Challenge of a lifetime!

Polly_Wolly_Doodle

Well done on the airing cupboard and the boys' room!
I attacked both my sons' rooms but have stalled on my daughter's!
Like you it's an old house with no storage space, so we have boxes and crates that are not sympathetic to the house!

Can i ask what prompted the move from sole trader to limited co.? Was it costly to do? xx

cotswoldaccountant

Thanks Tilly and Polly Wolly Doodle!

OH was, I think, quite impressed with my airing cupboard efforts. He is used to me getting half way through a task and leaving stuff everywhere when something else comes up, so he was quite surprised I had got it finished.

PWD - I changed from sole trader to a limited company because it was a more tax efficient was of running my business. It cost me £15 which was the Companies House fee for opening the company. As I'm an accountant it is the kind of thing I do all the time for my clients, so there were no other costs, and it will save me money in terms of tax savings.

Right, internet shop delivered so must pack that away. Never impressed with how little food seems to be delivered for the amount of money spent!

CA

Polly_Wolly_Doodle

Thanks CA, i'm wondering all sorts at the moment re businesses and the whole sole trader v company, car v co. van, etc etc are all swimming around my little head!
It's a shame all my experience is public sector!

LauraJo

Hello!!
Just had a look at your diary and wow what an ambitious target. With such a good start you are well on your way!! Good luck

cotswoldaccountant

Thanks LauraJo, it is great to see the numbers creeping down each month, and reassures me we are not completely mad in our mortgage free ambition!

cotswoldaccountant

Busy busy week here, DS1 birthday, a friend's wedding, lots of other stuff going on and lots of work to do. I can't keep up! Builders are about to start ripping out the walls in the lodger bedroom this afternoon - eek! I'm confident it will look good when all the work is finished though.

NCT sale coming up at the weekend so I have been labelling bits and pieces to sell, including some bulky items like stairgates, which it would be nice to get rid of. Still can't bring myself to sell the cot though - I am not particularly sentimental about these things but I just can't bear to part with it yet...

Nice start to the day with £10.35 Quidco payment and £26 for some expenses I was owed. Will OP if I get two seconds spare today.

Must work hard today - lots to do!

cotswoldaccountant

Monthly phone call to bank today, and our balance is down to £374,624! :j:j:j
Feels really good to have broken the £375k barrier - onwards to £350k. I need to be careful as we are restricted to OPing 10% of the mortgage balance each year, so I won't be able to get quite down to £350k this year, but will make some extra savings in a separate account if we have some spare cash.

Cheque arrived this morning for NCT sale proceeds for £62 which is a really good result - I sold the majority of the things I took there. Another one coming up next weekend which will hopefully offload the rest. It is nice to be rid of some of the clutter!

Expensive week here unfortunately. In the space of a few days, our boiler has died and the car needs so much work doing to it that we may well be better off getting a replacement. So tomorrow's task is trekking round garages - I hate car shopping! So much money for something which just falls apart eventually. I much prefer houses!

So not a lot of OPs to be made this month unfortunately, but hopefully there won't be many more expensive repairs for the rest of the year!

Looking forward to a sunny bank holiday weekend - lots of nice things to do. Dinner with friends tonight (free - at theirs!), a fancy dress party tomorrow (also free, just need to buy a birthday pressie), a good friend coming to stay on Sunday. If we didn't have to buy a car, it would be a very frugal weekend!

CA

cotswoldaccountant

Just updated a spreadsheet that I found, I think through this site, for recording mortgage payments / overpayments / interest rate etc - projected mortgage-free date is currently showing as December 2018. Doesn't sound too far away... I would really love to be mortgage free by the time I am 40, but that is in 2017 so it would have to be a huge effort to bring the date forwards by over a year.... and the current projected date is based on £3k of overpayments every month, on top of the already reduced mortgage term (meaning we overpay automatically as part of our monthly payment, which doesn't use up any of our 10% annual overpayment limit). Sometimes we manage more than £3k a month, sometimes less - but making a regular OP of much more than this is wishful thinking, especially with a broken boiler and broken car!

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

It's hard to believe the progress we can make on clearing the mortgage - fantastic to think that our mahoosive mortgages will be gone so soon :T

Tilly x

LauraJo

Wow that's fab! Being mc by 40 is a great goal! Maybe cut yourself some slack and say you want to be mc when you are 40.... That means you have another 11 months but still a nice round goal he he