Mountainlioness' diary: the MFi3 journey

mountainlioness

Hey taka - Edinburgh is fab! Hubby and I looked at moving to Scotland a year or so ago but he didn't feel the right jobs were available... our dream still is to get there one day, by paying off the mortgage early and being able to semi-retire and spend loads of time in the mountains! We crossed into scotland on our cycling tour and saw a church that was up for sale for renovation and it got us excited again about all these plans. It won't be for a loooong time though, gotta do the serious life stuff first

we moved over to herts for my job so I can't really complain much! Just got new hubbt used to Essex and we were off again. I love my job and we are settling here but the prices are just mad. We do have a lovely house but at the back of my mind is a niggly little voice that says we'll have to move again to get that 'family', long-term house. Just hope it's wrong...

catshark88

Area makes such a difference it is scary! We are in the New Forest and just about commutable to London and prices are horrendous. Land alone is £25k an acre and gets snapped up in a moment when it comes on the market.

I find it quite tough keeping up the momentum of reducing the mortgage when it is so large. I know that every penny helps, but it gets tough when you have worked really hard one month, have paid a lot of extra payment and you still owe a gazillion pounds!

I love Edinburgh. I used to work for a Scottish bank and would try and find any excuse to go on "work trips" up there!

Take care.

Kaz2904

We bought a horrible little flat in 2001 (Me 23 and 6 months pregnant, DH 24) and slogged our guts out to make it nice. We sold it for double what we paid so had a £50k deposit. We then bought a horrible house (2005) and are doing our best to make it nice but it is slow progress due to the amount of work and lack of time. We got it cheap (£140k) because it had no central heating or hot water and is hideous inside. So our start out mortgage for property no 2 was £90k. That's a lot for us but I know others owe much much more.
We are now the grand old ages of 29 (me) and 30 (DH). Hopefully it will be gone by the time I am 35. Dh has no pension though we need to get something sorted there.

mountainlioness

Dear All

We may have an answer!!

A bit of digging on the internet unearthed that our super-duper norwegian water heater thingie in the cupboard has an immersion element... also noted a mysterious switch in said cupboard that has been on since we moved in... I've asked around (thanks corgiman!) and it seems this isn't essential for the hot water system.

Switch is now off and we'll be monitoring the effect on the meter...

But, the strange thing is that the people who were in our house before are now next door, their switch is on and always has been yet their bills are normal. So we'll have to see. Have everything crossed as if it's not this then gawd only knows and we'll have to pay someone (:eek: ) to come and check the place out...

mountainlioness

Dear All

An update on the electricity saga

Since we spotted the 'mystery switch' in the cupboard we have used just over 21kwh or about 7 per 24-hour period, compared to 11.6 in the bad old days - which equates to a saving of 28%! Am really pleased with this (:T to jobbing musician and her electricity king of a DH!) although it is higher than our useage in the old house... so the hunt will continue for ways to cut our consumption but with not quite the same urgency as before now we've made the main saving.

Well, am off overseas for work early tomorrow so probably no updates on here for a few days... hopefully when I get back I'll have the details of my pay for the next year and can do some serious financial planning (and mortgage bashing!)

Just had an amazing home-cooked mexican meal courtesy of DH (chicken breasts stuffed with potato and spinach with a tomato and pepper salsa, served with bean and avacado salad - mmmm!) Also v MSE as the remaining salsa and beans are going in with the rest of the meatballs from Friday for DH's dinner tomorrow Alas the Waitrose scottish raspberry and amontilado trifle is not at all MSE, but, as I have confessed before, is our accepted 'sin' and blimmin' gorgeous so happy to cut back in other ways to fit it in!! (which we did - in under our £40 food budget this week including the trifle, some bits for the house and our dry cleaning :j )

We've now painted the rental room and it's almost ready for the first visiting prof... fingers crossed we can get someone in soon. Although we've only spent about £50 on it so far - only a hanging rail to go...

Anyway, have a great rest of Sunday and catch you all later

ML

mountainlioness

Hi all from the US of A! Where it's 5.30 am but given we're leaving again in just over 24 hours there doesn't seem to be much point adjusting!)

Just a quick update to say I should have about £100-150/month more to play with now one way and another as my performance-related pay has been agreed.

Now the dilemma is what to do with the extra money... my instinct now we've started the challenge is to shove it straight at the mortgage but then again we only put £100 each into our ISAs (just up from £50) and maybe that's a better place? (we have yorkshire e-isas as recommended by the Great MSE in the Sky)

On the other hand, DH has had shed fantasies ever since we got a house together so I may just fulfil them first by starting a shed fund what price can you put on a happy partner?!? We'd do it the MSE way of course :cool:


(jobbingmusician - will email back soon!)

SuiDreams

Been reading this thread with Envy, really really want to get rid of our mortgage but we have other things that we need to pay off 1st. Am in the process of Changing mortgage onto a better rate, will be keeping payments the same and reducing the term from 17 years to 15. Would like to move in the future, but this would mean more than doubling the current mortgage. So need to reduce it as much as we can so that we can aford to move else where. Thanks for the Inspiration

mountainlioness

Hi Suidreams - sounds like you're making good progress if you're reducing the term

We're around 23 years and hoping that the overpayments will start to have an impact on the term, although we're not formally reducing it as we need the flexibility, particularly if we have cubs in the next couple of years

Got back from the US this morning and checked the meter - only 18.58 kwh used since Sunday afternoon so taken with the other readings we're now looking at around 5 kwh/day or 150/month (it was 350/month in our first 2 months in this house!) So am hoping this whole little saga is now over!

Just booked a trip to France for our bi-annual wine-buying session... we've been running on almost empty through the summer as the ferries were over £100 each way so looking forward to a bargain stock-up for xmas (£15 each way plus diesel). We probably spend between £100 and £150 on wine each session, which must save us in the region of £800-1000/year if you think about drinking 4 bottles a week or so.

One good thing about the whole using up of wine over the summer is we discovered a great way of drinking cheap cava. Freezing individual berries in ice-cubes then adding them to the cava really livens it up a bit (plus removes need to wait for the bottle to chill ). Blackberries are particularly good as they're so soft they turn the whole glass pink and fruity (and even got the berries free from Freecycle :cool: )

Hoping to make our £300 overpayment target in October and will be posting an update to TG after that...

SuiDreams

Well its only 2 years that I've taken off the term and it allows me to keep the mortgage payments as they are now for a while. Otherwise I'd probably waste the savings on something silly. I'm currently trying to replace small appliances, with Nectar points and free amazon vouchers.

mountainlioness

That must save you 1000s in interest though! Have you used any online calculators to see the impact on your total payments to the mortgage company?