Tm's MFW ramblings

turtlemoose

More than two months of this year gone already! That was fast. 

Most of my money remains in pensions and house equity, still watching the pennies day-to-day

Work just announced a 2% pay rise, which after deductions (incl 1.7% raise to UC, but then higher UC deductions due to earning more), works out at c.£40 in my pocket. But I expect that will soon disappear to utilities and food increases etc! 

Aside from mortgage, food, and children, my car is my next biggest expense. I spend £70 - £90 on fuel per month, and set aside £165 for maintenance, repairs, insurance, tax etc. Once upon a time that pot also included a future replacement, but as the prices of everything have gone up (oh, a recurring theme! lol!), and the car gets older and needs more repairs, this mostly gets spent with nothing leftover. My mum and I have decided to share my car - we live very close (less than a minute walk) so it works from a practical perspective, and makes sense for both of us financially. She's going to pay 1/3 of ongoing maintenance, and me 2/3, as I will continue to own the car and use it more. It saves us both money, so hopefully a win all round

I have exactly a year left on my lovely low fixed rate....I'm plodding along adding every £ I can to overpay before the rate jumps. Still realistically looking at £100-£120 extra per month once it goes up, which feels a bit intimidating right now.

Perhaps there will be an opportunity for progression at work in the mean time, I'm almost at two years in this job, which seems to have flown by. 

turtlemoose

Sharing a car is working well, there's been only two clashing instances in a couple of months, easily sorted with a short taxi fare (less than £5 each way) - definitely cheaper than 2 x cars. 

I went for an internal job recently - a 6 month secondment in a different team. I didn't get it, I didn't even get an interview. However, I got a video call from the recruiting manager, (who actually was my senior manager back when I was 21, at a different company!) saying he was thrilled to see what I'd been up to in the intervening years, and that he thought I'd be wasted on the secondment, but that there is a phased plan of work coming up towards the end of the calendar year, and he'd like to stay in touch and talk about a different opportunity at a later date. I said pleasantries throughout the call, but afterwards I just thought - what a fob off, he doesn't mean that. And then after that, i'm wondering, why would he bother saying that if he didn't mean it? There's no need for soothing my ego at all, we don't have anything to do with each other, nor do our teams, in day to day work - and I know the vacancy had a lot of applicants. So perhaps it will come to something? I don't really know what to make of it.

In mortgage overpayment news, my mum has offered me £10k as 'early inheritance' specifically to pay off my mortgage as a lump sum. It's a wonderfully generous offer. She said she would rather I had the money now at a time when I need it (ie before my rate jumps up), than go without now when I'll end up with it eventually anyway. Can't really argue with that logic I suppose. My bank allows 20% OP without penalty, and this would come beneath that so no charge. 

South_coast

What a wonderful gift from your Mum 🩷!

I would take the call at face value. As you say, there's no reason to have said it (or even reached out) if there wasn't genuinely a possible opportunity. Unless you know him to be a manipulator, I'd say it sounds like a good thing!

turtlemoose

I'm up to £925 this year added to the OP savings account, a smidge over target which is nice. 

Mum has given me £5k as mentioned above, that's been paid off it but I'm not really counting that in my personal OP targets as it's not come from me

Current balance is £80020.37 which is great! 

Made a little booboo with some of the 5k OP, my bank has changed their OP screens and silly me didn't really pay attention. I selected the option to keep monthly payments same but reduce term - I didn't really want to do that right now as wanted to keep the slightly longer term ready for remortgage time. Also it's added a £30 CHAPS fee to my next payment, and i'm fairly sure it didn't warn me about that when making the OPs so I'm a bit annoyed about that!!  So now I have

sub ac 1: £55114.66 with 12y 8 months
sub ac 2: £24905.71 with 27y 11 months

It's reduced my monthly payment by a little, so once the next payment comes out on the first, I'll set up a recurring "OP" to take it up to the usual monthly payment.

turtlemoose

bank has confirmed they didn't apply a £30 fee, hooray.

School summer hols looming suddenly! Have paid £650 for 11 days of childcare for the youngest, ouch. Will get a big chunk of that back from UC though so not too bad, just had to put it on the CC (0%) up front as don't have that sort of accessible "spare" cash knocking about! 

It's felt like a very spendy few months.... both kids grew a ridiculous amount and went up a clothes size AND shoe size each. Sigh. My mattress gave up the ghost and sections of it completely collapsed .... Ikea to the rescue, cheap, comfortable, not far from me so drove to pick it up... but still an expenditure I'd rather not have had. 

In deliberately spendy news though, it's a milestone birthday for me in a few weeks, so my mum is kindly doing some epic babysitting while my partner and I go away camping for 3 nights to celebrate in debauchery  style. I won an expensive bottle of champagne at a work conference recently (by getting the highest score in a videogame!) - so that'll be coming with us, I've borrowed my sister's electric coolbox so we can chill it - I've got my priorities straight 

turtlemoose

Paid the second 'early inheritance 5k' from mum off the mortgage today, balance now 74620k - which seems delightfully low! It'll massively help in terms of what my new monthly payments will be when my very low fix ends in March. 

My car has been a source of much cost and many worries, I feel it's dangerously close to tipping in to the category of costing more than it's worth. If it was just me, I'd run it in to the ground.  But I worry a little about my mum driving and unexpected issues,  and also I need it to be reliable because kiddos. Work offer a subsidised all inclusive (insurance, breakdown, all repairs, even tyres) lease option (also sal sac so less tax/ni) so after crunching the numbers of lease vs buying a 2nd hand replacement but being responsible for running and repairs, the lease comes out cheaper - so im getting an electric car on a 5 year lease. Quite exciting! I've got to stump up for a charger, but over the term I'll see savings in diesel that will compensate for that.

RedLipstick

How exciting on all the fronts, delighted for you! Mortgage is going down nicely, not long to go now I guess? Enjoy the car, come back let us know how it goes!

South_coast

Ooh, that new car smell 🥰!

beanielou

Good news on car lease.

turtlemoose

Wow, I'm an electric car convert. Purely from a fuel perspective,  it's costing 2p per mile, vs the diesel at c. 14p per mile (which I though was economical tbh!). And the obvious environmental benefits. It's also lovely to drive, really nippy, and now I've got the hang of driving an automatic, it's easy peasy. 

I've got to hang on to the diesel until mum feels comfortable driving the electric one, so probably look to sell it next  month. I think realistically I could get £2800 for it. That'll cover the £1195 to have a charging point installed (non standard install because of the way my property/parking is laid out), and the rest I thought about OPing but I'm going for a quality of life improvement instead - im going to have a small patio laid, and replace the fence and gates at the bottom of my garden. No labour costs as the lovely OH has offered his services   Oh i do need to, at some point, invest in cross bars and a roof box because the car isn't large enough for our luggage for a week away, but no rush on that so I've set up some saved searches on the auction site and hopefully can pick up a second hand bargain. 

At c. 6k miles a year, I think I'm saving £600 a year on fuel roughly, so it'll be 2 years before that offsets the cost of the charger install, but I've got this car for at least 5 years now so will definitely see the benefit (eventually). I've got a 20+ months interest free CC for the installation (next week, exciting!) so I can potentially stooze the car money when it comes in.