Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

Cheery_Daff

Thank you lovely people Glad to see you are all volunteering for the cheerful jobs, many hands make light work and all that :rotfl:

I will confess I'm trying not to get tooooooo over excited about it as there are still many, many things that could go wrong - bank won't lend cos it's got land, whole place could be falling down for all I know, buyers might ditch us for someone able/willing to pay the actual asking price, which we can't :rotfl:

But still, feels nice to be moving onto a new stage Must remember to cancel house viewing in the morning :eek: :rotfl:

Sadly this is also the stage where we have to start shelling out dosh... :eek:

Pippilongstocking

Fingers crossed my lovely!

Cheery_Daff

Thank you lovely lady :j Thinking of you has definitely helped - Ive never lived out in the sticks before but kept thinking of you and your stick house :j

Very excited as - get this - one of the outbuildings currently has FOUR freezers in it :j :j Don't think they'll leave them (although I might ask them to :rotfl: ) but think of the batch cooking and bargain hunting possibilities!! :j :j

Might turn it into a proper larder and get preserving stuff :j

And so much space to grow! Yay!!

And I'm pretty sure I spotted a raw milk farm the other day, which bodes well for cheese making experiments Were deep in dairy country anyway so shouldn't have a problem getting hold of milk :rotfl: I'm informed the farmers keep the milk run roads clear in the winter too which is handy...

All seems Most Exciting during the day - and at night I lie and think about all the things that might go wrong, and also all the reasons why it's a bloody stupid idea to move an hour away from work into the middle of bloody nowhere with land to look after when you know nothing about such things and are having to spend right to the top of your budget

But then life is meant to be an adventure, right?! If we don't do something like this now, we never will. Sometimes you just have to jump and trust everything will be ok.

We have built up many thrifty ways over the years, and many useful skills :j and I'm good at learning new things

Thriftiness does need to start in force again now though :eek: Proper meal planning and batch cooking :j

NOT giving up cafes but will cut down to tea and occasional cake rather than lunch Will probably ease off a bit anyway now were not viewing all these houses every five minutes!

Off to visit my sister and nephews today :j Most exciting :j Need to fill the car up, but hopefully no other spends and i may get a trip to THE BEACH - most exciting for a land locked person such as myself

Also need to do some stuff before I go - I feel a list coming on (once I've got a cuppa...)

Karmacat

Oh my word, Cheery, how utterly amazing :j:j:j

I really, really want to see this happen :j

Cheery_Daff

Thanks KC, so do I :j :j

It's off the market, and we've had the memorandum of sale by email :j :j

starnac

Congratulations Cheery! It sounds amazing! I may be slightly jealous. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly for you and you never know baout those freezers. If the previous owner has died, the family might not need/want them.

Good luck with the sheep too :rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Thanks starnac (and welcome back, by the way! :hello: )

I was hoping they wouldn't mind leaving all the junk in the sheds too, Mr cheery would enjoy a good sort through and make good use of it. Although knowing my luck they'd probably try to charge us for it and we'd land uo paying a fortune for a pile of old rubbish :rotfl: :rotfl:

starnac

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Thanks starnac (and welcome back, by the way! :hello: )

Thank you. It's good to be back. Since being debt free, we've been a bit spendy so I want to reign that in and we are actually looking at paying down our mortgage now :eek:

Ending up with a pile of junk is a possibility but you never know. They make whole TV programs about people who bid for sealed storage units! :eek:

Save

Cheery_Daff

In financial news... I emailed the mortgage broker yesterday about getting started with the full application - as far as I know he's on holiday til Monday but hopefully we can get on next week. He's got all the relevant details already as we only did mortgage in principle a few weeks ago I think.

Also dropped sale and purchase agreement form off at the solicitors office today along with house deeds, lease etc. Enjoyed reading through the lease - it's from the late 1890# and forbids us from setting up a tannery or steam hammer in the garden :rotfl: :rotfl:

Nobody's collected the ground rent for the last 17 years :eek: but since it's 50p a year so our backlog is a grand total of £8.50 I don't think it'll be an issue... :rotfl:

Feel like I should be doing something else...

Will investigate surveyors over the weekend, although I *think* we wait until we've had the mortgage valuation back? Will see.

In other news, been in town today and bought a few bits for Mr Cheery's birthday. Got friends staying tonight so will put the bread machine on for a tasty breakfaat of homemade bread and homemade jam :j :j

Cheery_Daff

Been doing some budgeting for the new house...

Some things that are likely to increase:

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Council tax
Estate agent doesn't know the band, but since the highest band in the county is double what we pay here, I've allowed for that and hopefully it won't be quite that much

Car costs
I've allowed for a doubling of insurance costs (because we'll now be commuting, although we'll have off street parking which may offset that a bit). Also allowed for a doubling of diesel costs - we filled the car, drove it to new house and back then filled it again last week, so we've got a decent idea of costs.

Also allowed for a doubling of *those* costs in case we buy a new car... Not sure we will yet, but either we'll always have to travel to the city together, or one of us will be stranded. Might give it a month or two first then figure it out.

Mortgage
Er, we don't have one at all at the minute so this will definitely be a giant increase!

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Those are the main things. There's LPG gas, but as far as I can see online estimates seem to match roughly what we use now anyway. Not sure of septic tank costs, but looks like water rates may be a tad cheaper.

Don't want to fall into the trap of eating out/ buying lunch at work so will need to get organised with batch cooking etc. Mr Cheery will be in charge of bargainous food finding, at which he excels :j

Saw quite a lot of people last night and today (we've been celebrating Mr Cheery's birthday) and we are both getting rather sick of people expressing surprise at how much our new house costs, and how we can afford such a thing. Several people have told us we must be inheriting something, or else we wouldn't be able to afford it (er, wouldn't WE KNOW OURSELVES if we had inherited something??) The amount of comments we're getting is starting to feel quite intrusive and rude.

Of course, people only know because I've been carrying round the paper house brochure but I confess I've just been excited about showing people pictures, and it wouldn't occur to me to comment on how much someone else was spending on a house, let alone insist they couldn't afford it! :eek:

In our case it really is quite straightforward:

* Mr Cheery worked 4 or 5 days a week for 25 years and paid off this mortgage (didn't even pay it off early, just made monthly payment each month)
* I have worked 4 or 5 days a week for 7 years, and I am rather younger than Mr Cheery, so still have (theoretically) another (mumble mumble) over 25 years before I reach retirement age :eek:

This means we can use the whole of this house as deposit, and borrow the other half (and pay a hefty monthly payment in return).

Not that mysterious?? In this case the age difference works in our favour - but so does spending years getting various qualifications and landing a reasonably paid job, working full time (or nearly) for many years, being pretty thrifty and not just buying everything new.

Maybe people have just got used to us not spending anything and therefore assumed we were poor with little income

Anyway, I suppose this is why people are cagey and never talk about money! :eek: That'll teach me! :eek: