The End May Actually Be in Sight...

RoaringTwenties

Hello all,

Phew it's been a busy week, our school & nursery Easter holidays don't cohere this year so I've had DD off all this last week plus this week to come, then she is supposed to go back just as DS starts his break! Nursery have agreed for DD to take a third week off, so in DS' first week off we're off to the holiday home. Then I've moved her sessions from the usual start to the end of the following week, so they'll have most of the start of that week together before DD returns to nursery & DS goes to my Mums for a few days. So essentially I have no time to do anything until 20th April :eek: Hence why I've been busy using whatever free bits of the day/evenings I can muster.

Got a few bargains, an identical jumper to one I love from Sainsys half price in the sale, they're gorgeous but not the greatest quality so when the first one wears out I'll bring the second one into play Also got DD a Peppa t-shirt there half price too. Spent quite a bit on more stuff for the holiday house - think it's going to be a bit nippy at this time of the year so I've got us electric blankets (reduced as its the end of the winter season.) Got the kids Paddington melamine crockery 70% off in M&S sale, we can leave that there. And loads of other bits that I now forget but which are stacked in boxes in the study. DW says it's looking like we're preparing for a nuclear winter :rotfl:

In advance of us starting to save for a deposit for another property we opened new Building Soc accounts this week, 1.3%, not great but the best around. It's a local BS though & the staff are great & it's all branch/passbook based which we like as we're terrible worriers & always catastrophise scenarios of online bank hacking & losing every penny etc I'm hovvering over the bank accounts that pay 3-5%, the problem is that they all require several direct debits plus funds going in every month, & in all honestly after everything I've dealt with with FIL's uber-complicated estate recently I'm really trying to simplify our banking rather than make it more complicated! I keep looking online & thinking I should get on with it & then I can't face it. Most of them have a cap of £5k too, so it's not like the interest is a massive amount. Not a very MSE attitude I know

Think there should be a lull with FIL's estate for a bit now, the Wealth Management IFA is now fully instructed & has disappeared off to set everything up, so I'm hoping MIL & I will get a bit of peace through April before it all gears up again in May, that's when final decisions have to be made about where the funds that will come in during April are going. The theory is that it'll all be set up by mid-summer & just need re-assessing annually.

We are threatening to stop off at Alton Towers CBeebies World on the way back from holiday so if anyone has been & has any top tips please feel free to pass them on [STRIKE]like "don't go, it's horrendous"[/STRIKE] :rotfl:

I was pretty close on the mortgage estimate: £5694.49 to go
:T

greent

Cbeebies world is great fun! We made our teenagers go on the ITNG boat ride last year with us! I have no top tips other than to take a picnic/ drinks - and we also took poundshop full length ponchos for water rides x


We paid for the premium parking (think we had a deal so got it cheap) - was well worth it as it was right by entrance (other parking is the usual theme-park fair distance away) - meant we left our picnic in the car and also had a change of clothes there, rather than carting it around. Finally, when everyone was shattered at the end of the day (and the smallest of ours was 6 at the time - so not especially small!) it was nice to just get straight into the car, rather than troop back all the way to the other car parks (not that we're lazy at all..... )


xx


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RoaringTwenties

greent wrote: »

Cbeebies world is great fun! We made our teenagers go on the ITNG boat ride last year with us! I have no top tips other than to take a picnic/ drinks - and we also took poundshop full length ponchos for water rides x


We paid for the premium parking (think we had a deal so got it cheap) - was well worth it as it was right by entrance (other parking is the usual theme-park fair distance away) - meant we left our picnic in the car and also had a change of clothes there, rather than carting it around. Finally, when everyone was shattered at the end of the day (and the smallest of ours was 6 at the time - so not especially small!) it was nice to just get straight into the car, rather than troop back all the way to the other car parks (not that we're lazy at all..... )


xx


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That's brill info greent thanks :beer: I need to organise it this week, I've got a free ticket for DW if DD turns out to be full price (from a cereal packet!) I gather I will get a carers reduction for DS, & he should get a Fast Pass as his consultant has written a letter about his diagnosis. He could never queue for more than 20 mins in a zillion years. I'll remember about the parking & the macs! The ITNG ride looks fab, how briliant to force teenagers onto it [STRIKE]and make them smile for the camera[/STRIKE]

RoaringTwenties

Hello all,

Well life has changed again for us! A week last Tues we got the final payment from FIL's estate, £100k Have to say it was one of the most surreal days of my life - we were at the holiday home, DW & DD were both in bed recovering from vomiting virus that befell them as soon as we arrived, so DS & I left them to it & went off to the bank & paid the mortgage off Sometimes life is truly crackers! We almost didn't notice it at the time, there seemed to be so much going on & we were away from normality, but now we're home we do keep having moments wandering round the house saying to each other "we don't have a mortgage any more." Just over two years ago we owed slightly under £200k & had a tenner in the bank. Now we own three properties all mortgage-free & have £80k left over :T

