Going to get rid of my mortgage!

bbh30

A no spend day for me, great! The kids had dinner at the neighbours (hooray!), husband had a big business lunch so only me to cook for tonight. I just had a jacket potato so minimal food spend.

Fairly good day at work, followed by (another) house viewing. We seem to be getting loads of viewings recently but still no offers.

Nothing else to report really, just still plugging away, another OP made today. The kids have been invited out to tea both tomorrow and Thursday so I am really going to have a cheap week feeding them!

bbh30

Do you remember that Swinton overcharged me when I paid my car insurance?? I rang up to complain and it turned out I was overcharged by 25p!!!! Anyway, they phoned me today and said they had listened to the phone call where I renewed my insurance and I was right (ha ha I knew I was!!) and that they were going to send me £10 as a goodwill gesture! Good on Swinton, Im really pleased, they were very apologetic and didn't make me feel like I was being really petty at all!
I had to go to Sainsburys this morning to get some ingredients for work, managed to get the cash back within about 10 mins of arriving into work so a cost neutral trip without having to wait a month for expenses, woot!
The children ate dinner at a friends today so no feeding them needed, I took my soup to work for lunch as usual but a colleage had takeaway pizza and offered me some of that so I left my soup in the fridge and will have that tomorrow- so free lunch for me! I just made a chicken curry for dinner, fairly quick and simple, chicken, onion, mushrooms and curry paste.

Our SKY box (which we now use for freesat but kept the recording/pausing etc function) has been really dodgy since we swapped to freesat. I rang up to complain and they have offered us £5! Better than nothing! I think Ive done quite well out of companies today. I also rang up to complain about a bottle of pepsi that had gone flat (unopened) about 2 weeks ago and they sent me £5 of vouchers to buy more pepsi- not bad for an initial purchase of 89p. I would never complain if it wasn't genuine, but I do think it is worth complaining- I used to be apathetic but now I feel genuinely annoyed if I had spent money on something and it dosn't do what it said on the tin!

Spendless

Yay good on swinton (and sky and pepsi -lol). £18 for 3 sandwiches and drinks -yikes! Though thinking about it £2 for a drink and £4 for a sarnie isn't unusual when eating out - it's the x3 when you think. :eek: Some people have a 'grab bag' in their house, with individually wrapped snacks and drinks - always assuming you are allowed to take them in.

Are you getting feedback from your EA about why you are getting viewings but no offers?

btw - my now 13yo son :eek: made jam tarts at school in food tech yesterday. Over 30 years ago my own teacher told a girl off for choosing to do them in class, cos she said they were 'too easy' but I don't mind. It was the first time son had made pastry. I read the ingredients expecting to find ready made pastry' in there and was pleased I didn't.

bbh30

Glad your boy made pastry! We do pastry - jam tarts- with our year 7s and they really enjoy it! I always tell them they can fill them with whatever they want- some of them make mini quiches.

Today I was making enquiries about my tax underpayment. From my research it appears that my employer may actually be liable to pay this as it was their fault the tax code was applied incorretly- HMRC sent them the correct code at the beginning of the year but due to a system error it was applied incorrectly.
I am going to fight this- nobody robs me of £126 due to their error and gets away with it!! Luckily my wonderful MIL is a tax accountant and she has been able to give me all the legal side so I know I am in the right. I did speak to payroll on the phone today and they were incredibly rude to me, now I have my facts I will speak to them tomorrow.

A small OP of 6.95 made today, just a bank tidy up. Got another house viewing tomorrow, an appointment with an estate agent (we are considering changing agent), need to go to work, swimming lessons, then out to a friends in the evening. Busy day!

bbh30

Spent ages on the phone talking to payroll etc and it turns out I still have to pay my tax underpayment. They have now agreed to allow me to pay it over 11 months but the whole thing still pees me off.

Spent £50 filling up my tank, at least I got some nectar points and hopefully that should last me until the end of term. Had another viewing this afternoon, I dont think it went especially well. We have got an appointment tomorrrow to discuss part exchange of our house with a new build but unless they knock a significant amount off the purchase price of the new build, there is no way we will be able to afford to do that.

I just feel a bit stuck between a rock and a hard place. I can either spend several thousand replacing the windows and painting the walls here but there is still no guarantee that it will sell. We can change agent (although Im not totally convinced that will help, as we are getting lots of viewings. Currently we are using an online agent). I just want somebody to make the decisions for me!

We have another viewing booked for tomorrow morning, Ive told the husband I am taking the kids out for a babychino and he can do the viewing and associated tidying as I am FED UP WITH IT!!!!

Off out to see my friend in a bit, had last nights leftovers for dinner and made some pizza whirls with a bit of leftover pastry and passata and cheese. Tomorrow I plan to make some more bread as we have none now.

Spendless

Do the rooms need re-painting and are the windows bad? Painting shouldn't cost you too much, if you do it yourself. There is a house selling board on the forum if you after more specific advice.

bbh30

The house has a brand new kitchen, and hallway and landing was repainted and carpeted about 6 months ago. We have repainted and redecorated every single room since we have been here.. but some of the rooms we did first probably need freshening up a bit. Its all very neutral. The windows do need doing- they are double glazed but its old double glazing with metal frames and they have lead crosses on them which blocks out some of the light.

