I'm baaack! And still dreaming of being MF!

coldcazzie

So, it looks like our mortgage is going to be split thus:

Part 1: £94000 fixed @ 4.19% until 31-03-16 and will then revert to SVR, currently 3.99%.
Part 2: £9,500 tracking 1.99% above BOE base rate for 3 years, so currently @ 2.49%, and then reverts to SVR @ 3.99%.

Part 1 has a £500 pcm limit on overpayment/ERC of 4%. Part 2 has unlimited overpayment/no ERC.

I reckon we should OP onto part 1 rather than part 2, but at the moment it's a bit unclear to me whether they'll split any OPs we make between the two parts? I will clarify that with them when I get a chance.

I also want to increase our emergency savings which is currently £2120 in an ISA @ 2.25% fixed for 3 yrs, 2 yrs remaining.

Ideally I'd like around £6k as emergency savings, but I'm thinking that a smaller target might be better first, because my income fluctuates rather a lot - some months I earn a lot and some months it's very little.

Thoughts please on how I should split any spare funds we have...?

coldcazzie

I forgot to mention, as part of our mortgage deal we've opened a current account which would give us 5% interest on balances up to £2500 for the first 12 months, if we pay in £1000 each month. It's a joint account which means that it'd get taxed at 20% for his half of the savings but 0% for mine (as I don't earn enough to pay tax).

I've been thinking about this over the past couple of days, trying to see what the best thing to do is. As far as I can see, savings options are:

For the lump sum
- pull the money out of the ISA, put it in the FlexD Acc, set myself a reminder to transfer £1000 in and out again each month and earn 5% gross interest on it for 12mos , earning roughly £100 interest in 12mos time.
Pros: more interest.
Cons: interest is taxed, have to remember to do the transfers, might get a penalty for removing early from ISA.

- leave it where it is, earning roughly £100 interest in 2yrs time.
Pros: effort free.
Cons: less interest.

For any monthly amounts that I wanna save rather than OPing
- transfer £1000 in/out of the FlexD Acc each month, then put in a random amount of money in each month and at the end of the 12m put that in the ISA.
Pros: freedom to save as much or as little as I choose, when I choose (good for unpredictable income).
Cons: gotta remember to do those transfers, will have to pay some tax on the interest.

- open a 6% FD fixed rate saver in my name only, save into that each month and put the money in the ISA when the 6% rate ends.
Pros: no tax on the interest, slightly more interest.
Cons: obliged to save min £25pcm and only up to £300pcm, plus no flexibility in terms of how many/when payments are made.

That is, of course, assuming we choose to use the account, we could just ignore it and continue on as if we never had it.

Thoughts? Even if those thoughts are "you're waaay overthinking this, CC!" :rotfl:

My aim is £3k emergency savings at the end of 15-16 tax year.

coldcazzie

Good morning all (just!) am feeling antsy today, not sure why. Perhaps because I feel like things aren't moving as quickly as I would like?

Over the past couple of months we've done rather a lot of decluttering, have taken about 6? car loads of rubbish to the tip, plus done a couple of charity shop runs, returned things to their owners and sold a bunch of stuff too. Where does it all come from?! I'm sure we didn't have that much stuff when we moved here.... anyway we have substantially reduced the amount of crap in our garage, and I put something on the Bay of E and it's already reached £26! :eek: which is a whole lot more than I thought, esp as there's still 3 days left! Even though we've reached our moving savings target of £1500 I'm going to continue to put money into the pot just in case I've missed something, or something comes in more expensive than we budgeted for.

The kids and I are off to a home ed group this afternoon and are rehoming an old DVD player to someone there, plus some DVDs to someone else, and I plan to stop off at Lidl on the way home to pick up some shopping bits so I will endeavour to write a shopping list before we go otherwise we'll just amble about aimlessly in there.

coldcazzie

Hmph, I just wrote out a post and then FF lost it when I hit post :mad:

Anyway, Happy Friday everyone!! Manwife's birthday today so I plan to put a cake in the oven later :beer:

We received notice yesterday afternoon that we have moved to formal mortgage offer!! :j:j:j we are awaiting the paperwork for that plus the searches (one of which is still outstanding) next week. Feeling rather relieved, I was starting to wonder whether we would ever get moved!

The item I put for sale on the Bay of E last week sold yesterday morning for £60, which will go in the moving pot, along with the pennies for a chest of drawers which is being collected on Sunday. I picked up the replacement set of drawers yesterday morning from a friend who is also moving (although much further than we are!).