I'm still at the stage of working out what this means for our financial future, but some vague ideas are forming, whether they come to fruition remains to be seen. I'd like for DW to retire at 55 in 15 years time although she will probably want to keep working [STRIKE]as she's a bit of a muppet [/STRIKE] :rotfl: That leaves us at 40 with no mortgage, £80k savings & 15 years earning power. My vague idea is to buy a nice house in the South West, rent it out for the next 15 years & between the rent & us OPing what we would have paid to our domestic mortgage have it completely paid off by 55. Then we can move down there & the rental income from our house & flat in the North (plus the profits from the sale of the holiday home, we won't need that anymore) will provide an income to support us over the 5-10 years before DW can get her superannuation. Currently she can take it at 60 but I bet they'll push that back to 65 by the time we get there :cool:

I still can't really decide whether it's mad to take on another mortgage (that's probably going to be bigger than any mortgage we've ever had before) when we are mortgage free at such a young age, or whether - as I suspect - it's actually a good use of the income from the rest of our working lives (plus the rent it'll generate) which will set us up to a comfortable early retirement. Especially when the investment means we can move to where we want to be geographically. I suspect the latter but am happy to hear opposing views on this forum

Anyway, the far more important update is that en route to the holiday home we managed to execute another RoaringTwenties/Crumpet family meet-up :T :j Absolutely brill to see Mr & Mrs Crumpets & the Crumpet kids again, the children all had a brill time together & the event was closed with a joint 9 person rendition of I Can Sing a Rainbow (God knows what the staff & other customers in the Beefeater thought of us all :rotfl:) Very much hope to meet a bit more regularly now we'll be passing their way more often en route down to the South West <waves to Crumpets> Many thanks again to MSE for bringing us all together :money:

Right I'll disappear before this turns into another mammoth post! Hope all are well in MSE-land x

greent

Oooh - fab news and still more exciting times to come in the RT household!


I love hearing of MSE MFW meet ups


xx

Pooky

So pleased for you with your lack of financial burden (obviously not the reason behind it but how wonderful that you and your children are left in such a good position).

I look forward to reading what you get up to next

RoaringTwenties

Hello all,

Well it's been a busy old time here <understatement> The long & the short of it is that having been totally mortgage-free for about 10 minutes we're now heading towards a bigger mortgage than we've ever had before :eek: I've had an offer accepted on a property in the south west, going to fund it with a BTL mortgage there & a re-mortgage on our own house. Total amount will be £250k <faints> Originally I wanted to put a BTL back on the flat as well as a BTL on the new place, & leave our home unencumbered, but it just didn't make financial sense - the interest rate for a BTL on the flat was significantly higher, & it was only for a fixed time, and with all the changes to BTL (rent to mortgage %age/interest rate stress tests increasing etc) I really would like to secure a lifetime deal now. It seems counter-intuitive to put a mortgage back on our house as soon as we've got it mortgage-free but as the IFA says, it's not like we haven't got other investments if anything did go wrong & we needed to realise capital. We'll still have the flat mortgage-free as well as the holiday home. I've calculated that doing it this way rather than two BTLs saves us £25k over the term so it's unquestionably worth doing. We're changing the beneficial ownership of all properties too so that the tax bill will be minimised.

I've done the figures and we should be able to pay the mortgage on our house off in just under 6 years, then turn our attention to the BTL & redeem that in a further 7.5 years. Total mortgage term of 13.5 years which is under my initial aim of 15 years. Then the rent from our own home & flat should provide us with enough income for DW to retire at 55, assuming she can still get her pension at 60 by that point. And then we'll fly south & live in the new house (which is gorgeous, it has a dressing room & a library & is 6 mins walk from one of the UKs nicest beaches ) The plan also leaves us with approx £14k left to do final bits of work to our house inc the bathroom & boiler. I may even get shot of the cork flooring I bemoaned at the start of this thread over two years ago I really wanted to get to a point where I don't need to save much from our monthly income to do work on our house but can throw all spare cash at the new mortgages.

We're at the very early stages of the transaction so obviously a zillion things could go wrong, but things are looking positive in that our vendors have said they'll break the chain & move in with family, & we've nothing to sell. I've already had enquiries from people wanting to rent the new property. The last comparable one that our agent had available received 16 strong applications. It's a buoyant market to say the least :money:

Time to update my signature I think...

Hope everyone is well in MSE-land

RoaringTwenties

Hi greent & Pooky & thanks for dropping by, I'll definitely keep updating as things progress

Beckyy

What an exciting time for you!

It sounds like you've thought everything through and have a good plan though, I'm sure that figure will be away down in no time. I'm looking forward to hearing your new MFW adventure!

RoaringTwenties

Thanks Beckyy, I hope we're making the right decision. I can't really think of any other sensible way to use the capital we've got & the income we should have over the next fifteen years, given that we don't want to get involved with stocks & shares & savings rates are so dismal. And we wanted a permanent base in the South West at the end of our working lives, so it does seem to make sense. I meant to say in my post we've engaged the services of my late FIL's probate/estate manager, he's putting an estate plan for us together as we are now above IHT.

I hope things are going well for you & thanks again for dropping by