Mortgage free by 2021?!

Moneyfordreams

Hope your FIL gets well soon x

hiddenshadow

Thanks MFD. FIL seems to be responding well to the medications so I think we're out of the woods unless something changes. I've come back home for a few days to take care of the dogs/cats, then back up on Thursday for the wedding we'd been planning to attend on Saturday.

Currently miserable with a head/chest cold, and resenting having to do all the boring bits (dishwasher/laundry/chores/etc) while DH has a mini-vacation at BIL's house, but it made the most sense for me to come back so that he (and the car) are available to visit his dad and help his mum out with errands and things. (And to be fair, I don't think he's having much fun at BIL's house anyway, my cold is just blowing things out of proportion!)

Starting off August with a small OP of £453.92. The rest of the £1,400 OP (£946.08) is in the offset accounts to earn a tiny bit of interest (my math says £4.82/year ).

More additions to the offset pot:
£1.59 from buying a book with promotional credit.
£5.10 from the cash back from last week's dinner out.
£18.02 from grocery savings in July skipping a weekly shop
£53.04 from TCB
£80.28 bought a phone and paid in USD (will have to see if that affects the cashback)
Plus most of DH’s bonus money (some got funnelled to this emergency trip to visit family)

Total offset pot: £3,016.68 <-- Was shooting for £1,200 for the year so this is brilliant

Total mortgage: £136,382.42

Might be able to squeak into the 135s this month...

BookWorm

Morning Hidden - just catching up here.

Sorry to hear FIL is unwell. Sounds like he may have turned a corner and be on the mend? Fingers crossed.

Also sorry that you are feeling below par. Often happens when you are busy taking care of others. Hope you feel better soon. Hugs x

Well done on the financials - great progress :T

BW

hiddenshadow

Thanks BW! Am hopped up on cold meds but they don't seem to be doing that much. Thankfully we stocked up on kleenex on Prime Day because I'm already through 1 box since Saturday.

Signature updated - super close to the 135s! May have to un-offset some savings, though - my parents are splitting up and my mom is taking it super hard, so my stepdad suggested I come visit her. It looks like I could combine trips with our Ireland holiday and fly for ~£400 to/from Dublin, but we don't have that much in the holiday fund at the moment. We'll see how things work out.

Quiet day today, hoping to power through this cold so that I can be in the office tomorrow. Have been scheduled to have a catchup at work for 2 weeks now and have missed it due to FIL/illness so would like to have that meeting and confirm that I'm done with probation.

hiddenshadow

No luck getting into the office today - walking the dogs this morning left me wiped out for about half an hour so I rested most of the day. Just wish resting would help, seems like I'm just constantly tired.

£30.35 from MB came through and has been added to the vacation savings in anticipation of possible US trip. Budget shuffling has set that pot at £500, which should be enough for me to get there and back. Hoping that means that extra money that comes in this month (T$B interest, FIT payment, etc) can actually go to the mortgage. Still need to confirm that I can go with work, and figure out dates.

Really glad I just have one work day left this week, though getting back up to the ILs may be interesting with the issues at Leicester. Hoping they can sort that out tomorrow as I don't really want to faff about with it on Thursday.

Not really feeling the camping thing this weekend for the wedding. I quite like camping, but for 1 night it seems a bit pointless, and we're borrowing BIL's stuff so I have no idea what we'll have. At least worst case we can always bail and come back early. :rotfl:

Finally ordered a new phone (mine's been dying a slow death for a few months which is especially sad as I generally only use it to listen to podcasts and it's crap at that now). Have to wait for it to arrive from Hong Kong, but at least it shipped today. Got cashback as well and so far it's tracking based on the number amount I paid, ignoring that I paid in USD which is a smaller amount in GBP. Fingers crossed the tracking doesn't go down, as it bumps it up to about 10% back. :j

hiddenshadow

£25 from sw@gbucks and £210 (!) from FIT payment (I was hoping for £150).

Both actually made as an OP as the offset pots are full.

Offset balance £136,147.42.

hiddenshadow

Just remembered the £5 reward from h@lifax so that's off to the mortgage.

Current balance £136,142.42.

