Getting a mortgage and then becoming mortgage-free!

Kittenkirst

Morning folks!
So big news for me is that I had my first covid vaccine on Sunday morning. Here in Leicester a lot of people aren’t getting the vaccine so I received a message from my docs that there were spare appointments; I booked in and had it Sunday morning. The hospital (vaccine area in the restaurant) was pretty quiet so I was in and out within 8 minutes or so, and handily someone in the car park gave us their parking ticket and said we’d be out before it expired which saved us £2 too.

The vaccine did take its toll and Sunday night & yesterday were a write of for me, however I had a good nights sleep last night and have woken feeling much more sprightly today. Still a bit achey but nothing too bad (not enough to take pain killers or anything, just noticeable) so I take this as a result for having more protection. That means all my immediate family (girlfriend, her parents, my brother) have all had it now which alleviates some of my anxiety.

In a freaky coincidence on Friday late night (whilst I was sleeping) girlfriend was whatsapping a good friend from our old workplace and updated him with out house news re selling and getting the new place. He then told us his girlfriend and him are buying in our little town, she obviously asked where and he named our development! So she woke me to tell me, which in my snoozy state I didn’t quite appreciate at first and was just all “awww lovely they are moving in together”. They then had a quick WhatsApp exchange re plot numbers etc then we get a FaceTime (we’re both in PJs in bed ha ha 11.30pm on Friday night- rock n roll lockdown!) and turns out they are going to be our next-door but one neighbours. How wonderful is that   
Needless to say we now have a WhatsApp group with them to discuss all things home stuffs, and have passed on our floor guys details (after checking with him first). We haven’t yet met the girlfriend as they met a few months before lockdowns, so it was too early to meet her before all the restrictions but she seems super lovely, and the way they interact together on the FaceTime etc was lovely to see; great to see a good friend happy!!

In other news we’ve been packing some boxes up of things we wont need for the next five months to go into storage & Ive been listing lots on Olio, facebook groups (for specialist stuffs) and facebook marketplace, for us and the girlfriends parents who are selling their corner shop. I made £20 selling workbench parts that I ordered many moons ago; guy collected on Sunday and Ive overpaid the £20 to the mortgage. We’ve got a guy coming this lunchtime to collect some old shop fittings for free too so they are out of the way, and some collections tomorrow for old badminton rackets and handbags (both free)

Ive also had £9.10 of cash back clear from Greenjin and £5.14 of Prolific surveys clear this morning so that’s also been overpaid. Making a nice total of £34.24 paid this morning to the mortgage as additional money.

I have also advertised my old engagement ring (I checked at the time of the split and my ex did not want it back). Ive had a bit of interest and a lady said she’s coming on Thursday to collect it for £400, however not sure if she is going to show. If she does that’s a massive result and the money goes straight into savings, if she doesn’t I’ll see if I have any more interest.

It’s payday on Friday for me, after the 6 week period from changing jobs- this month should be a bit more than it usually will be as I worked a week of Feb, so I’m looking forward to seeing the new salary and payslip, and then squirrelling lots to the house buying pot for the new place.

We’re expecting the searches back on our current home on Thursday, so expecting questions to come through on Thursday/Friday via solicitors. Ive also had a nose at mortgage rates again and sent our broker a note as we’ve been quoted:

2.2% Leeds building society 5 year fix £1499 fee

However, on looking at some new offers I think we could get between 2.08-2.10% with a smaller fee (under £499 on the 3 deals i have found) based on our LTV and affordability etc which saves us approx £400 over the 5 year term; I know its not huge but that’s £400 of payments we could make towards capital on the house instead. It may be due to the girlfriend having the flat on interest-only mortgage, however he is going to double check as we haven’t yet signed up to the mortgage so its worth checking if we can save more money and get a better rate! 

Right, time to start work and crack on with the day

Kittenkirst

Olio and Facebook have been great the past few days. Today we’ve got badminton rackets being collected (we still have two), and Ive got a brand new laptop bag in my car to drop to a friends next time I’m in their area (doorstep drop). 
Our food waste hero had some pulled pork available last night so we walked round at 930pm and collected it- now in the freezer ready for a dinner. We also got a lovely Tiger bloomer loaf which we’ll share with the in-laws. Girlfriend is looking forward to a tuna toastie for lunch and Ill have a hunk of the bread with my frozen veg soups.
We had some shop light fittings collected yesterday which were also free to get some space back. I now do have a small pile of items in the front room causing me guilt that need to go onto either fb/olio or go into the charity bag this week.

