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

Pearla*Merle

Hiya Mouche, I've been AWOL for ages (alas) but finally catching up and wanted to drop by and see how you're doing. Hope all is ok in Mouche-land and that life has been a lot cheerier this year? xx

mouche

It appears my diary updates have become an annual affair!


All is well in my world on the surface though I have been struggling with some health issues that I think are down to stress. I had a physical problem that they put down to anxiety/ depression but then the counselling service they referred me to said I wasn't depressed enough and they couldn't help me! So if anyone has any tips to destress a full time working mother of a wonderful but clingy 4 year old, please send them this way!


Work is ok but is becoming increasingly frustrating and stressful. On the other hand my flexible working request has been approved and I now work from home 2 days a week and can do 8 hours of my choosing on those days. Which means when LO starts school in September, I can pick him up twice a week which will be fantastic.


Financially, we are doing fine. The amount of money my in laws need is going up as age and health issues mount. I have had to reduce the money I am putting aside for my son's education to increase what we send them. Which is ok at the moment but it just covers their regular expenses. What we will do if they have an emergency I do not know.


I have been puzzling over what to do for my son's education as well. We had our heart set on private school for him as we were not impressed by the local schools when we went round last year. We can afford primary but secondary will be impossible. We are in a grammar area so we are hopeful he will get into one of those but need a contingency plan if he doesn't. One option is to send him to a local school for three years and throw all the money we have been saving plus the fees into the mortgage. Then send him private from Yr 3 and again throw the extra savings into the mortage. That way we may just be able to pay off the mortgage before he starts secondary, which means we will have the funds to pay fees then if necessary. But it seems like such a huge risk to take. What if one of us loses our job? Or mortgage rates shoot up? Is it easy to get equity out of a house once you have put it in?


I think I might have to formulate my options in a sensible way and post on the mortgage advice board.

mouche

It has been more than a year since my last update - thanks for popping in occasionally pbr, I will be hopping over to your diary after this update to find out what you have been upto!

Life has changed dramatically since my last update. Late last year my role changed at work. It was something I had asked for as I was bored senseless in my old job. My boss was very nice and agreed to let me try out the new role to see if I liked it with the security of going back to my old job if I didn't. As it turned out I didn't like the new job and I didn't want my old job back either - so I quit!

Looking back it seems like such a dramatic step to take but at the time it felt like the only thing to do. I couldn't face doing my old job for one more day and the new one was not what I expected it to be. It was my intention to take a break for a couple of months and then find another job. As it turns out jobs are thin on the ground especially as I am severely limited in the hours and location I can work due to the fact that school runs are my sole responsibility.

So...for now I am a SAHM though I am doing some freelance editing work.

Financially this has meant that we are much worse off. We are operating on what I call out emergency budget which means we are not saving anything (well we are but in the sense of moving money from one savings pot to another rather than adding to the total!). Some months we use some savings, some months we don't.

The good thing is I didn't quit without thinking about this. When we got married, OH had something like £1000 in the bank so I put £1000 from my own savings into the joint account with the idea that we would start from scratch together. I left the majority of my pre-marital savings in India. When I decided to quit my job, I brought those savings over so that I was in effect paying myself enough that we didn't need to dip into joint savings to finance my career break. That savings pot is getting smaller now though so until I find a new job (which I am not hugely keen to do to be honest - I am enjoying this less stressful phase) I need to up my income from home and reduce our outgoings.

We are still overpaying the mortgage but now it's with the idea that we will remortgage and get the money back should we need to for private school fees. And we will stop if things get really tight.

Luckily, OHs job is paying overtime at the moment. It is not guaranteed and they could stop it any moment but for now he is getting about 30-40% more money due to overtime. This is a huge bonus because he would work those hours whether he got paid for them or not - that's the norm in his line of work. Since we earned the same before I quit, the overtime is helping a lot but is not quite enough to make up for the shortfall.

So, here is my plan for now:
Increase Income
1. Keep an eye out for jobs
2. Do as much freelance editing work as I can get - it doesn't pay loads but I think I can make £200-£300 a month from it.
3. Ebay the houseful of tat I haven't had time to do before.

Reduce expenses
1. Join grocery challenge to keep control of costs
2. Think twice before buying anything
3. Wherever possible use vouchers, discount codes etc.

