Challenge of a lifetime!

cotswoldaccountant

Oh dear, I haven't posted for a very long time have I! Yes we did make it back from Devon, and have been to France for a holiday in the meantime too!

Life is just so frantic - I really should make more effort to update my diary.

Our plans to make a conservatory are coming to fruition - we have planning permission, and builders engaged to start in February.

Our 2 year fixed rate mortgage also ends early next year, and I've just had a very positive appointment with a mortgage adviser who specialises in unusual circumstances - for us, these are having a holiday let as part of our main home, and also both being self employed. Hopefully he will have good news for us and will allow us to remortgage at a reasonable rate. When our mortgage finishes, we should have a balance of £320k, but we want to borrow a further £150k to do all of the planned work at our property. After all the money we have thrown at the mortgage, it will be annoying to see the numbers go up yet again - but I'll just start paying it all off again!

Thanks for stopping in on my diary FloppyDisk - I will endeavour to update more from now on!

cotswoldaccountant

Crumpets wrote: »

I was wondering that too Floppy I hope all is ok with you CA

C x

Thanks for your reply too Crumpets - lovely to hear from you. I keep up to date with your diary often, just never seem to have a chance to post anywhere or anything! I must do better.

Busy day today as it is DS3s birthday (he is 4!!!) as well as the appointment with the mortgage adviser and, as ever, a mountain of work to do.

Pearla*Merle

Hello CA, just popped in to see how you were getting on? Realised we hadn't heard from you in ages - hope all is going well

cotswoldaccountant

How everything changes, and everything stays the same.

My goodness, it is five years since I updated my mortgage free diary. How focused we were on the task at hand, which was to become mortgage free in December 2018!

We were rather distracted from this goal by our building work - we had a lovely garden room added to our home in 2015, and also renovated a second rental property. We've redone our kitchen, but there are still quite a few house projects that we'd like to complete.

In many ways, our lives are fairly similar now to five years ago - we live in the same house, enjoy spending time with the same friends and family, our children are at the same school (although two have moved on to secondary school) and I still run my small accountancy practice, manage the rental properties and volunteer for the same organisation.

But things have moved on - how I laughed when I re-read my diary entries yesterday, where we had thought that our baby days were over, with four small children. Our family has expanded somewhat since then, and we now have DS1 (14), DS2 (12), DD (10), DS3 (8), DS4 (3) and DS5 (3 months!)!!! Returning to the baby and toddler years has been wonderful, but has meant very little time to focus on becoming mortgage-free.

OH took a permanent job last year - rather different after being a contractor for almost 20 years. This has given much more stability to our finances. He still works from home which is very helpful given our ever-expanding family!

Anyway, back to the mortgage. We were accepted for a five year fixed rate mortgage back in 2015, and we also opened an offset mortgage account with the same lender, allowing us to borrow £150k to carry out our various building projects. We used all of this money, but have gradually paid it back over the years, paying off the final chunk a few weeks ago when the liquidation of OH's business was completed - we didn't need the company any more now that he is no longer self-employed.

So we are just left with the fixed rate mortgage, which is a monthly payment of £2300. We have 11 years left on this mortgage, which is at a rate of 3.5% fixed until 30 January 2020. The balance at 31 March this year was £247,084. We have built overpayments into our monthly mortgage payment by taking a reduced term mortgage, but we're not allowed to make any further repayments until the end of the fixed rate period. So anything I can pay off the mortgage between now and 30 January next year needs to be saved in a separate account and paid off as a lump sum when we remortgage.

Having just paid off the overdraft in the offset account, and of course this time we really have completed our family, means now is the ideal time to get back on track with becoming mortgage free.

Please join me on my (slightly delayed!) journey to mortgage freedom!

cotswoldaccountant

I am constantly amazed at how many things we have to pay for nowadays - the idea of a no spend day seems a distant memory! Just been catching up with my banking and have had to pay out £45 for contact lenses for DS2, £10 for a lunch top up for DS3, £1 voluntary contribution to a class activity for DS3, a £25 refund for a guest in the holiday let who booked to bring a dog but then cancelled the dog... An expensive evening! I had an e-mail from Boden telling me they'd processed a refund, but then realised this was for a duplicate order which I made by mistake and would never have kept anyway! Hopefully tomorrow will be cheaper.

OH and I made the most of all the children except DS5 being at school / the childminder and used a Christmas gift voucher to have a delicious lunch out at a lovely local restaurant. What a treat! We did have to pay a little on top of the voucher value, for drinks and coffee etc, but it was well worth it. I've been half asleep for the rest of the day because of it though - an afternoon nap would have been rather nice, but sadly no chance of that, as DS5 has his second set of infant jabs this morning and has been particularly grumpy this afternoon (luckily he slept through lunch in a calpol-induced stupor!)

Tropically

Well done from having a £570k mortgage in 2007 to £250k-ish in 2019 including an extension! It's also really nice to have people come back to their diaries after a while so we can get an update. I do confess that the idea of more children than hands makes my eyes widen, especially with 5 sons! Do you still have the two rentals or did you acquire some more?

cotswoldaccountant

Thanks Tropically! Luckily my boys are not as boisterous as some - to be quite honest, I find all five of them put together easier to manage than my daughter, who is full of 10 year old "attitude"!

Yes we just have the two rental properties which we rent out as short term holiday lets. We did do B&B for a while (for a few years after I last updated my diary) which was a nice little income stream - and tax free under the rent a room allowance, but it really isn't compatible with a baby and toddler in the house, so we stopped the B&B earlier this year. Perhaps one day we'll have a lodger again, but in the short term I think we'll need to use the room as a children's bedroom, once DS3 decides that it is not fun sharing with his two much younger brothers (I'm thinking this will happen in about 2 years!).

Moneyfordreams

really enjoyed reading you MSE story... Congratulations on your additions to your family. You are amazing... I hope to here more from you

cotswoldaccountant

Thank you MfD! I started reading your diary during DS5's 3.30am feed last night and will subscribe - I think it will take me a while to get up to date with all of the diaries, but is a good way of keeping myself awake in the early hours!

cotswoldaccountant

As the week continues, the expenses carry on... We have a lot to pay out each week for children's activities and music lessons etc - an inevitable consequence of having so many children I suppose! Only the four oldest do clubs at the moment, and nothing unusual at that - they generally do a couple of sports clubs, Brownies/Cubs/Scouts and music lessons - two instruments and theory lessons for DS1 and DS2, and one instrument for DD and DS3.

When I despair of the seemingly constant spending on activities, I remind myself that had we had just one or two children, we might have thought seriously about sending them to private school, but we have excellent state primary and secondary schools on the doorstep, so we are really very lucky that they can go to good schools for free, and all we need to pay for is their out of school activities, school trips etc. There are loads of free clubs on during and after the secondary school day as well! We have a few friends who have chosen private education, and it sounds incredibly expensive - not just the fees, but extras such as uniform, sports kits, holidays and clubs.

I am pleased to have got on top of some long-overdue admin in my business over the past couple of days - I hadn't reviewed my fees for years, and have now streamlined my standard charges and put up fees where this is justifiable. The clients who have got back to me so far seem quite happy with the new charges, so I think they had probably expected a fee increase well before now! With a little more money coming in to the business, I am planning to take sufficient out over the rest of the year to reduce the mortgage to under £200k by the time we remortgage in January 2020.

Nice to see a bit of sunny weather for a change - it has been so miserable recently!