Mortgage free by 2021?!

shangaijimmy

Thinking of HMRC and escapade its amazing at how inept some departments can be at their own jobs. When i was a lowly young pool lifeguard someone from paypal actually rung me to explain how the bank holiday reimbursement worked for part time staff who were contracted to work weekends, as no-one else had tried to claim it. He couldn't understand how i had 'lost my day off' on a bank holiday, as 'everyone is off'.

Kittenkirst

Hi Hidden! What fantastic news with the tax being a higher refund than you were expecting!

Good luck with the move; it sounds like you're organised and it'll go smoothly!

hiddenshadow

Thanks kittenkirst, I'm not sure I'll believe the tax thing until HMRC actually deposits the funds (whenever that might be, claim up to 5 weeks to process).

Non-stop work this weekend...loads of house bits done, loads of de-cluttering and packing. I'm completely shattered, but at least the end seems to be in sight (both time-wise and job list-wise).

We did pause on the non-stop work to go out to dinner with friends on Saturday. Wasn't necessarily in the budget, but is the last time we'll see them until at least September, so figured it was worth taking the opportunity. (She also has health issues so one or both of us has had reason to cancel plans for a few months straight.) Very yummy food in addition to the good company, which made for decent lunch leftovers today.

Goals

Personal
Move to Ireland Rooms packed 5/6 - [STRIKE]bedrooms 1/2[/STRIKE], [STRIKE]bathroom[/STRIKE], lounge 1/2, [STRIKE]kitchen[/STRIKE] lounge is mostly done, kitchen/bedrooms/bathrooms are DONE!
House Finish DIY projects 7/10 got lots done this weekend, just need to finish off a few bits and pieces
Work Get this project done - Progressing good progress this week, thankfully, so maybe things will be a tiny bit less insane now?
Move to Ireland Get all of us safely there! 0/6

Financial
Moving Shift rent money to euros 93%/100% - waiting until payday to do the last few transfers

debtfreeoneday

All sounding great in here, glad to hear about the refund!

hiddenshadow

July OPs: £71.92
July Offset: £0.00

Current (offset) balance: £108,999.99
Month we’d be in to get to our current balance without OPs: December 2026 (+1 month)

2017 Overpayments: £10,053.84
2017 Offset Savings: -£6,171.94
2017 Interest Saved: £3,664.94

Total Overpayments/Offsets: £68,056.88
Total Interest Saved: £56,228.42

Daily Interest: £7.19 (down £0.08)
Monthly Interest: £215.43 (down £9.26)
July 2016 Interest: £291.04 (down £75.61)
July 2016 Daily Interest: £9.39 (down £2.20)

House Bricks: 1 (thanks to sneaky OP )

Mortgage reduction: £10,668/£20,000 (53%) (Average: £1,524.12/mo)

First month on a reduced standard payment. Will wait and see how the budget looks post-move and post-renters coming in…hoping to bump things up again by the fall.

Net worth increase: £42,940/£80,000 (53%)

DH got his quarterly bonus.

MFIT-4: £50,500/£90,000 (56%)


Goals

Personal
Move to Ireland Rooms packed 6/6 - got everything packed up in the end, though it was a lot of work!
House Finish DIY projects 10/10 - technically didn’t mow the bit of grass behind our garden gate thanks to the rain, but got everything else done
Work Get this project done - Progressing supposedly launching next week!
Move to Ireland Get all of us safely there! 6/6 everyone arrived safely, pets seem happy and settled in the house

Financial
Moving Shift rent money to euros 100%/100% - now to figure out the logistics of how much we’ll need in euros on a monthly basis

porgiegeorgie

Have just finished reading your diary HS, it seems I've joined you at a pretty busy time!

I'm glad you all go there ok and are settling in. I hope your new life in Ireland is amazing, can't wait to hear how you're getting on.

Leaving England (probably not to Ireland though) is an idea DH and I have bandied about, even more so since the Brexit result. I'm super-cautious about everything but DH seems really up for it and would probably definitely do it so reading your diary has given me food for thought...

Good luck with everything!

hiddenshadow

Hi porgiegeorgie, thanks for reading through my wafflings. Re: moving, we hadn't really considered going abroad (our thoughts were Welsh countryside or Scottish countryside), but Brexit altered our plans and our timeframe significantly. All in all it's been pretty smooth on our end, though we definitely could have done with not being lazy about house projects for 18 months and then frantically finishing everything in 3. :P And DH could have decluttered more, IMO, though he did a fair bit this time, at least (our move in 2013 was: me: so, that stuff you've had in storage for 2 years and not needed, most of it can go, yes? DH: *shocked/horrified* no, now I have a garage to store it in for free, and more space for more things!) :rotfl:

So....almost a month between updates. I can blame a week on frantic packing/moving/work, a week on being in limbo with bad internet, a week moved in with no internet (well, borrowed neighbours' internet), and the last week....no excuses there.

Move itself went surprisingly smoothly, could have skipped paying to get all the pets documented as no one even looked at them. They all seem to be settling in well, and the stairs here are shallower which helps the old man dog (though he's still so used to turning right at the top of the stairs...now he turns right, looks confused, circles around, and enters the bedroom).

