Tales from the city

ani*fan

Igamogam wrote: »

I have been following your other thread

Have you?? You've been quiet...:D

Well I finally got that complaint made to HSBC. They were very polite. It'll take 8 weeks or so to get a formal response which is fine, I don't expect any cash back or anything but at least it won't play on my mind any more and maybe they'll train their staff a bit better. All good.

ani*fan

I bit the bullet and added up the debt this morning. It's not quite below £10k so I'm going to save the signature update until later next month. The slowness of this is a real killer sometimes.

Me and OH have started to panic that there won't be enough cash in the wedding fund when the time comes to pay, so we need to focus on building that up for the next couple of months. I did find my dress though, ridiculously expensive, then left the shop without buying and found the exact same one online for half price. MSE score. :j

Is everyone remembering that Christmas will be coming soon?? Like we could forget??

:xmastree: :snow_grin :xmassign:

I need a winter coat and boots but determined to get them cheaply.

I'm keeping on going, trying to congratulate myself for every month the debt does not increase. It's all good. :beer: Happy debt busting day everyone.

Igamogam

ani*fan wrote: »

Have you?? You've been quiet...:D

Yep just lurking......some of those OSers I can fine a bit 'full on'. Dont get me wrong I like the frugality and the tips, but sometimes their steely determination on eeking out a carrot can be a bit........er.........off putting??;):rotfl:;)

ani*fan wrote: »

=
Is everyone remembering that Christmas will be coming soon?? Like we could forget??

No! No! No! You mentioned the C word - now I have to go off and sulk or least like down in a darkened room:D

ani*fan

Igamogam wrote: »

Yep just lurking......some of those OSers I can fine a bit 'full on'. Dont get me wrong I like the frugality and the tips, but sometimes their steely determination on eeking out a carrot can be a bit........er.........off putting??;):rotfl:;)

They may be hardcore Igamogam, but they truly have helped me out, big time! Gotta love that!


No! No! No! You mentioned the C word - now I have to go off and sulk or least like down in a darkened room:D

Haha!! I know, I'm sorry, I like being ready though. I was in the queue in Aldi the other day and there was a kid behind me singing christmas carols. His mum was rolling her eyes and saying 'you're such a good singer...' :rotfl:

Anyway, another day, another few quid saved. It's all good.

ani*fan

In the interest of educating myself for the future, I've been studying the housing market since January. It's been quite interesting, prices are seriously falling here. Brilliant. I now feel I know so much I could have a back up career as an estate agent.

In the process, me and OH have mulled over where we want to live (stay in this area or move elsewhere?), what kind of property (a flat or a house?) and when would be a good time to try and buy (after we're married, probably).

So we decided we want to stay here and we want a house. Houses are few and far between here but there's one on our street that looked like it might be perfect. In true 'overly enthusiastic' style I wanted to go and see it, even if just to rule it out as being too small, too dark, too something not right. I have put this off for months, trying to be patient and sensible. Then last night we went to look.

It's perfect. We love it. It's our dream home. The third bedroom that wasn't pictured online, and I therefore assumed to be a cupboard, is actually a good sized double bedroom. It's so much better than we even thought, and we thought it might be nice. We don't have a big enough deposit and we don't have a mortgage agreement. We do have a wedding to pay for and debt to pay down.

What to do? I feel I may drive myself insane thinking about this now. OH is the same. It's right there for the taking, but we're just not in a position to do that. Plus, is it wise to even try to buy the first place you have looked at? I would think not.

Anyone have any ideas how to progress? I'm in a temporary contract job with an almost 100% guarantee of being kept on but nothing in writing. OH's job is permanent. We have about £2k in savings for the house, less than a quarter of what we would need. Or do I just give up on this for now, see it for the pipe dream it is and hope the house is still there when we are ready? It has been on the market for at least 9 months, since I started looking. The price has already dropped £10k and is not negotiable. This looks like a fair price to me, £15k more than the sellers paid for it 10 years ago. They're not being greedy and they understand the market is falling. Plus they were really nice.

Phew. This is hard. I kind of wish we had never looked now. Maybe I should go over to the mortgage boards and look around. When I read back over this post, basically I'm telling myself we can't do it now, I'm just tormenting myself, and I need to calm down. If someone else had written this, that's exactly what I'd tell them.

I feel a bit silly. All thoughts regarding this daftness are greatly appreciated.

hiddenshadow

ani*fan wrote: »

Or do I just give up on this for now, see it for the pipe dream it is and hope the house is still there when we are ready?

Sadly, I think this is your only option. Unless you can/want to defer the wedding to save for the house deposit now, you don't really have any other choice.

The one thing I'd suggest is investigating with the sellers whether they'd consider a rent-to-buy scenario. If you paid rent that would cover their mortgage, they might be willing to do that for 1-2 years while you saved up the deposit to buy. This isn't likely to be an option since they probably want the equity in the house to move themselves, but if they're open to short-term landlording you'd be ideal tenants as you'd have incentive to keep the place in good condition (and could potentially lock in the price now which would help them if prices continue falling while you're renting).

Edited to add: I know it's hard, but there will always be another house. Maybe on another street, or in a different neighbourhood than you'd think of living in now, but something will turn up when you're ready to go.

Igamogam

Tend to agree with Hiddenshadow. I would however add.......... rather than defer the wedding, take a look at what/why you are spending on your wedding - can you cut back? I am sure you are not being extravagant but what you can save you can put towards that deposit.......there will be other properties

Igamogam

ani*fan wrote: »

Anyway, another day, another few quid saved. It's all good.

In my place of work with the mad frogs we do not actively do anything about the C word until 2 weeks before the end of term.............how mean is that:eek:??!! Not mean at all as we have to maintain order and our sanity and we have families at home we want to enjoy the over hyped nonsense with in a state of mind that is not on the verge of committing a heinous crime:eek::D

Magpie100

Well, I can give you some input in to your other question, although I think it's going to be irrelevant as I agree with Hidden Shadow. But when we bought our first house we looked at TWO and ended up buying the first one we saw. We moved five years later and when we bought this house we really upped our game and looked at THREE houses. And bought the first one we were shown again.

I'm sure it's not how lots of people would do it, but if you know where you want to move and what your budget is, I think looking at hundreds of houses can sometimes lead to total decision paralysis.

On the finances front I would lean towards postponing the wedding, to be honest, but you are probably too far along to want to do that. But really you need to decide as a couple which of those two things - house and wedding - you want to have first.

Good luck!

ani*fan

Thanks for your honest replies everyone. We seem to have calmed down now and had another think about our priorities. We really do want to have our wedding next year and get the debt reduced so house buying will have to wait. It's no great hardship really, we love our flat, just need to keep on doing what we are doing for longer. Thanks for being so sensible everyone.

Magpie100, your story was really interesting, I'm exactly the kind of person who gets paralysed by too much choice, probably buying the first house we look at would work for me. That means I shouldn't look at any more until we have the deposit ready. But at least we have a clear idea of what we're after once the time comes.

I've just declared a huge success on my thread for trying to get the shopping budget down. I saved over £100 this month. Even if this has been an unusually cheap month, I'm still saving loads. I'm going to put £200 in the food budget from now on and also try to build up a store for when we are poorly/can't be bothered going to the shops. I'm well pleased with that.