The End May Actually Be in Sight...

RoaringTwenties

Forgot to say the good news is I *finally* got my mortgage statements for the three accounts we redeemed this time last year :T It was amazing to see the zero balance :j Said a little thank you to the Grands again (though I don't suppose they heard me, working on the basis that they are now reunited & living the afterlife as they lived their youth on earth they were probably off having a fab time at a tea dance or something )

RoaringTwenties

Well it's been a week of two halves

I finally made an OP on Weds :T Just over £300 more gone from the balance. I feel that I can now look those who have done so well with their OPs in the face again Our last one was June 2014

I claimed £4.15 from TopCashBack yesterday, that had been hanging around since last May apparently. I pretty much gave up with it a year or so ago as I got fed up of transactions not showing up, chasing 10p seemed like way too much hassle. Plus I've been buying less online. But I might have to start again as it does mount up over time.

So I was doing well OPing & claiming my cashback...& then on Fri morning I bought a laptop :cool:. We've needed one for ages, OHs work one is now like the one on Peppa that says "I am broken" when you switch it on . And I have a feeling that if I tried to fix it it would then, like Peppa's, say "I am now very broken" :rotfl:. I'm always nervous with technology, I think it goes back to doing a PhD in the floppy disk days, before a cloud had been invented, and a simple corruption could - & regularly did - result in the annihilation of a thesis <shudders> :eek:I did my research on megabytes & gigabytes & terabytes & RAM etc & then chose this one because it's a lovely cobalt blue colour :rotfl:

Anyway via the utilisation of best friend's Amazon Prime it arrived yesterday, & I managed to set it up, download iTunes & back up my iPhone without incident or needing assistance from the lovely Mr Crumpets who had kindly offered help to a technophobe :beer:. I need to see if it will talk to my printer next, the old laptop never saw eye to eye with HP for some reason :mad:. It's been paid for by the absence of two months Council Tax so I don't feel any poorer :money:

Half term this week, we have some plans but all fairly low spend & will be no spend if DS carries on with his current behaviour & spends the week indoors thinking about his attitude :mad:

RoaringTwenties

Well I got some good bargains in my grocery shop this week, exciting things like Calpol & All Bran on special offer

I noticed that we seemed to be doing well with our petrol fund, couldn't fathom it out until I realised that a) the price has come down recently, & b) I'd forgotten that I'd increased the amount I put aside a few months ago! Nice to have a surplus rather than feeling I'm constantly topping it up

Came home yesterday to a letter from the BS thanking us for our OP & telling us that as a consequence our monthly payments were going down :eek:. This has never happened before in all the years we've had a mortgage so I phoned them to see what was going on. Apparently this is a standard thing now, unless you instruct them otherwise! I wonder if it's to stop people OPing too much, then the lenders couldn't be accused of applying ERC's to people & get in trouble with the regulators? Then again this effectively means that OPs mean little, if the remaining balance is just re-spread out over the remaining term? We are no-where near our OP limit which remains at just under £6,000, as we can OP 10% of our start balance not current balance every year from the date the product was taken. Anyway, I've set it up so the same payment will go out regardless of OPs. Although apparently every time we make an OP we're going to get a [STRIKE]pointless[/STRIKE] letter stating that our payments would be now going down except they won't cos we have a private arrangement in place :mad:

We had a cheap lunch out Mon & yest, the kids loved that, today we are going to a Stay & Play session at a local nursery, then DS has a birthday party this aft. I still have a silly cold hanging around & DD is shattered after skipping her nap for three days in a row so I think we need some quiet NSDs in the house for the rest of the week, DS is going to my mums tomorrow so I think I'll attack the bank statements that have been sat around for a while

RoaringTwenties

Just 9 days left of this month (I work it out across weeks in a month, so even though OH gets paid on 27th this month our new financial month starts from 2nd March ) & this far we are doing well :T I decided to buy an external back-up hard drive thing for my shiny new laptop, priced up & the local Argos was the cheapest, 2TB for £59.99. Other than that the only spend has been a spring coat for DS from TU as their 25% off is on atm. Half term has been really cheap

I went through our bank statements last night, Natwest only send them every three months now so there's quite a lot to catch up on. For a while I tried printing them monthly but the way they are laid out isn't very user-friendly IMHO & then the laptop fell out with the printer & the two of them stopped being on speaking terms :mad: Anyway, I was only 10p out & all the transactions concurred which is the main thing

