Diary of a home owner wannabe (my 6 year journey)

gallygirl

pennyforthepot wrote: »

Things took a downhill turn on the MS front yesterday. I went out with a few friends in the evening for a farewell drink for one of the mum's who is relocating to Mongolia with her husbands work. As they were ordering bottles of champagne I felt obliged when it came to my round that I had to do the same so I am now £50 lighter than when I went out. Its very hard when you are under that sort of peer pressure. So now it looks like I won't be hitting my target for this month I'm going to look at doing some surveys to see if I can make amends somehow.

I think you're allowed to blow the budget every time a friend moves to Mongolia

pennyforthepot wrote: »

On the positive side the same friend did give me her Vax carpet cleaner (which I have borrowed on a number of occassions), a wheelbarrow, snow shovel and pickaxe :eek: as she could't take them with her.

Sounds like quite a haul :T. Shame she couldn't take them with her - don't suppose the Vax would have been much use but am sure the others would come in handy .

pennyforthepot

gallygirl wrote: »

I think you're allowed to blow the budget every time a friend moves to Mongolia

Too true gallygirl - I concur :beer: -23 degrees:eek: It gets so cold that they haven't been able to take their dog (a shug)and even worse for them as they are actually Australian so used to sunnier climes. Imagine two years of no internet shopping or supermarkets :eek:

PFTPx

edinburgher

Imagine two years of no internet shopping or supermarkets :eek:

Imagine how much money you could save!

I used to have colleagues in a government department who worked in less salubrious parts of the world, they'd essentially spend nothing for 3 years, come home and buy sports cars for cash :rotfl:

Not my choice, but each to their own...

pennyforthepot

Having a much needed lie in today. Spent most of yesterday afternoon on the sofa as I seem to have developed a lung infection. Nothing serious and it should go of its own accord, I don't feel ill but I have a stabbing pain everytime I try to do anything - so the rest of the housework will have to wait. I'm such a terrible patient (so DH keeps telling me)- I get so irritable if I do nothing which is why I am keeping myself in bed today - for as long as possible.

I passed the time by looking at flats in London. I saw a couple of really lovely ones over in Bow overlooking the canal. I am seriously thinking about taking the money out of my investment fund (which currently funds the rent on our house) and buying a flat and renting it out for the next 5 and a half years so we can use the income from that to pay for the rent here and then we would reap the benefit of the increase in value of the flat. The only problem is the rent from the flat wouldn't match what the investment fund currently returns and we would be short each month by about £600+ I think I am going to go and see some estate agents in London and chat to them and track the housing and rental market over the next 12 months with a view to buying potentially in a year.

A LSD for me yesterday £5.30 on some veg and bread etc for the weekend.

DS has been umming and arrhing over buying a tablet of some sort. He is currently using his phone to do most of his viewing of Youtube and videos. As he recently sold all of his warhammer to a friend (family who are going to Mongolia) and made £100 and the price of Ipad minis have just come down by £30 (as well as me having a £15 voucher for Tesco Direct) he took the plunge. He has a healthy balance in his bank account and is pretty good at saving for stuff that he really wants rather than frittering it away on rubbish. I will now encourage him not to spend any more for a couple of months so that he can build up his balance to what it was before. I will not allow DS and DD to go below £500 in their accounts and would rather they had £1000 as a buffer. Unfortunately DSS2 has his father's attitude to money - if it's there it is spent, and normally on rubbish. I did buy him a book on money for teenagers but I don't think he's opened it.

Enough drivelling from me, off to catch up on some diaries

PFTP x

edinburgher

I continue to be confused by your BTL aspirations! I thought you couldn't/wouldn't get a mortgage to fund the purchase of your own flat? If that's so, how can you buy a BTL? I'm sorry, sure you've covered this before...

Feel better soon, your stoical approach will help

gallygirl

edinburgher wrote: »

I continue to be confused by your BTL aspirations! I thought you couldn't/wouldn't get a mortgage to fund the purchase of your own flat? If that's so, how can you buy a BTL? I'm sorry, sure you've covered this before...

Feel better soon, your stoical approach will help

PFTP has lots of money :T but it's in an investment fund as it's not enough to buy the type of house they live in at present. It gets drawn on to pay the rent every month. Plan would be to withdraw cash from fund to buy btl with no mortgage, hoping that the drop in monthly income would be more than made up for by capital gains. Risky but could work.

I think that's right .

pennyforthepot

gallygirl wrote: »

PFTP has lots of money :T but it's in an investment fund as it's not enough to buy the type of house they live in at present. It gets drawn on to pay the rent every month. Plan would be to withdraw cash from fund to buy btl with no mortgage, hoping that the drop in monthly income would be more than made up for by capital gains. Risky but could work.

I think that's right .

Spot on Gallygirl - go straight to the top of the class :rotfl:

The official plan is to save £250,000 over the next 6 years (just under now) and use that money to buy a flat for us to live in. The money that is currently in the investment fund (money made from the sale of my last house of which the interest made is currently being used to pay for the rent on this house) would then be used as a monthly income supplementer (I suppose a form of pension plan). Looking into the prices in London I may need to reverse this plan and use the investment fund to buy the flat and the £250,000 as an income supplementer - the only problem with this is the current level of returns on that sort of money would not allow us to draw down a sufficient amount each month to live off and enjoy ourselves so we would end up having to eat into the capital.

Hope that helps :eek:

PFTP x

pennyforthepot

:j:jNSD:j for me yesterday.

Pretty blustery outside this morning - no trees down that I can see but then I've hardly ventured far - just looking out the kitchen window.

I'm aiming for another NSD today as I'm not expecting to venture outside in this weather. DH sent DSS2 out yesterday to get some eggs for yorkshire pudding. As he wasn't sure how much they would cost he gave DSS2 all his change who then duly came back with 32 eggs as his dad hadn't told him the precise number he wanted - so it looks like its scrambled eggs for breakfast lunch and dinner :rotfl:

I've only been out of action for 2 days and the house looks like the storm occured inside rather than out so I will no doubt be spending my day putting it back in place and doing the mountain of washing and ironing that has piled up over the weekend. Oh well happy days :eek:

PFTP x

pennyforthepot

Didn't manage a NSD yesterday - had to pop to Mr T to buy some bits to go with the sausage casserole I made and also DD had a friend over so I picked up some goodies for them so ended up spending £15.

I won't be reaching my £100,000 target this month as DH arranged to go and see a counsellor which he is going to be doing on a weekly basis. It's £50 a pop and I paid the first £50 yesterday. Money well spent as far as I'm concerned and if it means not acheiving my goal this month and DH is happier in himself then I am more than happy to do that.

I switched over to using my Tesco cc last week with an aim to earn the points on it for an additional merlin pass and typically I received an offer in the post yesterday from Amex - if I spend £600 on it over the next few weeks I can earn an additional 1% cashback - which makes it 2.25%. - so I'm going to switch back for a few weeks - already spent £300 as I put DS's ipad mini on it.

I have kids coming out my ears this week - with everyone having friends over. Tomorrow will be interesting as all 3 of them have at least 2 friends coming over - not sure where I'm going to put them all or what I'm going to feed them - possibly a big casserole.

Got most of the housework out the way and am just about to start the mountain of ironing from the backlog of washing.

No list again today - it's hard to be focused on what needs to be done when the kids are at home - so as long as they are all fed and watered I will be happy

PFTP x

edinburgher

Best of luck with the armies of kids PFTP

Don't worry about missing your target for the month, DH must take Priority From The Pot!