Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow

edinburgher wrote: »

$25/mo for a podcast??? !!!! me, that's daylight robbery!

Ha, I pay $0 for all the podcasts I listen to. There's a platform (Patroner or something?) where you can subscribe to a monthly support fee - a long-term/non-product variation on Kickstarter, I think.

I think this particular one comes out every day (I've only just started listening) so I suppose if you enjoy it for $1 per episode then $25 isn't too bad? Or maybe compared to the "latte factor" it seems cheap regardless.

hiddenshadow

£35 in from testing out laundry detergent.

Sent in my old, almost-dead phone with several cracks in the screen to a phone selling website expecting to get ~£15 (what other sites quoted for a "broken" phone). Instead they've counted it as a "working" phone and have paid £63!

On the less-good-for-the-budget front, we got a quote last night for replacing the windows on the front of our house. Between discounts for posting a review and allowing before/after photos, bank holiday discount, sign-on-the-day discount, take their financing which we can pay off immediately discount, and a tiny bit of negotiation :cool:, we settled on £3,000 for replacing both the large windows on the front of the house (small windows are just the storage cupboards). Our bay window in the lounge is in need of replacing anyway, and the upstairs bedroom one will get extra sound-proofing.

Might knock back our mortgage payoff a tiny bit and put us closer to £105k when we move, but I think the benefits outweigh the costs. We have a week to change our mind, anyway. I'll probably see if we could get someone local out to see what they think about the condition of the windows. I have a feeling we could get away with not replacing but would likely have to knock a few thousand off the sale price if we did, either on initial price or post-survey.

Our N@tionwide account interest ends at the start of October, so some of it can pay for the windows and some of it can go to the mortgage. The interest rate on the financing is something like 38% :eek: (1.8% per month I believe!) but the "settlement charge" is 2 months' interest on the outstanding balance and it allows early OPs, so we can immediately OP everything but £100 and then pay 3.6% interest on that to settle the account. I think I can handle paying £3.60. Also confused the sales guy with asking to do a £104 deposit rather than £99 - means we get 1 extra t3sco clubcard point out of it though! As they say, every little helps.

hiddenshadow

So I've been pondering the window thing for the last couple of days and can't shake the feeling that we shouldn't do it. Have phoned a couple of double glazing repair places to get quotes on fixing the one door that's sticking, but haven't heard back yet. Even without that, though, I just don't see £3k for 2 windows being a worthwhile investment. The rest of our cul-de-sac has similar windows so I worry that upgrading ours would be more cost than value returned, and certainly for rental purposes our current windows are fine. It might be worthwhile if we were going to do all the windows in the house (as then that could be a selling point for them all being recently upgraded/soundproofed/whatever), but to only do 2 of the 8 seems a bit silly.

Will wait until Tuesday/Wednesday to decide for sure, and hopefully hear back from repair people (ideally would spend £300-500 on repair, max), but I think we'll cancel the window deal. Much as I like the look of the new windows, we'd only enjoy them for 5-6 months and I don't really want to pay for tenants/new owners' enjoyment. :rotfl:

BookWorm

That price for the 2 windows does seem a little high. Have you thought about getting some other quotes as comparisons?

hiddenshadow

I've called a local place to possibly get a quote, but really if we can just repair the locking mechanism on the one door that's been sticking, and maybe figure out where its draft is coming from, I'm fine with that. The house is quite warm in the winter even though we have super thin curtains, so I don't think we're losing that much heat, and the windows look fine. Boring, but fine. If this were our forever home I'd do it, but as it's not and we're likely to rent soon and sell fairly soon after that, it doesn't seem worth it to sink a bunch more money into the house.

Happy to be swayed by anyone who's an expert, of course, as long as they're on MSE and not a salesperson knocking on the front door. :rotfl:

Edited to add: the quote includes about 1k in non-discountable items, like putting scaffolding up to reach our 3rd floor and doing the engineer's survey. So I suppose the actual cost for two windows (about 1.5m wide) is in the region of 2k.

hiddenshadow

Good:
- Met up with my unofficial godmother and her husband last night for dinner. It'd been at least 10 years since I'd seen her and 20 since I'd seen her husband, and neither had met DH, so it was really nice to chat with them (even if we did get home at 1am)
- DH earned £5 doing a survey!
- Pension direct debit finally seems to be working, so that's gone through (with employer contribution) for August pay. Free money!
- Made appointments for two repair people to come quote for the windows. One of them is local and does sales so we could get a replacement quote from them, but I'm hoping repair will be cheap/easy.