T@lk T@lk switch happened this week but is rubbish so we're switching again. Signed up for 17Mb internet and when it was installed we're told the max we can get is 1-4Mb. So we're struggling on 2-2.5Mb for a month until BT takes over. T@lk T@lk offered to upgrade us to fibre but it would involve an 18 month contract and would be more expensive per month than BT, so we'd rather switch. In theory we'll end up with this month being free, essentially, as we should get our annual line rental fully refunded as we cancelled within our cooling off period, and the broadband is free on the deal we signed up for. Even if we have to pay something for this month, better that than not be able to use the internet at home given it's our profession/most of our hobbies as well.

Greyhound went to the vet yesterday to get his teeth cleaned - he was rather mopey yesterday when he got home but quite enjoyed the wet food we gave him for dinner/breakfast! Pleasantly surprised by the cost (£235) as the lowest we've paid for the older guy is £400-something...guess that's what you get when you just do cleaning and don't need teeth taking out. Leaves us some extra money in the vet pot, may OP that later in the month to push us into the 135s.

Finally got a referral to neurology to look into my vertigo/dizziness, will have to wait until end of Sept for that. Hopefully the time passes quickly between August holidays at work (sadly not mine) and our Ireland trip in September.

Hope everyone's having a nice weekend!

hiddenshadow

Ireland is booked! :j

Picked two places to stay, both pretty rural - one south of Dublin (Co. Wicklow) so we can get a sense of whether we'd like to be that close to the coast/Dublin, and one further inland (Co. Carlow) with a couple who immigrated to Ireland 15 years ago so I'm hoping we can pick their brain on how that went/what life is like there/etc.

T@lk T@lk have "kindly" waived the cancellation fees that they applied to our account the minute they found out we were leaving. They haven't yet agreed to refund the line rental (it'll be on our final bill, apparently), but I plan to fight that tooth and nail as well.

Plumber came this week and installed the fittings in the downstairs toilet so we've got two working toilets in the house again. Just need to put up the various trims (dado rail, quarter round, window sill) and that room should be done. Also fixed the outside tap so it actually has decent water pressure, which means we can wash the car/dogs/driveway.

Fencing is happening tomorrow. Really hoping that goes smoothly and our jungle can become a garden. Just as well that we're planning to move as we've lost all hope of trying to grow any veg this year. Will see what the garden looks like once the fence is in and then see what we want to do with it...probably leave it for the winter and get it spic and span in the spring when we're ready to rent it out.

Passed probation at work with no issues. Didn't think there would be, but I'm always paranoid about that sort of thing (especially with not really working for a week while FIL was in the hospital right before probation ended). We're also expanding the team more in the next 6 months so that may help pave the way for me to work remotely from Ireland next year (or maybe not, but it can't hurt). Will wait until 2017 to bring that up though, I think.

Not much else to report - DH and I need to find/book theatre tickets with money my dad gave us for Christmas. We've gotten vouchers from him a few years running and we always procrastinate and then do them all in a big chunk, so it would be nice to actually aim to go to one thing a month/every other month for the rest of the year, as this year we went to 3-4 things in the same month with Christmas 2015's vouchers - it was fun but a bit overwhelming.

Moneyfordreams

you are very organised , put me to shame...
I've become a bit of a procrastinator.. will think about things many times ..get stung then race to change

hiddenshadow

Thanks - have gotten a lot better on the organisation front in the last few years! I couldn't manage without an online to-do list/app though..I've been using https://habitica.com for the last few weeks and it's decent, not quite as engrossing as I hoped it would be, but it works well enough on the computer/phone. I try and keep track of everything in there, and put dates on everything, so that each day I just have to look at whatever's due that day and either get it done or set a new date. Having it all in one place really helps me stay focused on whatever needs doing on a given day/week.

Speaking of T@lk T@lk, I got home to a letter claiming that we'll get a refund of £172.31 on our first/final bill. That would work out to £18.85 for just over a month of line rental, which sounds about right. Who knows how/when they plan to give us the money back, but at least they've confirmed we'll get a refund. Still annoyed with them for selling us service that's not even 25% of what was advertised (they did tell us the estimated speed range in the welcome letter, but in teeny font), but I suppose it's a lesson learned there.

New phone arrived so will have fun setting that up. Thought I'd have to pay customs/import of ~£20 but it came through without, so ended up paying £84 total plus cashback on top. My taste in computers may be expensive, but at least phones I don't really care about so can go cheap.