get on top of my pensions now. I have dutifully paid into the company pension here and at my previous company but I have no idea of account numbers, current value or anything. I’ll be 35 in April so still a while to go for retirement but just want to make sure I have all the information on my finances readily available.

On the good news front, EDF have finally corrected my meter reading. The amount I owe doesn’t seem to have changed in my online account though. They say it reflects payments not expenses unless I provide a meter reading. Well I’ve provided a meter reading so update the amount please! Maybe I need to wait a bit longer.

tootoo

Sorry it didn't go well for you.
is a pushchair not an option for help with bag etc?
I'm sure you'll soon be in the swing of things, but do whatever makes it easier for you - if thats a taxi then so be it!

mouche

Thanks tootoo. I think a pushchair will be needed though I will need to check with the nursery if they have room to store it. Though I suppose I could leave it in the car and collect it from the car park using the spare car key. For now though LO has a very bad cough so I think it will have to be taxis.

I have taken two days off (today is my second) just to relax. I am a very stressy kind of person by nature and I have really been struggling mentally for a few weeks and somehow it didn't all get better when OH found a job. So I am at home trying to wind down and feeling guilty about sending a poorly LO to nursery when I am at home. I know OH is right when he says LO loves it at nursery and will feel less sorry for himself if he's busy playing. But still. Yesterday I took him to the out of hours doctor only to be told it was viral so no prescription and then to lose my phone on the way home. I spent the whole evening trying to cancel it and crying over the fact that I hadn't put any security measures on it. This mornng OH got a text from the taxi company saying that they found it in the cab (we had rung to ask yesterday but at that time they said they couldn't find it). I am so relieved even though I have already paid £5 to havthe old SIM cancelled and anew one sent out. Thank god I couldn;t get through last night to have the phone itself blacklisted!

So anyway, I have opened a new ISA for OH - they rate has gone up since I opened mine. Not fair! Now I need to fill up his transfer form and the majority of our savings will start earning a few more pennies. I have also signed up for online access to my pension accounts from my old company. I don't know much about pensions but the one with the most money in it has grown by 22% in a year. That certainly looks good. I also need to get online access to my current pension - the amount on my Benefits website at work is significantly less than I have paid in but I am not sure if the benefits website is updated regularly.

gallygirl

Missed your post re sofas. I got mine from M and S. had the cash but they did 2 years interest free credit so took that option and paid the cash off the mortgage :T. Then at the end of the 2 years I carried on with the payment every month - into the mortgage :T. Because I paid it off monthly and have carried on paying the same amount I'm no better/worse off. I don't feel as if I paid for them, therefore they must be free. In my confused little world :rotfl:.

MoneyMission

Hi Mouche

Just a quicky to say you're doing so well. You're both working hard and taking care of your little one. A couple of days downtime here and there is not a luxury - its a necessity!

Missed the news about OH's new job. That is fantastic. :T:T

MM
x

mouche

Thank you gallygirl and MoneyMission. OH is happy at his new job and his hours aren't as bad as they could have been. He is able to drop LO off every morning and even manages to pick him up a couple of times a week.

Which has been very useful as I am just up from a 10 day spell of ill health. The worst of which was developing labyrinthitis. It is the worst thing ever and left me bedridden for three days. Thank God for OH as he did everything for LO for those three days - thank God they were weekdays.

Am recovering now and working from home - looking forward to the end of the month and paydays as I need to know how much exactly OH will be getting in order to refine the budget. Which has suddenly expanded to eat all OHs extra wages. Amazing how costs increase to meet available income!

Seriously though, the new budget has a hefty bit saved for LOs education. If we can keep it up with no job losses etc., we may just be able to manage private school at primary stage for him. I had budgeted £200 regular OP as well but I'm afraid we did go sofa shopping after all and spent £1000 more than we budgeted for.... Still, we now have (or will have once it's delivered) a three seater, a two seater and a single sofa, which is what we needed. They...er...also have power recliners on two of the three seats in the three seater and a manual recliner on the single seater. Which is why we bought it really - it was on Clearance and anything slightly similar was one three seater and one two seater, no recliners for £2000 (our original budget). We got a lot more bang for our buck but now we have a two year interest free loan - not something I ever wanted to get into. Still, it's done now and we will finally own something more expensive than my annual travelcard! We will be paying £117 back per month to the finance company and £25 back to our own savings that had to be raided for the deposit.

On other news, I put £50 of the accumulated cashback on incahoot onto my M&S gift card - that will do us for Christmas. I have also signed up to another year on incahoot - the membership fee has doubled since last year but still only £16.49 through my company's benefit scheme. I earned £82.40 in cashback plus got about £30 rebate on Morrison's vouchers. So just under £100 of savings in a year after you take the membership fee off. I'll take that thank you very much. Have to decide what to do with the remaining £32.40 of cashback - use it for grocery shopping or withdraw it and OP ....decisions decisions.

Also did a mid-month review of the bank accounts for the first time. Will be doing that again as I now know we can only spend £20 on groceries and £50-odd on all household expenses this month. Should be manageable - only 11 days left and we won't NEED more than milk, bread and eggs. What we will want is another thing altogether.

tootoo

Hi mouche - still getting on well.
Hope you're recovering ok.