Goodbye Mortgage - the beginning of the end!

Beckyy

£55 OP'd. current balance: £95,546.06

Managed to get some Christmas shopping done yesterday. I'd been putting away £50 a month to cover birthday and Christmas presents but its dwindling down and I think I'm going to have to increase it next year as we had some extra occasions to buy for this year.

Bought OH a jumper but it's not quite the right size and the cost of driving back to the shop will be half of the refund so it will have to wait until we go back in that direction.

Trying to figure out if I can get Quidcos Christmas cashback bonus, didn't realise you have to shop at 5 different retailers to get it, will hopefully manage though as haven't had much cashback lately!

Beckyy

Ordered heating oil and logs... hadn't planned to use heating oil now that we have back boiler & stove but will make life easier when we're both at work in the Winter, and we won't be using much. Cant believe how much we have to spend on fuel though, can quite believe that so many people are in fuel poverty.

Switching electricity today from BG to eon. Fingers crossed it goes smoothly!

Have also emailed solicitor with regards to my other uninsured losses in the car accident, have been waiting quite a while now so fingers crossed it won't be long before they cough up - would go a small way towards the heating oil bill anyway!

lilmissmup

Bit off topic but me and OH have been trying for a baby for a year now and still nothing so you never know how long it will take.

I was a bit worried about starting trying due to my debts but I have cleared over £3k on my loan in the time we have been trying....

I am about to switch our tariff but within our supplier, will save us £150 a year!

Beckyy

I hope you get a positive soon lilmissup! That's the thing that's been playing on my mind... if it ended up taking a long time for us to conceive then I'd be happy to start planning everything now, but if I knew it would be within a month or two then I'd be a bit more picky about when we prepared ourselves. It's the aspect of not knowing that throws everything and makes it so hard to judge the best time to start a family.

Got some vouchers in the post from Mr.T today which is handy and I'm intending to do our main festive shop soon. We won't be cooking for anybody as visiting others so won't have to get in huge amounts of things, but I'm hoping to get everything bought as early as possible so I don't have to battle the supermarket when it's absolutely packed and the shelves are half empty, then I just need to worry about fresh things for each week.

£100 OP'd today.
Still need to pay for the heating oil so that's £300 which will disappear, waiting on invoice.

Have finished work for the day so just need to walk the dog then I'm going to do some housework. It always seems to be the day after I've watched Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners that I'm very enthusiastic about it - I wonder if OH will catch on and start playing it to me in my sleep.... :rotfl:

Beckyy

The weather is really not nice today. It's blowing an absolute gale and has been snowing on and off.

Had to get a couple of things from the local shop as I couldn't face driving into the supermarkets in the bad weather for the sake of 2/3 things.

Still no word from the solicitor about the uninsured losses. If I don't hear anything by Monday I'll chase it up again. Hoping for it before Christmas but not sure if that's going to happen now, feels like it never will almost!

I need to think of some more recipes to cook, especially for batch cooking. Can be difficult with a meat eater and a veggie... may have a nosey on the OS board tonight!

Mortgage balance today: £95,524.40

Which means at the moment our daily interest is £11.19. It feels so high when you see it put in writing.

£3.13 TT overpaid. A third of today's daily interest at least!

Beckyy

£1.55 TT OP'd. Mainly from Q mee. I wish it was a bit more but still have to get some Christmas presents so will have to wait until that's all sorted before I see how much I have left over to OP.

I have quite a few things to get done today before work, also making a batch of chilli con carne for dinner tonight and extra portions for the freezer. Aiming to batch cook lasagne and cottage pie soon too as we've just about run out of HM ready meals and they're very handy when I'm working evenings.

Just watching homes under the hammer and it's making me want to buy another BTL more. I do think our best option is probably to rent this one out and buy a new house for ourselves when we want to move though. Just need to get the deposit pot up and the mortgage down at the same time!

My 'Stuff to eBay' pile is every growing but the thought of sitting down and taking photos, listing, workout out postage is putting me off. I really need to get it done though as we could do with the space and the pennies!

Beckyy

Current mortgage balance: £95,585.31

I've decided to aim to OP £2500 during 2014 (£208.33 each month).

Ideally I'd like to get our mortgage down to 70% LTV before the end of our fix which, at current house prices etc. would be £87,500. That should hopefully give us enough equity to get a half decent BTL interest rate if we do go ahead and let this house out. This OP target should set us up to be in about the right position, or extremely close to it at least.

We will also need to start saving seriously for the deposit on our next house so that that plan can work. So anything above the target OP will go into savings instead as we will need as much as we can to put towards our next house.

We're hoping to get a new door fitted soon. Ours is old and lets in a huge draught so it should make a big difference. We've had a good quote so will hopefully be getting it fitted in the next month or so. There aren't many other home improvements that we need to do, although there are bits and pieces we would like to change we will have to weight up the options as it would still be an investment if we keep this house.

Beckyy

I've also decided that I would like to save £5000 during 2014. This will be a big challenge for us as will mean OPing £208.33 per month for mortgage target and also saving £416.66 for savings target. I would prefer to be short on the savings target if it come to one of the two, but fingers crossed we'll make it with both!

BlueMoo

Hi Beckyy :wave:

Been interesting reading your diary as you seem to be where I would like to be in about 3/5 years time. Bigger house/Think about Family etc.

If you are worried about conceiving, it might be worth a quick checkup at the docs just to make sure that everything is ticketyboo. If so, great! If not, then at least it gives you time to start planning etc.

Our current house is ideal for renting, but to be honest barring lottery win (can anyone hear me? :rotfl:) we will haev to seel it for the deposit for our new house. I can still dream though....

Beckyy

Thanks BlueMoo. Definitely a good idea!

Will keep my fingers crossed for your lottery win


I've been doing a last minute online dash for Christmas presents, had to pay extra postage for one of OH's as I left it a day too late for guaranteed free Christmas delivery - not very MSE of me! It's been an expensive month and I'm looking forward to the new year and getting back to a bit of normality without all the extra expenses.

Solicitor is chased up my uninsured losses from car accident, it's barely a couple of hundred pounds but I'd like to see it asap as it will be a months OP for next years target, just.

Just about to do some present wrapping and card writing - getting into the festive spirit now :xmassmile