The suede brush arrived yesterday so I have given it a go on those boots and they have come up beautifully. Pretty pleased now as it means for £9.99 I have some beautiful suede boots that complement my wardrobe, and In have the suede brush cleaner thing to help with other shoes/bags too.

Took myself out for an outside walk at lunch yesterday to get some fresh air and a little exercise, and did a half hour on the bike watching Line of Duty too. I’m being really inconsistent with the exercise and my weight is increasing. I am now 7kgs heavier than normal but my motivation to do anything about it keeps going, then I get a bit glum again, try to do more, then lose inspiration. Trying to focus on being more consistent: more water, eat better (less bingeing style behaviours) and move a little more.

I signed up to Next at the weekend, which was just in time to get a VIP slot last night for the sale as thought it would be good for Homeware. Logged in last night and there was only a few things we liked at a decent price, however when added to bag they were already sold out. So i guess that’s a good thing as we didn’t spend anything, will wait and see for the summer sale and hope they have a few of the bits we have earmarked in the sale then at a price we would be willing to pay. In a rather geeky moment we went through online and put together a “wants list” for Next and detailed the exact items and the price we would be willing to pay; when the next sale comes around we can check if those items are within our little budget we’ve agreed for the item and buy them; hopefully save impulsive or unnecessary spending.

Kittenkirst

Afternoon all, 
Quick coffee break following a long workshop on diversity & inclusion. Really great to see that my new workplace are serious about being inclusive and trying to make people feel comfortable with being themselves at work. My old workplace used to make a lot of noise in this area, however I was never comfortable enough to disclose my relationship status...whereas here Ive started off with introducing myself and making references to my girlfriend etc. That feels a lot better I must admit!

I had good fortune on Prolific yesterday, I checked it on my afternoon lunch and got a £5 survey which took less then 10 mins to do, and paid out before 5pm! So I managed to withdraw a little payment of £7.25 and send it to the mortgage.
I also rounded down the joint bills account and sent the extra to the mortgage so an extra £6.54 went across.

Tomorrow is payday and my first payday from my new employer. It’s a bit more than i was expecting by my calculations even with it being an extra weeks wage also, which is pretty nice and means a little more can go over to the house moving pot.

We’ve had a request from the brokers to provide this months payslips so sent those over this morning before work started, and waiting to hear from solicitors re searches on our current house and any questions still. 

Ive been setting up a Google drive in the last few days on our house ipad- started creating a s/sheet detailing all our account details, bill providers, renewal dates (not log-ins obviously) but all references so we have it all in one place. I’ll then store all manuals for the new house appliances in the google drive, and set up and area for the girlfriends parents as we are constantly logging them into different products & sorting out insurances etc for them Feels good to get it all in some semblance of order!

Managed to get out yesterday lunch for a walk, and dragged girlfriend out after walk to collect some Olay from an olio lady who lived 18 minutes walk away (contactless obviously). I also got myself moving at lunch today and walked a nice 4km in 45 minutes which I’m feeling the benefit of; fresh air and a bit of sunshine does me the world of good!

I have a lady collecting my old engagement ring sometime today- Ive messaged asking for a rough idea of time but no response yet. That will hopefully be £400 for the house pot; I’m thinking of using the money for one of the items on the house “wish list” as its money we didn’t bank on having, however am cautious that I’m not going to ‘spend’ it in my head before the pennies are in my hands! 

One area we do need to think about is a couple is the ginger ones vet costs- we have an account that we save in monthly for any vet treatment that he needs, but with his eye surgery, all of the meds at the start of last year for his ear & nose issues, his ultrasound and X-ray this year for his urinary issues and Hugos unexpected passing & cremation, we have now emptied that savings pot. So, we need to decide whether to take out insurance for him or just rebuild the pot pretty quickly. The cons are that the insurance probably wont cover any future issues he has with his urinary tract, as he has already had trouble with it so will be classed as “pre-existing”, however the positives are he’ll be covered should anything else occur. Hmmmmm, something to mull over and work through 

Kittenkirst

PAY DAY - WOOOOP!

