Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow

First week of work went well in some ways (everyone seems nice, I think I've already contributed to the team) and not well in others (body gave out yesterday so I worked from home today, then today greyhound had digestive issues so spent part of the afternoon taking him to the vet). All in all a promising start though.

Goals update...

Personal

1. Move to Ireland Boxes packed 0/10
2. Move to Ireland Items de-cluttered 0/10
3. Health Lose 0.5kg 0.0/0.5kg
4. Life DH birthday gifts 0/3

Financial

1. Mortgage OP £1,500 Done!
2. Life Set up pension Not yet done

Career

1. Job Commute to work 2/20
2. Job Generally be awesome at new job (or at least try) 3/20
3. Learn Tech book chapters read 0/12

Off for a quiet evening, and perhaps a very quiet weekend as well.

debtfreeoneday

Glad to hear new job is going well!

Watty1

Just catching up. So sorry to read no answers yet on the health front

hiddenshadow

Thanks DFOD and Watty. Re: health, have another test at the end of this month, and then likely nothing until May.

Quiet weekend to try and let my body recuperate. (Not sure it's entirely succeeded, but fingers crossed next week isn't too bad.)

Good discussions with DH about future plans. Neither of us fancy being landlords much, so we don't think we'll keep the house long-term, which potentially impacts overpayment plans.

For now, we're sticking with the throw-everything-at-the-mortgage plan. As it stands now, our standard payment should be just below £1,000/mo in July if we keep current OPs. That should mean that renting it out would be (roughly) neutral (possibly barring some savings for maintenance/repairs).

We then have (at least) two options (assuming 2 years of renting, which FD will potentially allow even though we don't have a BTL mortgage):
1. keep our current setup, assuming we can live off one salary in Ireland and throw the other salary entirely at the mortgage, plus rental income. This would put us at a balance of ~£7,000 in 2019 after renting for 2 years. Standard payment would then be ~£80.
2. keep our current setup, but save/invest rental income rather than throwing it at the mortgage. This would put us at a balance of ~£30,000 in 2019 after renting for 2 years. Standard payment would then be ~£350.

Either option puts us in a good position for either riding out the fix until the end of 2020 but not necessarily bothering to OP (assuming we wanted to save/invest elsewhere, or perhaps buy land/property in Ireland). Option two would be to sell after the 2 years and take the hit on the early repayment charge (~£3,500), which I'm guessing we'd want to do if we wanted to buy property in Ireland earlier than 2021.

The final thing we considered, but haven't investigated at all, is whether either of DH's nephews would potentially be interested in living here. They could officially be lodgers, so FD wouldn't mind about them living here, and even if they paid a nominal amount (say, £400) each month we'd still be ahead, and the house wouldn't be vacant.

We'll see, there are a lot of steps in between. I'm glad we got the long-term vision ironed out a bit, though, as that reduces the options a bit (rather than also considering how/when to pay off the mortgage, or get a BTL mortgage, how to be landlords from abroad, etc). Even if we only stay in Ireland for 5 years for citizenship, it's highly unlikely we'd want to move back here.

Not much else to report. FIT payment came through - a whopping £31.95. Not bad, really, considering how grey/wet it's been.

We finally (after 6 months!) got things sorted with np0wer. They've switched us back to EON (which, it seems, has reset our 1-year price fix for another year, so we're locked in at 2015's rates, which is nice!), and - with prodding from the ombudsman - wrote us an apology and paid us £50 as a "goodwill gesture". They've refunded us the money they took via DD, but we'll have to see what EON decides to bill us for that period. At least that's sorted.

lippy1923

Well done with the gas/leccy. Wish I still had 2015 rates

hiddenshadow

Thanks lippy, I definitely wasn't expecting it as we only had 3ish weeks on our 1-year fix when np0wer switched us. It claims online that it expires Oct 2017/Feb 2018 though, so I won't question it!

hiddenshadow

My daily goals don't seem to be reminding me to post every day...second week of work has gone pretty well. Think I'll be in the office 3 days/week as that's likely to work best with my mobility, so I've updated my goal below down from 20 days (which was already blown) to 12 for this month. Only made it in 2 days this week but 4 last week means I'm still on track. Need to get cracking with the other goals though!

