Keeping up appearances.......

jvr

Hi all


Sorry also been a bit absent! Sounds like things are as hectic as every, fingers crossed or holding thumbs as they say in SA for your listed building consent!
Glad you had a fab holiday Honey... I LOVE Barcelona, me and my sister went last year for a few days and it was amazing as ever!

joeyjimbles

Hello all.
The rooms of doom are being decorated this week - I am spattered in various shades of antique white, pale blue and grey - so have been off-line most of the time.
Hope all is going well in Happy-land and elsewhere. Stress still ongoing here but hoping professionals are going to start doing their thing soon and help us (don't mean to be elusive but too personal to share) - weight seems to have stabilised however and I am eating more and more regularly though sleep is still scattered. It has to get better before too much longer - I'll pin my hopes on that.
Right must get back to the rollers and paint trays.

Honey_Bear

Hi Happy! :wave:

Just wondered how life was treating you, because you haven't posted in quite a while. I hope it's just that life is too busy but all is well.

HappyNow

Sorry for the absence and thanks to those who have dropped by in the meantime

No major disasters, but life has been so, so busy and I'm feeling a bit wiped out by it all.

Have you ever watched Grand Designs, where the property owners start off all excited and bursting with enthusiasm, then as the programme goes on they become more and more weary with a slight grey-ish tinge? Well that. But the design isn't especially grand and we were somewhat grey before we even started.

We got Listed Building consent through a few weeks ago and have been doing lots of hard labour ourselves to keep the costs down. We've sold some more of our neighbours old stuff and it's brought the house budget up to around £30K which should be enough, but we can't be sure until the builder starts. He's someone we know and very honest and flexible so I'm pleased with that - he also knows that if we run out of budget we've built in some 'stop points', so he's helping us to keep the costs down. I am still enjoying it though and no regrets yet. The target is Christmas dinner in the new dining room!

Lots of other stuff to report but I have to jump in the shower ready for work, which is also frantic.

Anyway, signature updated and the unsecured debt is now below £19K.

Honey_Bear

Those figures look fabulous, Happy!

You were rushed off your feet before you decided to remodel Chez Now, so how you're coping with all of the extra work is beyond me. I hope it goes as smoothly as possible. No wonder you haven't been posting, but it's good to know nothing has dented your enthusiasm for life!

HappyNow

Honey_Bear wrote: »

how you're coping with all of the extra work is beyond me. No wonder you haven't been posting, but it's good to know nothing has dented your enthusiasm for life!

Hmm, well my enthusiasm is very slightly dented, to be completely honest! The house project has completely taken over my life and I think about it from the moment I wake up to the moment I (try to) fall asleep. We still have no regrets about doing it and would choose the same again, but we hadn't appreciated what a massive task it is on a tight budget.

Looking around, the place is unrecognisable from when we started and we've only spent about £1500 so far - but the builders are due to start in June and then the real spending will start! I'm not worried about overspending because we are both determined to stick to our budget - I'm more worried we won't get as far as we want to before we have to apply the brakes.

Signature updated for May and by the end of this month I will have more time to update my diary regularly because most of my manual work will be done. The plus side to all this hard labour is that I've accidentally lost half a stone!

Honey_Bear

Doing so much of the work yourselves at this stage means that you've been thinking about it rather more than if you just pointed the builders in the general direction of the house and said, 'Make it lovely for me, please.' Besides the exhaustion of biting off rather more than you'd thought, all of the work you've done so far will put you way ahead of the game when they do start in June, so hopefully you won't be stumped when tricky complications arise, as they always do.

If there's one thing I learned about having builders in it's that if they can keep the chaos to as few areas as possible that always helps. It's a bit like decluttering and creating lovely space though - as soon as there is a space somewhere, someone will want to put something in it like tools or supplies and then they take root. Is there an area you can keep civilizeed so that you can run away and shut the door once the builders start? I think the worst combination possible would be to have the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen all undergoing the saw at the same time. Rhetorical question - ask me how I know!

