BritishBibliophile Wants A House

ahX

Hey BB/all, Just wondered if you counted your current deposit as part of your savings? As it just dawned on me that I have £900 sitting in a secure deposit account for once I move out - could be handy for legal fees etc!

savingwannabe

Well done once again. Happy holiday planning. :money:

BritishBibliophile

£48.92 TT in to the deposit fund in time for payday on Friday, although can't move anything until Monday evening as it's not the end of the month until then. Total is now £9454.62

Unfortunately I'm now seriously regretting booking flights with British Airways. Realised last night that I booked the return flight for the wrong date :shocked: Booked it for 17th May instead of 13th. Tried to change it online, you have to pay the difference in airfares, which is £28 which is fine, but you also have to pay a £60 charge per person :eek: So that's £120 just on charges, when we've already paid £400 for the flight.

I complained by phone and by Twitter and got nowhere so in the end I found the email address of the Head of Customer Services and wrote an email saying I thought the charge was excessive, got a reply from her PA stating that they wouldn't waive the charge as it was not fair on people who pay for semi-flex tickets

I can understand the reasoning but I still find the cost extortionate, it's the kind of behaviour you expect from a bargain basement airline, but not one that's charged us several hundred quid already. I didn't buy the semi-flex tickets as they looked like the kind of tickets you get if you're travelling for business and know things can get cancelled with days to go, I didn't think it was for a mistake you would try to fix 2 months before you travel.

At my Dad's suggestion I checked Ryanair (hate hate HATE Ryanair) and we can get a flight back on the 13th for nearly £70 between the two of us, including a piece of luggage. So that's a possibility. Already tried looking for somewhere cheap to stay but no luck with that, not a weekend in May when it'll be nice and warm.

However I went through the first steps of the BA cancellation process to see what our refunded taxes would come to, and it would only let me cancel the WHOLE booking, not the return leg :mad: Tweeted again asking for help, luckily I haven't replied to the email from the Manager's PA as if I don't get a satisfactory answer about cancelling I'm going to be complaining about that too.

I just want to go on a nice holiday with my nice Gentleman Caller. I don't understand why that seems to be so difficult

savingwannabe

Oh no poor you. This is quite common as we book on the internet and it is so easy to click when we haven't had a chance to reflect. It also happened to me once, costing a lot on an already expensive flight so I sympathise.

Good luck, I hope they will help you. swxxxxxxxx

BritishBibliophile

Thank you savingwannabe, it's good to know I'm not the only one. I think I just do these things on automatic now and assume I'll get them right, it'll teach me to not do these things when I'm tired.

Did actually get replies from the PAs of the two managers/executives I emailed. Both very politely telling me to !!!!!! off, but both said they would pass my comments on to customer feedback.

I've calmed down about it since then, and one thing it's reminded me is that I'm very lucky to have Gentleman Caller. Rather than get cross with me, or tell me off, he said that if we'd left it to him we wouldn't have anything booked, let alone all the accommodation and the flights (albeit incorrectly) and plans on what to see when we get there, and that I shouldn't beat myself up about it and we'd sort it out

Anyway, annoyance was last week, this week I have hit a new milestone! House deposit is now at...£10043.47 :T When I started saving I never thought I'd get to this point, it's really been helped by living with my parents for the past few months, how people manage save so while renting I have no idea.

Anyway, I'm drawing the line at £10k for all the legal fees and an emergency fund for whatever house we buy, and from now on everything I save over it will be going in to the actual deposit that Gentleman Caller and I are pooling together. I'll still keep track of my whole amount on here though, as before it's not for me to share what Gentleman Caller has on his side.

Furniture Fund has also gone up by £21 - £20 was cashed out from Prolific Academic and £1 that I found on the floor near a bus stop in Cambridge :rotfl:

Total: £10043.47
Furniture Fund: £255.25

savingwannabe

:beer::jHurrah really well done. £10,000 is a lot. Wow. Well done.:D:money:

BritishBibliophile

So the rest of this month ended up being a bit quiet on the savings front simply because it's been a busy month and not much saving has been done.