First payday from the new job and the increase in pay is fantastic I definitely made the right decision with moving jobs based on the culture, team and the compensation

This means I have done the usual money shuffles:
£825 to the joint bills account for all household bills
£1500 to the savings account (making up for not moving any in Feb as I was worried about eking out the salary)
£100 to the holiday pot for next year 
£25 ad hoc charity payment (not the monthly DDs or food donations) from my 1st wage packet at the new job (I also did a larger one on the day I signed the contract-too) We see this as a little giving back to the world in gratitude for good fortune/things happening)
£78 to the gas engineer who checked our boiler for us (delayed due to COVID restrictions but needed as part of selling the house).
Then from the joint account we have overpaid to the mortgage £162.45 followed by £3 from a pinecone survey last week.

This makes the total OPs so far for March a nice chunk £393.03 so far (making payments for this month £1080.58). These odd figures irk me a little but we have a few more days of the month and I’m checking prolific regularly and will sweep change over to the mortgage over the next few days too which will hopefully bring us to a nicer number.

The lady didn’t arrive for the ring last night as she messaged after work saying she wants to collect on Sunday at 5pm now; which is all cool. I do have a feeling she isn’t going to take it so we will see what happens over the weekend.

Had a work quiz last night with the wider department which was nice to chat socially with people outside of work, although I didn’t chat all that much, but good to put names to faces more and get to know people; although my immediate team didn’t dial in oddly.

Soup for lunch today and it’s the last of my batches from the freezer so I’m hoping our olio food waste hero who does a collection tonight has some veg that i can cook up over the weekend, otherwise I’m going to need to be more creative with lunches next week!

Kittenkirst

Is there anything better than a good weekend?

Today started well- we did some tidying and pottering, then we went for a walk to our new house. We keep meaning to go and have a nose in the daylight and see if we can see any of the build, so the girlfriend suggested we take a look today. To walk the road route would have been an hour each way at minimum, so we looked at whether we could walk along the canal and that looked shorter so we decided to give it a go. 1.5 hours later with a round trip of 6.5 km (4 miles) and we couldn’t see the house! The builders have barriers up (undertsnadably) but because our property is round a corner we couldn’t quite see it from the barriers. It was still a lovely walk in the fresh air and good to see the development being built. It is only 42 houses on this development so fairly small in comparison to the development across the road (which we did look at too).

Ive then joined a John Lewis beauty masterclass this afternoon which I really enjoyed. It’s not normally my type of thing, however I really struggle with my rosacea and ruddy complexion and they had a masterclass with IT cosmetics. Ive tried two of their colour correcting products which have worked well so I joined that. I managed to sign up early so got a gold ticket (cost £35) with a code of £15 off their products after the masterclass and a goody bag in the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to seeing the goody bag as a few beauty bloggers have advised they are usually well worth the spend and fab. I had some JL vouchers as a leaving gift from my old workplace, so I used that alongside the code for £15 off and got a few more products to try as I’m feeling a little more confident about using them. Will see how i get on; Ive tried a lot of cheaper products over the last 8 years or so of suffering with the Rosacea but so far the It Cosmetics ones I used have been the best so far.

Last night the Pinecone survey money cleared so I sent that to the mortgage, alongside a little Tilly Tidy of 55p rounding the joint bills account to the nearest pound. We were tempted by takeout last night but (thankfully) couldn’t get through to place our order so decided to stick with Plan A of freezer food; I had leftover pork meatballs and pasta, girlfriend had veggie nuggets & mushy peas.
Tonight we have got that Olio pulled pork out of the freezer alongside some Olio baps and will make with a homemade coleslaw and corn cobettes. Will be like a fancy meal out without the expense (or additional calories!!).

A lady has just been and collected an older handbag of mine (advertised on Olio), and last night on my way home I picked up a free hairdryer (Tresemme one, barely used) that was advertised on a free cycle Facebook group. Our old one I have owned since I was 17 (20 years now!) and started to cut out regularly, and less frequently would spark and smoke, so I do think it has had its day. We looked at hairdryers in the sales at Christmas and were looking at spending £30-40 but decided to wait as with lockdown its not necessarily essential spending for us so we waited. I’m super glad that we did as we’ve managed to reuse something and save some £££.

