My MF Challenge

Beckyy

Welcome back - glad the building work went well and the dogs are getting along

MallyGirl

Back after a long gap! I switched pc, forgot my password and it has been very painful to get access back to this account - I have lurked in the meantime.


We have made inroads into the mortgage since hitting the peak of £238k plus CCs. Now it looks like DH is being made redundant on Friday so that is bye bye to 2/3rd of our household income. Gulp.
Hopefully he will find something else fairly quickly. We should be able to live on my salary if we are sensible but we won't be paying off any mortgage. Once again I am grateful for the flexible mortgage even if we are paying a higher APR for the privilege.


Plusses:
DH won't be travelling abroad for work in near future so we get to spend some family and couple time together
DD still loves school
The dogs are loving the colder weather
We still love the extension we added


Minuses:
The garden is still a work in progress, and the dogs love to dig
I have had to give up the allotment now that I have started working full time
DH is very stressed and just wants the consultation period over so that he can move on.

Beckyy

Just game across your diary again Mallygirl, how are things going? I hope your DH has found another job.

MallyGirl

Back after another long gap!

OH was unemployed for 5 months which was not a happy time but then he secured a 3 month contract, which became a 12 month contract fairly soon after he started. He just needed to get his foot in the door to show that his lack of knowledge in the niche industry didn't matter as his skills were transferable. Last month (after 10 months there) they converted it to a permanent job which is great. It is not as much money as he used to get but he is much happier. Plus we didn't need to spend all of the redundancy money before he got the contract.

2 of our 3 endowments have paid out this year - one left next January - so we have a much clearer idea of where we are and it is good.
I am back to stoozing to make our money work harder so I have approx. £28k on 0% cards for the next 2 or 3 years.

Plusses:
DD still loves school - GCSE options have just been finalised
We still love the extension we added
DH's new job involves no foreign travel
I finally got a dog training permit for my local forest so I bought a van and got it all kitted out with crates etc to just get up and go if it is cold enough on a Sunday morning

Minuses:
The dogs are hating the warmer weather

Mortgage stands at £80k (plus the £28k stooze pot) and DH still has some money in the company account to pay himself once end of year/corporation tax etc is all sorted. We could be clear in the next couple of years.

MallyGirl

Another update after a bit of a gap.

The last endowment has now paid out.

Mortgage now stands £9k but will be £17k by the end of the month due to a massive credit card bill and some money being moved to savings accounts. For the first time we have savings of £10k which are in 5% or 6% accounts (so earning more than the mortgage interest costs). We have also put £23k in S&S ISAs so far as it is time to ramp up the retirement planning. It is the 'big 50' for both of us this year and S&S need to be 10 year plus investments so we will be maxing out the ISAs either side of April even if it increases the mortgage again for a bit.
We are not home clear yet as we also have £51k on 0% cards till 2018/19 but the end is definitely in sight. By the Autumn we will have built up enough in savings/ISAs to match what we have on 0% cards, and we will be keeping the flexible mortgage anyway in case we need access to funds for some reason.

It has been a couple of years of big spends (cars, van and orangery) and job changes but I now feel I have a much clearer view of the future.
The equity in the house is still our major retirement plan but I don't want to be forced into moving/downsizing until we are ready to make that change.