From Flat to Farmhouse

Savingtomove

Hi FloppyDisk!


I have been for the odd ride but lost a lot of confidence on my old loan horse so would be starting again with lessons. I also have two young children so can't commit to a loan or anything regular at the moment. As soon as DD2 is old enough I'm planning some lessons to get back on the saddle!!

We are hoping to move in about 2 years but have slot of work to do to get the house we would like! Our childcare outgoings really dent what they will lend us at the moment!!!

Looking forward to hearing how you get on and I'm planning to start my own diary in the next couple of weeks!

Savingtomove x

hiddenshadow

I agree on the definition of "prosperity" re: the saving comment. You won't become a millionaire just by being frugal, as you need to invest/grow income as well, but as Watty said, if you keep lifestyle inflation at bay you could get quite far.


Having said that, I'm now paying to part-loan a mare (loving it though), and we're in the process of buying a house. (Still staying fairly frugal there at least, not going overboard on size of house/land yet.) Might buy a horse in the next year or two but everyone slips up sometimes, right?

FloppyDisk

Ooopsie!  Updating has clearly not been my strong point, but I certainly can't blame lack of time now.  It's a good time for an update as we have now been living in the countryside for two years now. 

Quick progress highlight - 
We have reduced the residential mortgage by £20,885 and the BTL by £807.  The values have increased (conservative estimate but difficult to pin down at the moment) by £17,500 and £11,722 resulting in a total mortgage debt of £559,059 against total value of £756,722 = £197,663 equity - a long way off my 600k target for 8 years time!

I am OPing the BTL with tiny tilly tidies each month and putting the profit from it into the residential mortgage instead, resulting in an average OP of £126.16 a month.  I offered my tenants a rent reduction for the next few months but they refused and said they were happy to pay the full rent!  

We were just about to start work on the new kitchen when corona hit so we have halted that for now and have £30k saved ready, although the boiler has been misbehaving and I now have a badly timed bump due later in the year so we may have to re-prioritise my long awaited kitchen. 

Lease extension is still ongoing but the fees are ready to go, and some spare for refurbishing the bathroom when tenants change.  For now everyone seems quite happy so I'm sitting tight and holding the purse strings. 


So all in all we are in a good position.  However if the new kitchen and boiler come to fruition we will be sailing quite close to the wind, particularly on maternity pay so we will just have to see when the world re-starts and what our situation is at the time. 

My personal account  is sitting at £6,600 and I'd like to get that to £10k before the end of October to fall back on when I stop working.  Luckily I have no competition entries or riding lessons to waste money on for now, but the instant lock-down lifts I will try to catch up missed time.  On that front I have a lovely schoolmaster on loan so minimal spends there. 

Day to day spending is a bit weird at the moment, I've had to hand supermarket trips over to OH who is a bit of a masterchef wannabe ( lucky me  ) but our food bills have rocketed accordingly.  He is very good at meal planning so not much is wasted and reading here lots of people seem to be suffering the same big increase in food bills so for now it is what it is.  I am trying to keep a lid on shopping for DIY bits and pieces for the house and garden which are adding up.   Otherwise, so far so good in terms of work for OH and I, we are both busy and no mentions of furloughing yet.   Fingers crossed we can continue to stay out of danger in that sense. 

For now I suppose the easiest goal to think about is my savings pot.  I have 6 months to save £3,346, so averaging £558 a month.  This should be doable during lockdown but quite a bit of my money is in a SS ISA so quite volatile at the moment.  Obviously I would rather the lockdown lift and I can catch up with missed riding competitions but having this goal will help me to be sensible. 

Jessy103

Good to see your update, floppydisk and congrats on the bump! 
Best of luck with the savings target. Take care and stay safe

FloppyDisk

Thanks Jessy!
Luckily we have family so we will be able to scrounge a lot of bump stuff second hand.  It is sometimes tricky navigating between the family suggesting that we make sure a pram is sensible and small enough to fold up and fit onto buses and in plane hand luggage compartments (despite me doing all I can to avoid ever having to get on either at the best of times!)  While my sensible friends are encouraging me to make sure a pram is hardy enough to cope off road and has space for me to chuck in a spare bridle and brushing boots at events. 