More later!

mouche

Thanks pbr. I was having a bit of an 'I will never find another job ever again' panic this morning and your words made me feel a lot better. Freelancing over the summer is going to be a challenge with DS but I suspect the work will dry up over the summer as well so might as well enjoy it. I have booked him into childcare one day a week for 5 of the 7 weeks of holiday he has. I love him to bits but I suspect we will both need a break from each other occasionally. I am using childcare vouchers to pay for it; I still have some left over from my job and it feels a bit like free money though I know it's really not!

Feel good MSE things today:
1. Reached the end of the month only 76p over my grocery budget. Next month will be even more challenging with my 19 year old nephew staying with us for 6 weeks (he's doing an internship in London).

2. Have an urgent freelance deadline which will prevent me from going out this weekend hence saving money (ok I know that's clutching at straws!)

The bad news is that OHs salary has come in and they haven't paid much overtime this month. About 48 hours worth is missing. He doesn't want to query it as overtime payments were officially stopped a few months ago but he's still getting random amounts. So his logic is if he keeps quiet about it, he might get some but if he queries it, it might stop altogether. Which I guess is fair enough but doesn't make planning easy! Luckily we still have enough in savings to cover the shortfall for July.

mouche

MSE things today:

1. Stuck indoors working on freelance assignment so no costs incurred.
2. Car needed new suspension coils - cost about £250. Grrrr. Plus £5 on taxi for OH to go and pick it up. Double grrrr.
3. OH and LO went to McD and spent about £6; much better than OHs preferred outing to Bluewater which rarely comes in at less than £20.

mouche

It's been so hot this week! I have never missed the air conditioning in the office more. Alas!

Now let me see, what moneysaving have I don since Saturday? Er...not a lot I'm afraid. I completed the freelance assignment so about £110 will be winging it's way to me shortly. But it left me so drained I took 2 days 'off' to recover and now it's the weekend.

I did a shop at Lidl hoping to use the £5 off £30 voucher I had but overestimated their prices so ended up spending less than £30 so no discount. Next time I'll tot it up as I go round!

In fact I have been moneyspending not moneysaving! My mum is coming to visit from India next week. It's her 70th birthday at the end of the month and given that my dad is old and frail and can't be left on his own for long, it may be the last trip she makes to us. So....I decided to fulfil a long held desire of hers and booked us onto a cruise!! Only a mini one (2 nights) as there were no other options in the period she is here but a cruise nonetheless. It will be my first cruise as well so I really hope it goes well. It has pretty much cleaned out my savings though!

I am also planning a trip to Legoland in the first week of the summer holidays for DS. I need to get a pack of the Kellogs cereal that has the 2 for 1 voucher. Once I have that, it will be £90 for the 4 adults (OH, me, nephew, mum) and I can get DS' ticket with Tesco vouchers. I know my mum will give me the £45 for her and nephew so not too bad. I checked out the Q bots but they are so expensive!!! I think DS will just have to learn a valuable lesson in patience.

mouche

Halloween is the perfect day to resurrect this diary right? I am back from the dead and hopefully will spend more time here from now rather than on mumsnet, which is fascinating but such a waste of time!

So what have I been doing in the past year or so? Well to summarise:

• I've gone back to work. In fact Friday is my first anniversary at my 'new' job. I was very lucky to find an interesting, challenging job with a great boss, flexible working, and a significant salary increase on my last job. I am really happy here and can see myself staying here till I retire.
• OH and I spent about 3 months with us both bringing home quite a lot of money from our jobs and feeling super-rich. That all ended when OH decided to quit his job due to many reasons including bullying and mismanagement. I fully supported him in this and in his desire to open his own business.
• In the past year I have realised that OH is a superb chef but a terrible businessman. He does not have the patience or focus to do the boring bits (like doing a business plan, getting professional insurance etc.) I have tried my best to help him but whether it works out remains to be seen.
• The current situation is that he has launched a small business from home in the hope that as it grows, he will be able to hire premises and staff. Note the operative word 'hope' - there is no planning or research behind this. He is also working in collaboration with someone else (separate line of income) who owes him over 2000 pounds for work done (he does pay occasionally but is struggling himself). I treat this business line as a hobby as it brings him great joy - I have put my foot down about him paying costs and waiting for reimbursement though. He can do it for free if he wants to but we don't have the funds to pay for an expensive 'hobby' right now!

