Forever Home Fund

katep23

So one half is really tidy and the other half...

katep23

Good news, queried TCB which was declined recently - one lot of £40 has been confirmed, awaiting the outcome of the other £40. Always pays to put in a claim!

Going to set a mini challenge of making £1,800 additional money over the next year from 1st July. Currently getting about £100 from TCB for OH's hotels but this is not guaranteed if the company gets a corporate rate so will need some work to achieve this. Money will come from cashback and selling stuff.

katep23

Long chat with OH tonight - we are not comfortable with using too much stooze money and putting ourselves in debt so plan is to do roof (depending on costs to decide whether we re-roof or patch up), then save and replace stooze money, and do kitchen next year.

In the meantime, we need to up income and reduce costs without feeling like we are denying ourselves.

Due to increase in salary and reduction in outgoings for various reasons, we should have £2K per month to throw at renovations - I'm not convinced this is right so need to keep a close check on what we are spending!

chumpy45

Sounds like a sensible plan, it's hard trying to find the right balance. Good luck with the roof

katep23

anSat here watching the results - first time ever I've actually followed the results live rather than wait until the morning to find out.

Slight moment of hysteria when I heard OH state that the results were in from Pacman-shire (nom nom nom) - apparently he said Clackmannanshire (allegedly!)

katep23

Have bought two full height larder cupboards to help with storage in kitchen.

Just moving stuff from kitchen to the one in the utility and doing a mental stock take as I go - am now googling recipes to use up green lentils and couscous!

katep23

£20 requested from TCB, £10 from FB sale, £16 in change to pay into bank and a NSD.

OH back to work tomorrow, away Monday to Thursday, have a long to do list this week whilst he is away.

katep23

£84 paid into MOS - £20 from TCB, another £40 from TCB and £24 change paid into bank.

New skirt bought for new job - £12. Oc@do delivery today was £53.

Going out with old workmates on Friday but thinking of driving as otherwise it is a bus - train - bus and will probably take two and a half hours (and cost a fortune) rather than an hour and a quarter and £15 in the car, plus will be cheaper if I don't drink!

katep23

Another £18.58 sent to MOS from selling an IT text book on Am@azon. Takes me over £100 this month - shame I am starting my challenge on Friday :rotfl:

Long post - advice needed!

With the result of the referendum, we discussed re-mortgaging earlier this week and spoke to our lender.

Looking at the options for a 5-year fix, our current lender is pretty competitive (£10/month more than cheapest option).

We are however in a 5-year fix currently so would need to pay a 4% ERC (nearly £14k) to get out and they won't negotiate on this, even if we re-mortgage with them.

It does pay for itself as our interest rate would reduce from 4.44% to 2.64% so in the space of 3 years, the interest we save would cover the ERC.

However, we cannot add the ERC to the mortgage so would need to save this up.

Alternatively, if we wait until January the ERC reduces to £9.5K so we would need to save £11K to cover the product fee as well. As I am just changing jobs, I will be in my probation period until December so January would work well.

The risk is that the mortgage market may change and we cannot get as good a deal - alternatively, it may also improve!

The real question here is about the stooze money.

At present we have £47K offset and £47K of debt. My plan was always to move this around until a year before re-mortgaging then pay it off and close the accounts to allow our credit files to recover.

How long before re-mortgaging should I be considering doing this?

I don't want to pay off the stooze money (having paid fees) and then not re-mortgage and lose out on the overpayments but I don't want to leave it too late and then get rejected. Anyone got any ideas?

The current deals end in August / September 2017 but was looking to BT them if possible.

The plan if we do re-mortgage is to keep the term the same (currently 28.5 years) but continue to make our existing payment. This would be an OP of £400 per month and would reduce the term by 7 years.

Advantage of this is if one of us lost our job, we could reduce the payment for the short term. More important if OH loses his job as he earns twice as much as me!

Worst case scenario, we can't remortgage so carry on as we are and are no worse off than we planned when we took out the mortgage but the idea of being able to OP £400 based on the same payment is too tantalising to ignore!

Oh and if we do remortgage, the stooze money becomes less attractive as the new mortgage won't be offset so less of an incentive to BT it.

Phew long post - sorry!

katep23

December 2014
Mortgage £346,545.00
Mortgage free date 2044
LTV 86.64%

2nd July 2016
Mortgage £331,603.12

Total paid off capital in last month: £885.16
Total paid off capital £14,991.88

MOS: £9,798.82

LTV: 82.9%

Amount to Mortgage Neutral - £321,804.30