Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow

I've been horribly neglecting this journal...lack of time, lack of energy, busy (but good) visit with family, plus a general feeling that I don't have much worthwhile to say. I'm not striving to find/make extra pennies to OP, and while I should probably do that with saving money for new house, I don't have that same drive there. (Somehow paying a debt down motivates me much more numbers-wise than making a savings number grow?! Odd.)

House - the tenants are interested in buying, but not in a position to do so until 2020 at the earliest, so I think we'll be marketing it this summer with the hope of selling by the end of 2018. Not as tidy as selling to the tenants, but frees up the equity for our use sooner.

Job - have applied for a few things, and have a final interview for one this week. Fingers crossed that goes well -
work is still being ridiculous, and also wants me to switch to be a contractor in April so that I can handle the tax payment stuff between UK/Ireland. I don't mind doing that, per se, but I'm hoping if I could give my notice this week or next I could skip all that hassle (or at least do it with a new workplace where I'd be staying longer than a few weeks!). Fingers crossed.

Not much else to report. The US holiday is booked for next month, and I'm mulling over whether to arrange a full lease of a horse at the barn in May. I would like to ride more than once a week, but it also seems like an extravagance before we've got the rent/house stuff settled. We'll see...

hiddenshadow

So, March happened fast....

- got, and eventually accepted, a job offer! Current job did a whole song and dance about wanting to keep me on, but ultimately the things that annoy me aren't likely to change anytime soon, plus new job offered more money

- from May I'll be officially freelancing (purely for payment purposes, new job is offering stock options + paying for equipment), so I'll be able to handle my own pension contributions, business expenses, pay schedules, etc. Plus I'll be paid in euros, which should make the budget easier to manage

- ...speaking of pension contributions, this is the second month that current job has been late paying mine into my pension provider. I've e-mailed them about it and their rather cavalier response was "the important part is it's being paid!" Well...yes, except that 1) it isn't being paid, clearly 2) it's also rather important when it's paid, as if it were my take-home pay that was being delayed by weeks there would be a major stink. Ah, well, more reason to be glad I'm leaving...and at least compound interest isn't really a concern when the delay is a matter of weeks. Still, it's the principle of the thing.

- may get paid a "bonus" at work this month, if I finish this last project by the end of the month. That might mean working a bit during our US holiday, but as we have no plans I don't mind too much. This is still to be agreed, so I'm not counting on getting it at all, but it would be nice...would essentially turn a 2+ week gap in pay (when un-accrued holiday is accounted for in my final pay) into a slightly higher than normal pay month.

- we should finally be getting faster internet here! After several calls to tech support who assured me that everything magically works after resetting the router (despite things clearly not working within minutes of doing so!), they finally sent an engineer out. He did some things that had little effect, if any, due to our distance from the exchange, but he also got in touch with someone in the fibre network to see if our house was meant to have fibre in the first place. It turns out it was, so we should be getting it installed tomorrow! :j (I'm not getting too excited until it's in place as it was meant to be installed last week, but only one person showed up and it's a 2-person job apparently, so they went away again, leaving us very sad. )

I can't think of any goals for April at the moment, especially as we'll be on holiday for almost half of it, but I think if I can secure the work bonus and get myself ready to go for the new job, those would both be good things.

Also, we should hit 5 figures on the mortgage with June's payment! That's assuming I don't get itchy fingers if that work bonus happens and I have "spare" money to OP.

FloppyDisk

:j Great news on the new job + extra pay for it! If you are self employed can you start to cover home costs as work expenses like phone/internet/heating?
Any spare dosh for the pony fund?

Unicorn_cottage

I love all your number crunching - will have to read a few times to get my head around it! Great work Hidden

hiddenshadow wrote: »

February OPs: £0.00

Current (offset) balance: £103,054.42
Month we'd be in to get to our current balance without OPs: November 2027 (+3 months)

2018 Overpayments: £0.00
2018 Interest Saved: £0.00

Total Overpayments/Offsets: £68,918.78
Total Interest Saved: £55,727.46

Daily Interest: £6.80 (down £0.05)
Monthly Interest: £210.25 (down £1.71)
February 2017 Interest: £225.58 (down £15.33)
February 2017 Daily Interest: £8.06 (down £1.25)

House Bricks: 1

Mortgage reduction: £2,386.02/£104,646 (2%) (Average: £795.34/mo)

Edging closer to 5 figures!

Net worth increase: £25,981/£150,000 (17%) + €3,709/€20,000 (18%)

Making steady progress here.

MFIT-4: £57,240/£90,000 (63%)

Making steady progress here as well.

Goals

Personal

• Health/exercise: Horse riding 4/4 Success!
• Health/exercise: Zombies Run Week 4 Week 3

Financial

• Mortgage balance: £103,054.42/£103,055
• Sell the house: Investigate rent-to-own option Done
• 2018 Rent: !!!8364;7,500/!!!8364;7,500

Career

• Look for a new job In progress

hiddenshadow

FloppyDisk wrote: »

:j Great news on the new job + extra pay for it! If you are self employed can you start to cover home costs as work expenses like phone/internet/heating?
Any spare dosh for the pony fund?

Should be able to expense 50% of phone/internet (sadly no heating, that would be lovely as our rental's insulation is horrid!). Think we can do 1/3 of our rent for the home office, though, as I work 99% from home and DH is 80+% from home, so that would be nice. (Not sure how that will work with us paying rent annually, but fingers crossed it doesn't throw accountants for a loop.)

Unsure on pony front...not so much funding as time/health. I had to skip a few weeks of lessons due to illness pre-holiday, and the prospect of not being able to ride my own horse for weeks is daunting. I'm going to try out a lease this summer, I think, and see if riding more frequently helps on the health front. Long-term I may see if there are people willing to do a half-lease of my horse, which would still allow me to buy my own pony but not worry if it can't be ridden for a while. Plus help with its expenses. Win-win.

hiddenshadow

Unicorn_cottage wrote: »

I love all your number crunching - will have to read a few times to get my head around it! Great work Hidden

Thanks! I do find the numbers motivating..even if one or two look a bit uninspiring there's always some figure that makes me smile in any month.

hiddenshadow

April OPs: £0.00

Current (offset) balance: £101,443.08
Month we’d be in to get to our current balance without OPs: December 2027 (+1 month)

2018 Overpayments: £0.00
2018 Interest Saved: £0.00

Total Overpayments/Offsets: £68,918.78
Total Interest Saved: £55,727.46

Daily Interest: £6.70 (down £0.05)
Monthly Interest: £200.88 (down £8.31)
April 2017 Interest: £230.60 (down £29.72)
April 2017 Daily Interest: £7.69 (down £0.99)

House Bricks: 1

Mortgage reduction: £3,202.61/£104,646 (3%) (Average: £800.65/mo)

One month closer to 5 figures!

Net worth increase: £31,778/£150,000 (21%) + €7,128/€20,000 (35%)

Making good progress here as well.

MFIT-4: £58,056/£90,000 (64%)

shangaijimmy

As always i Love your detail in figures.

hiddenshadow

hiddenshadow wrote: »

- ...speaking of pension contributions, this is the second month that current job has been late paying mine into my pension provider. I've e-mailed them about it and their rather cavalier response was "the important part is it's being paid!" Well...yes, except that 1) it isn't being paid, clearly 2) it's also rather important when it's paid, as if it were my take-home pay that was being delayed by weeks there would be a major stink. Ah, well, more reason to be glad I'm leaving...and at least compound interest isn't really a concern when the delay is a matter of weeks. Still, it's the principle of the thing.

Pension contribution did eventually go through...now just waiting on the payment for my final (April) pay.

- may get paid a "bonus" at work this month, if I finish this last project by the end of the month. That might mean working a bit during our US holiday, but as we have no plans I don't mind too much. This is still to be agreed, so I'm not counting on getting it at all, but it would be nice...would essentially turn a 2+ week gap in pay (when un-accrued holiday is accounted for in my final pay) into a slightly higher than normal pay month.

Good news: this happened!

Better news: bonus was 1k more than expected...guess they appreciated my extra work during my holiday (plus a pretty stress-free project launch)

Annoying news: They applied the same pension treatment to my bonus as to my regular pay, plus it's all still done post-tax, which means my total take-home pay went down by over £200 for April. Ah well, Future Me will be glad of the extra few thousand put into the pension way back in 2018

- we should finally be getting faster internet here!

This finally happened! Still need to sort out billing for the faster internet, plus cancelling the not-that-fast satellite internet, but we have decent internets! (Though after spending almost 2 weeks on my parents' 300Mb/s connection 50Mb/s feels "slow" again, haha. First world problems.)