So we are starting to struggle financially as my income just about covers all regular expenses (provided we cut back on groceries and treats) and our savings have taken a big hit this year due to a couple of trips to India (necessary and my FIL had a stroke), a replacement boiler (it broke), and an expensive (but glorious) holiday to France. The holiday was booked before OH quit his job and in a way I am glad we went because god only knows what the situation will be like after Brexit.

I don't want to get into politics here but I am very concerned about what things will be like after Brexit. All authorities seem to be in agreement that it will get worse before it gets better. Being in London, I know that my company is no longer hiring here - focusing on Barcelona instead. If there are job losses, they will start here. Which leaves me in a very precarious situation. OH and I have discussed that if things get really bad, we will consider relocating - possibly back to India - but more likely to Canada or Australia. But we have been in the UK for 12 years now and we like it very much, so I do hope that is not necessary.

So anyway, that's why I am back on MSE. So I can tighten the belt as much as possible to get us into a better position. We still have savings but another major expense would wipe us out so we really need to stay in budget every month. And OH needs to make a success of his business. Easier said than done!

Thank you pbr for checking up on me sometimes. I am off to see what you have been upto.

mouche

Today my boss and his boss were here from the US so I had to drag myself into work despite a cough that could wake the dead. They took us out for brunch so no spends on breakfast or lunch today yay! We also had the work 'benefits fair' where all the benefits providers come and tell us about what they offer and hand out freebies. Got a nice water bottle and a bunch of sweets - just what LO needs the day after Halloween!

They were also offering free mini health checks so I got mine done. Apparently, I have a metabolic age of 58 - I am 40 in April!! I have been having a lot of health niggles lately and Google and the doctors have been telling me that losing weight will make a big difference. I want to but really struggle with motivation. I need to find the resilience and the determination to do it.

The benefits fair was really good and I got lots of good information from it. I am going to write it down so that I remember to follow up.

1. The medical insurance people suggested I upgrade my private medical insurance (non-company) from the cheapo version to the premium version (provided they continue to cover the illness that was diagnosed after taking out cover). They said this would be a better option than the company scheme because though it is an excellent scheme, it would not continue after I leave the company and I would have difficulty finding anyone to cover the condition at that point.

2. The critical illness people told me to check the full terms and conditions to see what conditions would be excluded. I have high blood pressure and I suspect they would reject a wide variety of claims so not sure if it is worth getting.

3. They are offering prepaid shopping cards with cashback so need to get onto that. We used this benefit a lot when my husband's company offered it.

4. We get 2 days free emergency childcare a year, and 8 further subsidised days so need to get signed up to that.

5. Need to get a free financial forecast done by the pensions people.

Come to think of it, it was a pretty MSE day:
- NSD
- Freebies at benefit fair
- Free brunch
- Some good advice from the benefits people
- Remembered to place my free matched betting bet club bets before they expired. £11 in the bank.

mouche

Another NSD today. Yippee!

Didn't buy breakfast and snacked instead on goodies brought back by travelling colleagues. Not diet friendly at all but MSE-friendly.

Lunch was probably bought by manager but need to confirm with colleague - might not be an NSD after all. Dinner was in a lovely restaurant and paid for by managers as well.

Saw a weird transaction on my credit card so called the fraud line and had my card cancelled. I will be card-less for 5-7days which might help in reining in the thoughtless spending. My other cc is not contactless and somehow I am more reluctant to use my debit card than my cc.

Spoke to my manager about a payrise. Today is my 1st anniversary at work so I thought it was worth a shot. She said payrises are decided in Spring and depend on the company budget but if they are given out, I stand a good chance as she is happy with my work. So fingers crossed!

mouche

So today was a bit of a spendy day - some expected and some unexpected. OH is catering a private function on Sunday so he did the grocery shopping for the household when he went to get supplies. He says he spent about £15.

Apart from that I spent £5 on a taxi taking LO to drumming as OH got stuck in traffic and couldn't get back in time to drop him. I also spent £15 on a birthday gift for LOs friend.

On the other hand, my afternoon efforts at matched betting had limited success as none of the results that would have triggered bigger winnings happened. So I made a modest £19 on that today.

The function OH is catering tomorrow will put his business back in the black (just!) but orders next week are very low so it's worrying.