Otherwise the flat lease extension is progressing well with the premium agreed at a lower amount that I had budgeted for but I won't release that money elsewhere until it is all done and dusted.  Knowing my solicitor that could take months... We are still tweaking the kitchen design and it is nice to see improvements that we want like removing corner cupboards having an impact on the price.  
We have managed to haggle the new boiler works down by £500 but it is still a significant amount of work to be done as the whole system needs to be replaced.   There aren't many companies that are happy to come and quote at the moment so we can't be too picky. 
I've taken Martin's advise and initiated a switch for the electricity onto a cheaper provider. 

The only significant bad news at the moment is that my employer has announced their intention to reduce pension contributions to the legal minimum, down from 10% in my case so that's quite a blow, particularly when prices were low!  Of course it is better than an actual pay cut and I'd rather that than face redundancy or even furlough at the moment.  

Personal savings are at £7,273 but arena hire and dressage training is resuming this week with small competitions hopefully not too long after so that number might take a wee knock while I can just about squeeze into my white breeches!  

FloppyDisk

Ooops, I've not been very good at keeping up but I will blame the sprog but I read a post about how some people's diaries stretch back years so I thought it was a shame to miss out on adding to that journey.   Although I haven't posted, I have been reading lots, particularly Ed and his FIREside chats which has got me thinking about pension management and trying to transfer an old, poorly performing one, into my current workplace pot so I can be a bit more proactive. Work contributions are back up to 10% which I am matching, perhaps it is worth increasing this by a few %, not sure at the moment. 

On the house front, I fixed the main mortgage at 1.62% for 7 years, which seemed amazing at the time but I could get 1.39% now, ho hum, at least we have stability through the nursery years for current and future sprog.  That gives us a standard payment of £1309.69 on our daft 32 year term, but I round it up to £1500 plus £20 or so each month.  Normally we would pay £517 ish in interest each month, so by doing that our balance drops by at least 1k a month which is a nice number. 

The flat keeps ticking over with rent coming in on time and no costs out of the ordinary. I really ought to get some valuations for the house after all the work we have done to it, but I guess we are around £525k for the house and £275k for the flat, with £383k and £162k ish on the mortgages.  After CGT it means cash of around £224k in the Farmhouse Fund.  My horizon now goes out to the end of the 7 year fix when we should have at least £400k.  I'm not really sure I can increase that much more, we could tighten our belts a bit but I would have to do that without Mr Floppy noticing.  Probably more importantly we would have 50% LTV so eligible for the best rates for the next fix.  

Our plan is still to get a Farmhouse type thing, particularly something with outbuildings/barns etc for holiday lets or workshops.  That said, we quite like where we live and if we moved in 10 years time we would have to factor in schools too so maybe it is less likely now but life will be what it will be. 

Savings wise the joint account has nearly recovered from the kitchen works and after 3 years we finally splashed out on some curtains downstairs, I like everything to have 10k in it before I can relax too much so with £8600 in the joint account we have another month or so before we turn our sights on the next project.  My account is at £11300 but with an 11 year old car I probably ought to think about saving for a new one and/or repairs.  The flat is only at £4100 after finally getting the lease extended so a long way to go there but at least here haven't been any disruptions in rent coming in over covid so that will rebuild slowly. 

Finally, horses are still brill but how I will ever manage with full time work (+commute??), nursery runs, dog walking and riding with no arena or lights etc in the dead of winter is beyond me.  I'm wondering when the time comes if I can change a direct debit with the nursery seemlessly to a full livery yard without Mr Floppy noticing (there's a theme going on here...)

Watty1

loved catching up.  So much going on in your world since I last read your diary !

FloppyDisk

Half way through September and already sprent an extraordinary amount on food, not helped by a whopper shop on the 1st.  Food is our most out of control area at the moment with a quick trip to get milk often costing £20 but today at least I avoided a spin around the shop after swimming and deliberately left my purse at home for our afternoon dog walk past the village shop.  As we live quite rurally, I feel I ought to make the most of being near a shop to get essentials (essential chocolate and biscuits usually) when really I haven't a clue what we do or don't have in! 

Watty1

I used to struggle with that too!   I found clearing the cupboards good for the soul and the purse!

castlelough

Really enjoyed catching up with your diary FD. I used to follow you way back before you had even met Mr. FD! Love how you've managed to keep up your equestrian activities and your focus on getting to your farmhouse, despite the life changing arrival of the minisdisks!