Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow

Personal

• Move to Ireland!
• Lose the final 5kg
• Figure out health stuff

Financial

• Mortgage balance: £95,000 (bit of a stretch as our planned OPs have us at £97,766)
• Lifetime ISA: £8,000 (replace with another £1,200 goal for S&S ISA if we can't contribute to Lifetime ISA for some reason)
• Net worth: £300,000 (bit of a stretch, much of this year's growth was from the stock market, which isn't a guarantee. Note: does not include increase in house value.)

Career

• Sort out remote job
• Investigate new thing every week

hiddenshadow

Personal

1. Move to Ireland Pack 4 boxes
2. Move to Ireland De-clutter closet
3. Health Lose 0.5kg
4. Health Neurology appointment

Financial

1. Mortgage OP £1,500

Career

1. Job Sort out interview(s)
2. Learn Download 4 tech books, read at least 1

hiddenshadow

Well, this is interesting...

...literally minutes after I made an OP (£549.54, woo) I got an e-mail from work. They're putting me on SSP effective 1/1/17. Assuming 4 weeks in a month, it works out to ~£353.80 per month.

Can't say I'm overly surprised, really, this is part of the reason I've been job hunting (as I didn't expect a start-up to be able to keep paying my salary indefinitely). I do find it a bit unexpected that they'd essentially give me no notice about it (for all they know I had an expensive Christmas holiday, counting on January pay to cover it). Still, we've got a month to run the numbers and figure out how the budget will run.

It's looking a bit lean at the moment. Cutting all our savings pots and regular spending out puts us at -£218.69. We could cover this from savings, especially as it's likely to be short-ish term (fingers crossed on new job front).

The other option would be to re-calculate our mortgage payment for our standard payment. Right now we pay £1,350 including a tiny OP to get to a round number, but we could pay £1,097 or thereabouts. That would cover the shortfall, and we could still OP extra if we found it in the budget.

Will have to discuss with DH and debate the options.

On the plus side, mortgage is down to £116,934.27, and we've broken 40% of the original loan paid off. Not bad for 3 years, if I do say so myself.

debtfreeoneday

You'll get some tax back as well don't forget with your salary reducing a lot to what it was - sorry to hear work are doing this.

hiddenshadow

Argh, that reminds me that I'm still waiting on HMRC to re-calculate my tax based on my regular salary + pension contributions! Should get a good chunk back from that alone, let alone this pay adjustment.

Need to investigate whom to phone to chase that up (if I can reach a human at all)...

Watty1

Sorry to hear that about work. I know it was not entirely unexpected but warning might have been helpful.... On the bright side you have achieved a lot and have some savings to cover the shortfall.

hiddenshadow

Thanks Watty! Yes, I'm glad we didn't splash out on an elaborate holiday or anything. (Well, aside from our upcoming one to the US for my dad's wedding, but we would have opted out of that if we could. )

I'm more annoyed by the communication style than the communication itself - very sanctimonious about how nice they were to pay me over Christmas, plus a blanket statement and/or veiled threat that they'd just decide whether I was sick or not if I did try and go in to work to reset the clock on SSP and get my regular salary.

(Not that I'd be tempted to do that anyway, which is part of the reason I haven't tried again to drag myself in to work...I can't be useful there for only a few hours a week/month. I don't appreciate the assumption that I would do that, though, or that if I do feel like it's worth a genuine shot at going to work they could just say "sorry, you look sick, go home again". Sigh.)

Anyway...second interview with promising job should be on Monday. Neurology appointment is 2 weeks from today. Ideally after one/both of those things happen things will be more settled. I guess OP-wise this diary is going to be very quiet for the next few weeks. :undecided

hiddenshadow

Quiet weekend for us.

MSE wins:
- used nectar points + discounted zeek vouchers for lunch out at Pizza Express yesterday, which was quite nice. Still have over £100 in Hungry House vouchers as well, for when we feel like takeaway.
- DH spotted a wheelchair in the charity shop at the weekend, so we went and got it. £20 compared to the £80 ones I was eyeing on bay of e, plus supporting charity. Hoping I won't actually need it for too long, but even just yesterday it was really nice to have as I was already exhausted walking to the charity shop and restaurant.
- drove to Lidl to look for yarn (nothing, probably just as well) and got most of our weekly shop there. Decided we didn't need to go to Tesco to get the rest, we'll either go later in the week or improvise from the pantry. Fairly hefty Lidl shop came in at just over £25. :money: Should possibly make that a weekly ritual, though would need to wean DH off the lure of nectar points.

Second interview for promising job is Thursday, which is just as well with the Tube strikes today. Hoping I'll perk up a bit by then as well, right now I tend towards a wave of exhaustion right around the time I'd have the interview (though I imagine adrenaline will help a bit there). Fingers crossed that goes well, though I'll also need to address my health issues during the offer process, which makes me nervous (even though it probably shouldn't).

Quiet week planned otherwise. Didn't get any work done on the house last weekend, hoping to finish off some projects this weekend.

EatingTheElephant

Good luck for the interview. Hope it goes well.

hiddenshadow

Thanks ETE.

Interview went well, lasted over 3 hours and I enjoyed chatting with the other developers. They made me an offer on Friday and I accepted. It's a slight dip in salary from what I'm on now (bigger if you consider the lack of pension contribution), but the team seems really friendly and they're happy if I work from home up to full-time.

Will give my notice at the end of the week after the neuro appointment - I'm guessing they won't mind the notice period, but even if they do it's not a huge deal to wait a month. DH gets his quarterly bonus this month so that will help offset my SSP.

Had a busy weekend - yesterday we went out to lunch in London to use a voucher I'd gotten for my birthday, but we needed to have the voucher printed out, so we paid cash instead. Not a huge deal as we still have the voucher amount (and the restaurant was yummy, so no problems going back again), but a bit annoying. Then we went to see Love's Labour's Lost, which was very good production-wise, but the cheap seats we were in were super uncomfortable, so my body was not pleased.

Today I managed to drag myself out to the wool show/market that I'd wanted to go to for several weeks. Only there for an hour or so but it was lovely - slightly overspent my allowance buying crafty things. Have no plans to spend much next month, and it's good to support local business.

MSE win in DH not going into town to run errands/grocery shop this weekend. We're going to try and eat own the cupboard stores a bit, so he'll grab bits and pieces during the week if we need any.