Bad:
- Still need to sort out pension contribution from July pay, and employer contribution from May-July pay. Waiting on payroll guy to e-mail me back.
- DH signed up for a credit card with n@tionwide on-the-spot when he opened his account because it saved a credit check (which is irrelevant unless we're applying for loads of things, which we're not). Lost out on £30+ cash back.

Ugly:
- Still feeling ill, GP can't really do much. Debated briefly going private for this neurology appointment but I think I'll stick it out for now (may opt to switch to private after the appointment depending on what the wait - and cost - would be then). Only have one full week to wait, really - middle two weeks of September we're on holiday for part of them, and the appointment is the final week...hoping that'll help the time pass quicker (though I'd also settle for my symptoms going away altogether!).

hiddenshadow

August OPs: £700.41
August Offset Savings: £2,241.69

Current (offset) balance: £135,675.94
Month we’d be in to get to our current balance without OPs: October 2023 (+6 months!)

2016 Overpayments: £14,522.59
2016 Offset Savings: £3,483.16
2016 Interest Saved: £17,341.65

Total Overpayments/Offsets: £43,133.60
Total Interest Saved: £45,802.59

Daily Interest: £9.23 (down £0.16)
Monthly Interest: £284.74 (up £5.17)
August 2015 Interest: £610.71 (down £325.97)
August 2015 Daily Interest: £19.70 (down £10.39)

House Bricks: +4 :j

Mortgage reduction: £25,992/£30,000 (86%) (Average: £3,249.12/mo)

Progress continues.

Stocks & shares ISA: £1,000/£1,200 (83%)

No change

Net worth increase: £58,205.65/£65,559.14 (88%)

Bonus for DH, pension contribution for me, plus stock market.

MFIT-4: £23,824.06/£90,000 (26%)

Almost 6% ahead of schedule.

lippy1923

Very impressed with the August figures. Good luck with the windows and hope the nasty illness symptoms do one soon!

hiddenshadow

Thanks lippy!

hiddenshadow

Regular mortgage payment cleared and bank's official value is £138,093.84. Should be able to OP this month's £1,400 as well but want to see how house spends shake out first.

On that note, just spent £513.74 buying stair nosings and thresholds. :eek: This should let us finish installing the hardwood flooring on the stairs. Extra cashback from TCB means we'll make another 51p on it than if we'd bought last week. Will try not to spend that all in one place. :rotfl:

Currently battling np0wer - we initiated an energy switch with them in the middle of August, and then reconsidered after they wouldn't move our switch date later (wanted to ride out our full year with E0n for the t3sco clubcard points). Phoned up to cancel our switch within the cooling off period and was told it was all fine, but this week we've gotten notifications that the switch is still happening. Phoned up and got a bunch of BS about an "objection date" (which 1) appears to be 1-2 days after we started the switch, so violates the cooling off period 2) also appears to refer to your current supplier objecting to closing their account, presumably if you're in debt). So they claim that we had to tell them we didn't want the switch by the objection date (aug 16) and not the cooling off date (aug 26). I called BS on that and the complaints team will "handle it" somehow, but in the meantime we are having to go ahead with the switch and then the complaints team will switch us back or something? I'm sure we'll also lose out on the t3sco clubcard points (which are only worth £1.30 or so, but...principle!). We want to switch in a couple of weeks when the MSE switch event happens, but even if np0wer ends up the cheapest then I think we'll pay more to go somewhere else (see: principle). Annoying, as we had service with them a few years ago and had no problems, but this was ridiculous.

Also investigating the possibility of extending our mortgage term to lower our payments. We cut our term down from 23 years to 12 when we re-fixed, and I'd like to bump it back up to 20. It would drop our payments from £1,350 to about £780. We'd still pay the £1,350 (until we move, at least), but when we start renting having the extra cash flow would be nice as the house could be neutral between rental income, property management fees, mortgage, and possibly a bit saved for maintenance. Sounds like we'll have to submit loads of paperwork again (not sure why as we can clearly afford the higher payments now?), so we'll have to see if the bank's math matches mine. In theory it'd cost us more in interest with a longer term, but only if we kept the house for the full term - with the plan to sell in the next 1-5 years I don't think it'll be an issue.