I think I may also have found a home for our freestanding fridge-freezer which has been in our garage for the last 4 years serving as a beer fridge/extra freezer. It's been difficult for me, reducing our freezer contents down to only fit in one freezer (there is no garage where we're moving, and a fitted freezer in the kitchen) - it goes against every moneysaving instinct I have about batch cooking and buying in bulk when things are cheap! I'm also a bit gutted that we can't take it with us - it's a great ff and I like it a lot. I know it'll be going to a good home where no doubt it'll be in nicer conditions than a damp and mucky garage but still... I'm a bit sad. Is that weird?

coldcazzie

Today I packed up some boxes, and started washing the shelves and drawers out of the garage fridge-freezer. I'm itching to do more but trying to hold back as we don't have any dates and things can still potentially go pear-shaped.

I also received a call from the mortgage company regarding my formal complaint. They have, in all fairness, held their hands up and accepted that they dropped the ball several times during our application and thus delayed it all by about a fortnight. They offered me some money which I've accepted although that wasn't actually my reason for complaining - I complained simply because they were being rubbish and thought they should know that I was unhappy. Anyway, they've popped the money in our new account, which of course we can't access because the internet banking details haven't arrived yet :rotfl: so I'm just gonna forget about it for now. Perhaps it can be the first step towards [STRIKE]our[/STRIKE] my new emergency savings goal... unless the manwife uses it to do something sensible like to buy new bannister parts, seeing as there isn't one and you can step right off the landing and fall halfway down the stairs!! :eek::eek:

Sadly the winning bidder on my eBay item that ended last week failed to correctly interpret the meaning of the phrase "collection in person" when bidding so I've sent a Second Chance Offer to the next person in line *le sigh* meanwhile I've moved another £30.32 from selling stuff into the moving pot. Someone is coming to view the girls' wardrobe tomorrow.

A removal firm is coming to look round on Wednesday morning to give us a firm quote for removal services. Fingers crossed for their initial quote being fairly accurate!

Tomorrow I shall be calling our conveyancer to see where we're up to with the final search result. Hope everyone had a lovely weekend?

zootie

Wow Coldcazzie, what a busy few months you have had. How annoying the house move has taken so long ,but glad things seem to be heading in the right direction now.
I sympathise with your ebay problem. So annoying when you put collect in person and the winner bidder expects you to post to them.
I can see why you might need a banister!
Hope you have a good week.

System

Hey coldcazzie.

Sounds like you're really busy at the minute. Nothing worse than wanting to crack on with things but feeling that you can't just incase. Nothing wrong with complaining about things if you feel aggrieved and the compensation money is a bonus.

Hope you get the answers you want from the conveyancer and that the removal company give you a fair quote later in the week.

coldcazzie

Thanks zootie and Vinnybro1988

Final search came back on Monday, we received the report from the conveyancers this morning, everything looks great. Had to chase the mortgage company yesterday because they promised they would fax our formal offer to the solicitor but then didn't, but they did fax it in the afternoon after I chased them. I'm hopeful that our solicitor now has everything she needs to arrange contracts; I shall confirm this with her tomorrow.

The removal firm came out this morning and gave us a decent quote for services. It was as I expected though - higher than they initially said because we have a lot of crap :rotfl: the fella said "we don't often move people who have a 10 foot chicken run!" which is exactly why I asked him to come out and have a look in the first place! :rotfl: despite that, it was still not as much as my worst-case-scenario-imagination thought it would be, so I think we'll probably take them up on it.

A friend bought a wardrobe today that we won't need after we move, so that's another £100 for the moving pot :T they collected it this evening, and the fridge-freezer is being collected in the next week ish by its new owner as well.

The second chance offer wasn't taken up so I've relisted the item on eBay, hopefully somebody will come and take it off our hands soon.

Still much to be done but it is coming together, I think

coldcazzie

Today I took yet another load of rubbish to the recycling centre (where does it all come from? Seriously? I have no clue...) plus various other items have been returned to their original home/taken off to their new homes, including the eBay item that has been plaguing my existence for the last two weeks! *wipes brow* I think we're down to only one or two more tip trips needed before we move.

I'll be calling the mortgage company again first thing tomorrow morning as they've failed to pass on the valuation report to either myself or our solicitor even though they should have. I'm not even surprised. They really are useless.

We also got all our contract documents yesterday, but there's some problems with the SDLT form and there is also no outline plan included which I think there should have been... I'm a bit peeved as I wanted to send them back so they'd arrive tomorrow morning but that's not gonna happen now.

Anyway, happy mother's day to all the wonderful mfw mamas out there hope you all had lovely days!

zootie

I remember all those tip runs well. You do right to keep chasing up people with phone calls. It's sometimes the only way to keep things moving.