Had two trips in to London, and trains are expensive. Had a good Mother's Day but did involve a lot of going around to get things on behalf of the family. Car broke down completely and I had to be rescued by the RAC (who were fabulous and were well worth the £20 that I actually paid when you take out the large cashback return I got from Quidco ), had to borrow my Mum's car for a few days before I managed to get down to Dorset to get my Nan's car (we've been trying to persuade her to stop driving for months as she's not safe, this gives her an opportunity to get used to not having it around, if she manages okay then I'll be buying it off her). Had to pay a scrap dealer to take my old one away as none of the ones that offered me money actually called back or collected it, and then this weekend was back to Gentleman Caller's.

So overall I was a bit emotionally and physically exhausted on Thursday, and it wasn't improved by a bad drive down. Lots of rain, in the dark, all the motorways were !!!!!!ed by bad accidents so I had to use the B roads, which were a completely new route, and it took me over 2 hours to get to Gentleman Callers. But when I got there I found that he'd gone out to buy us pizzas, he'd been pre-heating the oven and he'd bought me extra cheese for the pizza, bread for breakfast, and a bunch of flowers.

Friday started out with a bit of a disaster as we were talking about houses and I ended up breaking down and having a bit of a cry as I've really been struggling with things recently. Not just the stress of sorting out the car but also just not having a proper place to live, I've been sleeping on my parent's sofa since August, 95% of my belongings are packed up and in storage, and I just don't feel like I have any control over my life But Gentleman Caller continued to be lovely and gave me a hug and reminded me that we'll get there in the end, even if it's hard now it'll be worth it a few months down the line.

We then went out for a drive and visited a few more places we could potentially buy, so we've now got more possibilities (although I suspect they're quite expensive places to buy property :rotfl:) and after lunch out we had a winding drive back to his place.

Then today we had the BEST news possible as we went to Halifax to see if they'd be willing to lend to me with my temporary contract. And the answer was a great big YES, their advisor said that if I'd had at least 2 years in my previous job then that counted significantly in my favour, and he's given us an AIP that we can use with estate agents to show we're serious, he also played around the calculator a bit so we could see the different interest rates that were open to us and the repayment costs, and explained the next steps of buying as well. Really cannot fault their customer service in any of the process.

So I then had another little cry outside the bank as it was such a relief to be told that someone would lend to us in our circumstances, I think the uncertainty had been getting to me more than I had realised over the past few weeks. We had a celebratory breakfast and then this afternoon I drove back to my parent's as I need to get my laundry and stuff done and have an actual day off on Monday.

Next step now is to actually find a house we want to buy. This may be more difficult than we were expecting, but I'm sure that the right house will make itself known to us when the time is right. As my old housemates used to say - "Everything happens for a reason".

On to the money front, and I have been paid early thanks to the Easter weekend, but I can't do a proper money shuffle as I can't move money to my HTB ISA until April, so while I've taken out my rent and will set aside commuting money, I can't do a proper shuffle until Friday, when it will all get dealt with

savingwannabe

So sorry about all of the stress I hope you are feeling a bit better now. Really good news on the Halifax I am soooo pleased for you. Have a good week and take it easy it sounds like you are doing too much. Gentleman caller sounds lovely.:jhugs, sw.

BritishBibliophile

Thank you savingwannabe, feeling much better, just been one of those months. Onwards and upwards to April!

Sat down and sorted out my money this evening, the worst thing about being paid before Easter was having my wages in my account and not being able to do anything with it as there's no point before the end of the month.

£514.64 added to the house deposit fund :j Want to add more to it though as May will be a bit of an expensive month since that's when we're off to Rome. Last month was also quite expensive due to changing the flights and getting the car sorted out, so I'm going to be quite strict with myself this month, I don't want to put a mortgage underwriter off when I finally find a house I want to buy.

Off to see Gentleman Caller this weekend, we're going to drive to yet another new place to see if we like it, and possibly frown at a useless estate agent I phoned on Monday :rotfl:

New total: £10558.11

savingwannabe

Well done on saving BB you are well over the £10k mark, you have a fab holiday to look forward to and hopefully a nice viewing. Have a lovely day and take it easy.