Great figures again this month. I still marvel at how much your unsecured debt is diminishing. I hope you're giving yourself a huge pat on the back each time you update the figures. Excellent news about the disappearing poundage.

Honey_Bear

I realise you are probably still up to your armpits in dust, carpenters' tools, plasterers' accoutrements and plumbers' kit and therefore unable to clamber over the mountain of stuff to reach the computer, but if you get a moment could you just let us know you're still coping?

HappyNow

Honey_Bear wrote: »

I realise you are probably still up to your armpits in dust, carpenters' tools, plasterers' accoutrements and plumbers' kit and therefore unable to clamber over the mountain of stuff to reach the computer, but if you get a moment could you just let us know you're still coping?

Oops, it's been a while, apologies!

Yes, still coping thanks . You're spot on about the dust, carpenters' tools and plumbers kit. Not quite ready for the plasterers' accoutrements yet, but it won't be long now.

Lots to update on, but as this is a moneysaving site let's start with the dosh. The inheritance changed things a bit, so we blew £400 on an independent financial advisor a while ago. It was money well spent and it changed our thought processes. Turns out, we're going to be rather wealthy in the future. We could be rather wealthy now if we did the sensible thing and moved house. We could take early retirement and have a lovely lifestyle in a lovely (smaller) house with several holidays per year etc etc. It took us about two minutes to agree that we're NOT that sort of sensible and we really want to live here for another decade or so.

The IFA also did an overhaul of Mr H's pensions, and we were somewhat surprised at how they've grown while we weren't looking! And my final salary pension will be quite generous. The upshot is, we have a plan. Briefly and simplified:

• We carry on as we are for the next 16 months. Minimum payments on the debts though as they're all on 0% and there's no need to stress over them!!! <-- Yes, I really wrote that!
• In Jan 19 (co-incidentally, just before the DFD I had always planned!) we will both either take early retirement or, if we prefer, just work part-time. My works pension will kick in (without reduction for taking it early because of my length of service) and pay out a lump sum to clear the remaining debt and still leave around £10K. My monthly pension along with drawdown from Mr H's pensions will easily cover us until standard pension ages, and there will be a good chunk left over.
• Our annual income after that will be approx. £30K at today's prices.
• When we feel like it, we can sell this place for a fortune and live happily ever after.
• Until then, we can use the new pension freedoms to draw down any shortfall needed from Mr H's pot to finish off the house. This probably won't be necessary.
• We will be able to give our kids a helping hand (but only a small one - they need to fend for themselves).

That all looks very nice written down .

Honey_Bear

Do you know what, Happy, I think I'm going to be smiling for the rest of the day! That's such wonderful news. You've paid off more than 50% through sheer hard work, so you know you can manage money like an award-winning tightwad but you don't have to any more if you need a bit of a splurge, like two Fry's Peppermint Bars instead of one. You've been a fabulous neighbour and your lovely neighbour showed his appreciation when you took on Donkey Dog and his attached oversized, very adaptable, kennel. You rolled up your sleeves and got on with the chaotic disruption of turning the house/kennel into the potentially palatial pad it can be and to cap it all you went to an expert who read your fortune. (See what I did there?) I'm so pleased for you, it's just lovely hearing your marvelous news so thank you so much for the update.

And how utterly marvelous that you can be comfortable with the idea of paying off the minimum payments on the debts for another sixteen months or so to get to the place that you intended to be anyway, and then make the most of your assets and opportunities with Mr Happy in the place you both love. I think that's pretty much what most of us would be aiming for, if we're honest.

The idea of lots of foreign holidays may seem glamorous viewed from the dentist's waiting room with a dog-eared copy of Hello but quite frankly that's always looked like running away from an everyday life to me, searching for something that isn't there. Fun to dip a toe into occasionally but it's not a life I find tempting. Maybe that's just age. Saga cruise, anyone?