On the people front, things are mostly settled. We're still waiting for an Irish bank account (multiple, actually), which means we can then get utility accounts in our names. We have managed to find/pay for the waste removal, but they have yet to give us bins, so we've been piling trash up in the shed. On the plus side, we've got accounts with the library (the system looks quite good actually, apparently it was recently nationalised so that probably makes for a better selection), and our library has a trial program to allow patrons in out of hours, so it's "open" 7 days a week 8am-10pm. DH is very excited about that. (I'm excited as well, but slightly less so ).

There ends the good news, unfortunately. Letting our house has been a total nightmare so far. The tenants weren't pleased with the cleanliness of the house ("dog hair everywhere", supposedly), and now expect us to pay almost £700 for re-cleaning it (!). The estate agent took it upon themselves to act upon an unrelated e-mail I sent back in June to allow the tenants to remove built-in bookcases in August. We wanted to evict the tenants then and there for removing fixtures & fittings, but probably can't because the estate agents apparently gave them permission. So we're trying to get legal advice on how best to approach this re: the tenants and re: estate agents. Frankly at this point we're willing to take a financial hit if necessary just to get it all over and done with, especially as we don't see the housing market improving in the next year (original plan was to sell in summer 2018 after we've lived here for a while and figured out how much we like it/how likely we'd be to buy here; as I pointed out to DH even if we decide we absolutely hate it here we're not likely to move back into our house, so there's not much point in keeping it).

So, we'll see...it's stressing me out quite a bit, even though realistically we could probably take a 4- or (very low) 5-figure loss on this whole thing and still be fine. (Not happy, of course!) Ideally we won't have to take a loss at all and either tenants will move out/estate agent will not be crap, or we'll resolve everything and tenants will just stay for the 1 year and estate agent will also not be crap , but I don't know how likely either of those outcomes are (esp. re: estate agent not being crap!).

Work is finally calming down a little bit...project launch is on Monday (supposedly...this will be the 3rd launch date), so we'll see if everyone's hair is on fire next week. I've reached a point of burnout that I've never encountered before...I can't be bothered to care one way or another whether launch succeeds or fails, or even if the company succeeds or fails. Success would be better, of course, but...meh. I don't think I've worked a week of "normal" hours since the middle of May, and (assuming the company honours their promise) I've almost accrued an entire annual leave's worth of time off in lieu. So that'll be nice, someday..?

On the MSE front, I've also lost a bit of mojo I think...partly because our budgets are all in flux due to different financial commitments on the UK side and who-knows-what-we're-supposed-to-budget-land on the Irish side. Partly because of the house/tenants issue (shouldn't OP until we know what sort of financial fall-out there will be). Probably partly due to work burnout. I'm hoping all of those things will be fixed in the next few weeks/months as everything settles down/gets sorted.

DH has been to London for work twice and each time my body's given out. He's got 2 more trips scheduled, then we both go for a few days. I'm hoping after the joint trip he can scale back his trips to 2x/mo, both for his sake and mine. We'll see...he's not the sort to ask for that sort of thing, and his boss would never suggest it (I'm sure if he thought he could, he'd have DH in the office 5 days/week rather than 2!). My health might be the one thing that gets DH to put his foot down, so I guess that's a silver lining.

All that negativity aside, I have a feeling we're going to like it here. There are a few massive frustrations (main one being that our house somehow doesn't have a post code, and ISP won't consider you for fast broadband without one, and yet I can't figure out how/when we might get one despite working on it since June! :mad:), but it is nice that the only noise we have are the road out front and the cows living behind our garden. I think it's rained at least once every day we've been here, but we both quite like the rain (and it's easy enough to avoid when your schedule is flexible).

porgiegeorgie

Scotland is my first choice if we do move (so not a million miles away since we're already in Yorkshire so half way there as it were), but DH seems to have Canada as the top of his list! He's quite open to the idea of Scotland too though.

One of my cousins lives in Edinburgh and has an quicker, and usually cheaper, journey down to visit family in London flying Edinburgh-Stansted, than I do driving/getting the train from Yorkshire. We worked out that if we moved somewhere within reach of an airport with flights into London we could travel to see our families in London, Essex & Suffolk in a similar time it currently takes to drive to see them. It was this that really got us thinking about it.

I didn't realise a postcode system had even been introduced in Ireland until just now! Bit of a pain your property wasn't issued with one when it was rolled out. Hope you can get it sorted soon.

hiddenshadow

We've visited Edinburgh a couple of times and loved it each time. I don't know that I could live there now as the pavements/hills would restrict me too much mobility-wise...but if that weren't an issue I bet it'd be a lovely place to live. We were thinking of the countryside between Edinburgh/Glasgow, or between Edinburgh/Aberdeen.

It is crazy how you can move farther away and yet have an easier journey. In Essex our commute time was 3-3 1/2 hours per day. So far DH's commute has been 10 hours over 2 days, so not dramatically different on average (but of course he also get 3 days commute-free, so overall a win). Cost-wise it's about even to fly once/week than to commute in every day.

Post codes were launched in 2015, apparently, and everyone assures me that they're optional and "no one cares", except for the internet company (of course!). I've tried, in vain, to convince them based on the fact that our neighbours (who do have post codes) are already getting fast internet from them, but they refuse to proceed unless they have an identifier for our house. Sigh. In theory we'll get a post code by November/December, so maybe it can be a Christmas present to ourselves.

Moneyfordreams

hope things settle down soon for you. congratulations on your move