Personal

1. Move to Ireland Boxes packed 0/10
2. Move to Ireland Items de-cluttered 1/10 - set aside a shirt for charity. Do the 3 bags for charity count if we finally donate them? They've been sitting around since Christmas
3. Health Lose 0.5kg 0.0/0.5kg
4. Life DH birthday gifts 0/3

Financial

1. Mortgage OP £1,500 Done!
2. Life Set up pension Emailed work about this, waiting to hear back

Career

1. Job Commute to work 4/12
2. Job Generally be awesome at new job (or at least try) 8/20
3. Learn Tech book chapters read 0/12 need to get on this!

Think DH and I are both coming down with lurgy, so likely to be another quiet weekend.

hiddenshadow

Productive weekend, even though we're both feeling rough.

Spoke to an estate agent about renting. Management costs are higher than I expected (12% + VAT), as in the US I was only paying 9%, but it looks like the other agencies in the area charge 12.5%, so fair enough. There's the option to buy special insurance for gaps in rental income or legal expenses, but I think we can get that for less if we swap our current home insurance for landlord-flavoured insurance. Estate agent was quite pleased with our plan to visit Ireland in May and possibly secure a rental there, then we can work on securing tenants for our house before we move. We should be able to about break even on the mortgage with the rental income (after fees), though we'll need to save for taxes. So that's all positive.

Another good note is that the estate agent advised us to do very little to the house. It's obvious thinking about it, but I hadn't really considered that the standards for a tenanted house are quite different from selling. We'll still need to do a few things (big: finish hardwood flooring on the stairs, add cladding to the hall; small: skirting boards/crown moulding various places), but we don't really need to do all the little things that were on my to-do list. So that's also handy.

Also made progress on the goals...

Personal

1. Move to Ireland Boxes packed 2/10
2. Move to Ireland Items de-cluttered 5/10 finally got the closet done, plus some extra areas
3. Health Lose 0.5kg 0.0/0.5kg
4. Life DH birthday gifts 0/3

Financial

1. Mortgage OP £1,500 Done!
2. Life Set up pension Emailed work about this, waiting to hear back

Career

1. Job Commute to work 4/12
2. Job Generally be awesome at new job (or at least try) 8/20
3. Learn Tech book chapters read 1/12

hiddenshadow

£10 more to the OP pot from surveys.

DH has been shopping at Lidl the past few weeks and we still have over £150 in the grocery budget. We've also been eating out of the cupboard a bit, hoping to gradually eat those down so it's less to move.

I'm off sick from work today, DH's lurgy has hit me finally. My boss at work also has it this week, so at least I'm not the only one. Hoping to be able to work tomorrow, as there are meetings in which I should participate.

Not much else to report - since all the banks have slashed interest there's not that much excitement going on with the OP front. Have also reduced the time I'm committing to surveys so I can focus on the new job.

Estate agent's contractors estimate £500 to put a stud wall up to restore bedroom 3. Will get our own quotes as well, but that sounds reasonable. We've got all the materials to finish up the miscellaneous projects around the house, so hopefully pre-moving spends will just be moving boxes, removals company, etc.

Happy hump day, everyone.

hiddenshadow

Adding that £10 OP to the budget and spreadsheet prompted me to look at the numbers again. Managed to shuffle around another £100 in the budget to break out of the 114s! Current balance £113,932.35

Also realised we're already (over) halfway along with the MFiT-T4 challenge, even though there're still 5 months until the halfway point time-wise. I expect our progress to slow considerably over the summer when we move, but at least we're ahead of the game for now.

Have referrals for 2 more medical tests, hoping they show something helpful. We'll see I guess...at least the neurologist is taking this seriously and not telling me to just manage with my symptoms because they don't match anything (so far).