Discovered yesterday that we are not entitled to the new Married People's Tax break because OH earns about 3p of Higher Rate Tax. Oh well :A

Today OH & DD are having a morning at their favourite farm seeing "tickygoat" (that's chickens and goats in DD speak ) and then this aft she will be napping so I've basically got a whole day free yippee! I plan to spend it instituting a new filing system, how sad Tomorrow if DD is up to it we're all going to drive over & collect DS from my mum, historically DD hasn't coped well with long journeys [STRIKE]which has made for some interesting trips to Cornwall [/STRIKE] :eek: but we think she's getting better now, if we do all go we're going to stop at a pub in the Dales for lunch, looking forward to that treat

CathT

The married people's tax break is new to me so just goggled and tried the calculator. Said not entitled as one of us wasn't born before 6th April 1935?

Great idea for stay at home parents though.

ETA

It's marriage allowance for young one's! Still don't qualify though :cool:

Goldiegirl

RoaringTwenties wrote: »

Discovered yesterday that we are not entitled to the new Married People's Tax break because OH earns about 3p of Higher Rate Tax. Oh well :A

How annoying! Perhaps she could take a VERY small paycut - that'd help.


We hope to take advantage of the Married Tax Allowance thingy. As I no longer pay tax, I'd transfer some of my allowance to Mr Goldie, who currently has a small tax liability


Hope you have a nice day out tomorrow

RoaringTwenties

Hello to anyone who remembers me! I can't believe my last post was 21st Feb 2015!

Well the end really was very nearly in sight as we got the mortgage right down & were due to pay it off entirely this summer...but then four weeks ago we took on another mortgage

The long & the short of it is that we got an opportunity to buy a holiday property for a good price in a place that we visit every single year. We realised last summer that our Autistic DS could no longer cope in hotels & that we would have to hire a cottage. The problem with that is that if we have to change plans due to his condition we run the risk of losing money, hence why previously we'd always booked fully cancellable hotel rooms. Plus he struggles when not in familiar surroundings. What we realised is that he needs a home from home. We did our research & found a perfect place, I negotiated well & we had a competitive offer accepted in late Oct. The conveyancing has been a slooooow process & is ongoing as various things have come up that require checking but really hoping to complete this month fingers crossed :T

We've borrowed against our house (as the holiday property would have attracted a higher rate as a FHL) & so now have a mortgage of £52,000, although if we offset remaining savings it's around £46,000. We've put it on a 7 year term but hoping to pay it off in 5, esp if we can make money on it by letting it out, we'll OP any profits we make. I've been doing my research into Furnished Holiday Lettings! We've got a decent rate of 2.49% & have set the mortgage payments a bit higher so there probably won't be too many OPs, although unlimited OPs are allowed with no ERCs. The focus will continue to be getting the best for the money we have so that we can enjoy life

Other than that we had a great 2015 with two highlights: firstly, we took advantage of the change in law & converted our Civil Partnership to marriage in May :)The way it works is that they backdate the marriage to the date of CP, so basically they pronounce you wife & wife & then tell you instantly that you've actually been married for ages :rotfl: It's very hard to take when one has also recently turned 40 :eek: Anyway, DW (:D) & I celebrate 10 years married on Tues :T

The second highlight deserves special mention here as it would never have happened without MSE - the RoaringTwenties & Crumpet family meet-up :j After many months nattering away daily (God bless Whatsapp ) Mrs Crumpets & I managed to get our families together & a fabulous - & frugal - time was had by all :beer: Hoping to do that more often going forward, esp with a prospective holiday home on the cards. So lovely to meet such fab people :T

Hopefully with DD now 3 & in receipt of her voucher I can use some of her nursery hours to update on here to keep me focused, & contribute to some other diaries too :money:

I hope everyone had a good Christmas & wish a fantastic 2016 to all on MFW :beer:

RoaringTwenties

And thanks to you both, CathT & Goldiegirl, for posting above - apologies that I never came back to you, very bad form . I hope you're both well x

Crumpets

Hello RT good to see you back I hope you do manage to keep us all updated of your progress, as although we chat away about all sorts of things, it's quite often nothing to do with being a MFW

RoaringTwenties

Hello Crumpets! I'm sure I don't know what you mean...now what do you think you might eat tomorrow whilst the kids are playing? I was thinking for me maybe some homemade soup & then lemon drizzle cake or perhaps salted caramel fudge. <sighs> Now then, what's this forum about again? :A;):rotfl: