Mortgage free by 2021?!

jodles16

Haha my big girl is always more excited to see the kong come out than us coming home! The little one loves the kong but not quite as much, she used to be a bit anxious when we left but now she isnt at all! Its a wonder drug! Our little one does have a fluctuating weight problem so need to keep an eye on him! Best invention ever!!

Jodles

PS I am inspired to see if I can send OPs without having to ring up!

hiddenshadow

Jodles, see if you can get the sort code/account number for the mortgage. I just make ordinary Faster Payments to that account and (usually) get a text the next day confirming the new mortgage balance.

Our older guy still doesn't really "get" kongs. He likes them, but we usually have to show him how to lie down and arrange his feet/head so that the kong stays still. :rotfl: He's always been dim, and in his old age (13 this month, *sniff*) he's losing brain cells at quite a rapid clip. So I suppose understanding the physics of how kongs roll around and ways to prevent that is a bit much for him.

hiddenshadow

Not too much to report. £10.43 eventually came in from Clyde$dale, so mortgage balance is currently £152,935.82.

Went to a nearby steakhouse last night for DH's early birthday dinner. Only paid £47 (granted, I got a salad and not a steak), and we'll get 15% back from S@ntander, bringing it close to £40.

Have been chatting with an IFA recently about our pensions. He seems nice enough, and has offered to do a semi-annual review of our investments for an annual charge of 0.5% of the pension value. DH's pension charges the same, and I believe mine is 0.45% (need to phone up and find out). I looked up the funds my pension is in and they seem a bit crazy for our life circumstances (age/amount invested; it's heavily focused on bonds which does us no good), so will certainly look to tweak that even if we don't go with the IFA.

Mostly through reading Smarter Investing and am fairly confident we could manage things ourselves, but not sure it's worth the time commitment (given that the IFA's fees are almost identical to the pension company anyway). Need to ask him what he would advise investing in, though, and make sure that it sounds reasonable. Will likely spend part of the weekend running numbers and planning hypothetical scenarios...just my idea of fun. :rotfl:

shangaijimmy

I am so thankful that my sister is an IFA and looks after my pension!

hiddenshadow

Very pleasant surprise this morning. Got a letter thanking us for fully paying off our kitchen (which was on 0% finance). I thought we still had a month to pay, so that's freed up £39.50 this month and £110.75 next month!

£39.50 sent off to the mortgage, plus another £5.92 cleaned out of the budget category. Also found £12 in cash that hadn't been accounted for, another nice surprise. Current balance £152,878.40

Just noticed that we've busted through 20% of our starting mortgage balance paid off as well. Should hit 30% by the end of the year!

smallholdingsister

You ARE a mortgage machine.
Sure you know this but if you soak the normal dogfud you can dispense with the peanut butter?

hiddenshadow

smallholdingsister wrote: »

You ARE a mortgage machine.
Sure you know this but if you soak the normal dogfud you can dispense with the peanut butter?

The food we've got is a bit small (even soaked), so the PB helps keep it in the kong. Also we freeze it overnight so that they last longer (though I don't know if the boys really care, to be honest).

smallholdingsister

We freeze ours too but soak it to a mush.

Do your boys have "kong" in their English vocabulary?

shangaijimmy

I love those surprises like you had yesterday hidden. All lovely 'presents' to the OP pot!

hiddenshadow

smallholdingsister wrote: »

We freeze ours too but soak it to a mush.

Do your boys have "kong" in their English vocabulary?

Ah, our food tends to "grow" with soaking but doesn't really mush up. I suppose we could if we worked at it, but it's simpler just to add a bit of PB to it.

They certainly know the sight of them, and what triggers them getting one (on days we stay home from work the greyhound keeps going upstairs hopefully), but I just tried out "kong" on him and he didn't react. So I guess not yet.