I can't think of any goals for April at the moment, especially as we'll be on holiday for almost half of it, but I think if I can secure the work bonus and get myself ready to go for the new job, those would both be good things.

Pretty much done on both fronts! Purchased a computer for new job and have that as setup as I can before starting, and have (finally) signed contracts for said job. (Not that I expected it to fall through but it's always nice to have things in writing.) Just waiting on limited company setup stuff to finish, but otherwise all systems go for next week.

Also, we should hit 5 figures on the mortgage with June's payment! That's assuming I don't get itchy fingers if that work bonus happens and I have "spare" money to OP.

Sadly this won't happen due to bonus/pension stuff. Only £645.26 to go until 5 figures, so that will definitely happen in June.

Other notable things:

- tenants now want to end their lease a month early, which is fine for us as it gives us more of the summer to sell the house and frees us from a month of letting agent's fees

- that means we're already within our final 2 month window on the tenancy, so I've started enquiring about estate agents for selling the house. I'm sure they'll be horrible (see: all estate agents), but if they're a different sort of horrible from our current ones that'll be something new, I suppose? :rotfl:

- current estate agents continue to be horrible (surprise!). I'm amazed at how much they'll nag you for non-time sensitive things that they care about (will you sell your house to the tenants? can the tenants move out in June instead of July?) but ignore you on time sensitive things that you care about (please have tenants provide a solar panel reading within 5 days of this date...please explain why you charge non-sensical fees and then don't look into it for months...still no answer on that one other than "shrug?") :mad:

- spent waaaay too much money on holiday in the US. Granted, the majority of that was buying my work computer. Sadly I don't think I'll be able to expense it via the limited company as it didn't get setup until a week after I bought the computer, but I should only be "out of pocket" by about €400 once new job reimburses me the amount they said they'd cover, and that includes purchasing extended warranty + accessories. Could have gotten it in budget but had to go with an off-the-shelf model rather than a "custom" one due to delays on shipping.

Other US spending:
- $157.12 food (yum)
- $309.62 yarn (unnecessary but pretty)
- $215.65 clothing (mostly unnecessary but also at thrift stores ... best bargain was $11.91 total for a lambswool sweater made in the UK and an alpaca sweater made in Peru...should have been $15+ total but they gave us an extra discount because it was a Thursday...I do miss US thrift stores!)
- sub-$200 for everything else, including petrol, entertainment, and a replacement pair of running shoes for me (sales person kept having me try on expensive shoes and then I ended up with the ones on clearance that I'd spotted walking in)

All in all it was a nice holiday, except that I somehow ate gluten on Sunday (think it was cross-contamination from butter my little brother used for cooking), so was quite ill Sunday night and still don't feel amazing now. Travel back was OK, all things considered, though I think I'm still short on sleep by about 12 hours.

Dogs were also ill while we were gone. Dog sitter blames the raw food setting off their tummies, but they were on it for a few days before we left and were fine, so I'm thinking they just didn't like the disruption in their routine. Annoyingly dog sitting can no longer watch them next week (her dog had surgery and needs a quiet environment), so now we're scrambling a bit to find someplace to put them. I'm sure we'll figure something out, but it's not a very restful re-entry into regular home life! Cat's quite happy to see us, though, she wouldn't leave us alone last night (and not just because she wanted meals on a proper schedule!).

hiddenshadow

2 phone calls in and I'm already hating house-selling. One person was quite nice on the phone, also has quite low fees, we'll see if they're any good. Other person hasn't clarified what their fees are and kept asking about extra services we might want (shopping for a new house, solicitor conveyancing, etc.) All we want to do is sell the one house we have!

Other annoyances for today:
- horrible estate agents responded to my formal complaint by vaguely explaining things in a not-helpful way. No idea if they're actually treating it as a formal complaint (which would mean we could refer to ombudsman eventually...though really we're quibbling over a £17.28 fee from estate agents + withheld tax that HMRC has, so who knows how to get that back)

- horrible estate agents are at least sounding helpful re: arranging valuations and (shockingly) have not tried to suggest that they could manage the sale of our property (I'll move back in and do the viewings myself before that happens!)

- our neighbours have found our clingy cat who went missing in January, his body has been by the side of the house for quite some time apparently

- super tired and can't think straight...love jet lag! Nowhere close to bedtime yet, either, plus I'm not sleepy (hope that changes by bedtime)