Anyway, I think we have a plan forward so I feel a bit better. The new build is a complete no go as the part ex offer on our house was too low to make a fair offer on theirs. We did make a silly offer but they (unsurprisingly) said no! We are meeting with 2 new estate agents next week, we are going to change agents and keep it on the market for 12 weeks. If it hasnt sold by then with a new agent, we will take it off the market, spent the next year clearing as much of the mortgage as we can and replace the windows here, before putting it back on the market next spring.

I spent a little money today- £5 at the market this morning topping up on some fruit. The boy child needed some new goggles for swimming but insisted he wanted to buy them with his own money (he has birthday money)- I was prepared to pay for them but he was insistent!

I could have spent a lot more money that I did, Im glad I restrained though. Made a £6.40 OP bank tidy up.

Ive got soo much work to do tomorrow, the husband says he is taking the kids out so I can have a lie in for mothers day, but I will just spend the morning marking coursework projects, it takes ages and is dull as ditchwater but needs to be done!

Ive got 2 big packs of minced beef out of the freezer which is drefrosting now, I plan to cook it all tomorrow making portions of chilli, spag bol, meatballs, burgers which I can then refreeze for easy meals. Husband is moaning we only eat boring food so I need to make things more interesting. Im not going to do a big shop until next weekend but Im trying to plan more interesting meals- that don't cost the earth and don't use ingredients that are out of season or a tiny amount of some random spice Ill never use again.

bbh30

Well things have turned on their head again! The lady from the new build development rang us back today and said that they are now considering the offer we put in yesterday, and will give us a final decision when they have spoken to their manager tomorrow. Maybe they thought we were bluffing when we said we would walk away if they didnt do it for that price- who knows- but we offered them 30k under the asking price so we shall see what they come back with tomorrow.
I have had a very busy day. Started off in the middle of the night with the boy child saying he had a tummy ache and then sitting on the toilet for half an hour. God knows how but he managed to block the toilet and it was literally millimetres from flooding the bathroom. Cue me sitting with a coat hanger down the u-bend at 2am but was not able to unblock it. As we have no other toilet here, I ended up gaffa taping it shut as I knew the kids would just use it first thing in the morning. Had to send them next door first thing in the morning to use the loo!
As soon as the shops opened we headed to screwfix to get some implements for unblocking the toilet- I also popped to tesco to get some stuff for work tomorrow, then home again. Luckily the husband took over at this point and managed to unblock the toilet and I spend the rest of the day doing my batch cooking for the week.

I have made 8 portions of tomato and lentil soup, 8 portions of chilli con carne, 8 portion of bolognese sauce, 20 bread rolls, 2 pizzas and I was going to make a carrot cake but the husband decided as it was mothers day, he was going to make the carrot cake. Sadly for him, he wouldnt take any of my advice on cooking at the carrot cake is now sitting lopsided in the kitchen- but it tastes nice!

I ordered the girl child's birthday present online also- it was on offer and I managed to get an extra 15% off using a discount code so spent £90. Ive bought her a dressing table and a stool- its a white one and will match her bed, and its not a "kids" dressing table so hopefully it will last her a long time, into teenager hood and beyond. Its got drawers for storage space and she can use it as a desk for drawing etc also so I am quite pleased with it.

bbh30

We had our offer accepted by the new build people! I actually can't believe it- it was soo much under the asking price. Now Im actually quite terrified- Im meant to be reducing my mortgage but instead Im going to be increasing it!

The thing is, we put in our maximum offer and didn't make any allowances for stamp duty so now we have got to find 10k for stamp duty. The house hasnt started being built yet and they reckon it wont be finished until Sept time so that will give us time to save up. Unless we can persuade them to include stamp duty. We are going in on wednesday to sort it all out with them, we also definately need flooring and turf included also.

Anyway, that aside, I will still keep trying to OP this mortgage, may as well pay off as much as I can whilst I can.

I went to Sainsburys this morning as their disney dvds were on bogof- I wanted to buy some. I bought 101 dalmations for the girl childs birthday party, bought cinderella for her to open on her bithday, then I also bought wall-e and pinnochio which I will put aside until christmas. I don't think Ive ever bought an xmas present in march before!! I do love love love disney, we took the kids to disneyland paris in october and I would love to take them to florida but I think that is a way off yet!

Just watching superscrimpers again, I swear that miss m is actually really thick and the advice she gives out she gets from here anyway.

Dinner was spag bol from my big cook off yesterday, Ive also got a nice cheesecake for pudding which I made at work earlier! Just realised that the husband will get paid next friday so this month will finish much earlier than I anticipated which is good.

bbh30

I think we have definately decided that we are going to go for the new build and part exchange of our current house. It means we will be borrowing an extra £127k which is hugely scary. We will port our current mortgage to that property and then borrow the rest. I am absolutly terrified but once we are in that property then I will continue to overpay the mortgage. For now, I am going to stop OPing the mortgage and put the money into a savings account as we will need the extra money for general moving costs. We will have to tighten our belts even more than they currently have been. No summer holiday for us this year and the husband has even agreed not to go on one of his best friend's stag do in order to save money!

The good thing is that the build hasn't started yet and wont be finished until October- that is fine with us as it gives us plenty of time to save up more money. So this diary might now change from a MF diary into a savings diary and will revert back into a mortgage free diary once we are in the new house.

But I guess the money saving will have to continue and it is going to be even tighter from here on in, literally every single penny will go into savings. Im not quite sure how we can stretch our food budget even more but I will find a way!

I've had a NSD today, no OPs made. Feeling a bit under the weather like I am coming down with a cold or something so going to go off to bed now and have an early night.