Overpayments for March are now a nice chunky £393.58 which we’re really pleased with; makes our overpayment this year a nice £1120.56 which is 74% of our target for the year. Which either means we are smashing it or i set us too low a target     

Kittenkirst

A unexpected Bay of E sale of an item listed in January 2019!! Before i accepted the offer I had to go and double check that we still have the item upstairs, which thankfully we do. £16.16 already received (after paypal fee of 79p) and sent to the mortgage as an overpayment. Will cover the postage out of the surplus in the joint account.

That makes overpayment in March £409.74 in total now

The pulled pork (from Tescos) was delicious, and even better that dinner came to less than £1 all in thanks to Olio.

Kittenkirst

So after a few messages, the ring lady didn’t come last night and didn’t message which was a little frustrating.
We got on with making dinner (butternut squash & lamb mince bake- experiment and worked very well) and then had a blitz round the house, with all the packing it’s looking awful which puts us both in odd moods, so a quick whizz round before bedtime to make kitchen surfaces nice and clear & clean, downstairs hoovered and moving stuff/eBay & gifting pile piled up a bit more nicely.
Girlfriend started listing on Vinted last night; need to check in with how she did and get the other items on ASAP.

The ring lady messaged around 11pm to advise she had to attend hospital; not sure whether that’s honest or not, but I sent a message this morning saying that I hoped all was okay. I feel that’s the right thing to do as you never know what’s going on in someone’s life do you; even if i found it super frustrating and annoying. Chalk it up to experience!

The sold jeans are packaged and ready to be posted at lunchtime. We need eggs and cheese so combining it with a trip to gfs mum & dads shop (will take my lunch after normal times so there are no other customers in there!).

A quick Prolific study before work for £1.60 takes my pending total to £6.06 so I’m hoping to hit cash out before Wednesday on that so it can count in Marchs Overpayment totals.

Received my banking text this morning; and its like payday didn’t happen! I actually have less in my account than before payday now. I know this is fortunate as Ive already sent my funds to the bills/savings etc. It’s just always a bit dissatisfying to see the current account so low.

In house news, we are now debating having the kitchen island installed. It’s an additional £2315 with the countertop to match the kitchen, however we are not sure on the space available as this may mean we sacrifice a dining table as the girlfriend is dead set on having a sofa and the TV in that area so our kitchen is our main living space. We’re going to mull it over a few more days and then decide. 

Kittenkirst

Morning folks, 
It’s Tuesday and half way through the working week- I love the bank holiday weekends now I don’t work in retail  
Some Prolific money cleared last night so I woke to £5.25 confirmed which Ive withdrawn and overpaid this morning to the mortgage already.
Also sent a Tilly tidy of 80p (Its been ages since I have been doing those religiously and time I dusted it off; I read in someone’s diary about them rounding down their accounts and it reminded me. So I’m going to do that for a while; just to the nearest pound, to help us max out our OP before we sell on the 12th May!

We managed to sell our sound bar and subwoofer yesterday via FB marketplace: we never use it as the subwoofer hasn’t been plugged in for so long (we got it as a freebie from buying our TV in John Lewis when we first got the house- we used our work vouchers to pay for it that we had saved too) A nice crisp £55 made and being paid into the account today- will put into savings until the house purchase money is needed.

Mum in law went to the company shop yesterday and came back with some absolute bargains for us: Brewcity pickle fries (which are a naughty treat for weekends) 10p a box so she got us quite a few for the freezer. She also found my Live colour shampoo (helps prolong the hair colour) for £1 a bottle. Last time I ordered it online and paid over £5 including delivery. She managed to get me 4 bottles which will last agggges but for the lowly price of £4 in total! Absolute Bargain!  She also picked us up two cheesecake slices- key lime pie- which we are going to have at the weekend as the weekend treat meal, and two packs of the Keralan Schwartz spice mix that we really like but refuse to pay £1 in Tescos for; she got them for 35p each! Much better price

In bills news, Shell took over our electricity but for some reason Eon stopped them taking our gas! Grrrrr, so Eon have taken their full payment (for dual fuel) yesterday of £64 but we have also paid Shell Dual fuel DD of £59 this month. Shell have provided a credit of £30 as a compensation payment for the switch issue, and we’ve received an email from Eon that they are sad our gas is going. I’m assuming from that I don’t need to do anything (hoping!). Just need to contact Eon once its done to ensure they refund any credit on the account, as I know energy companies are notoriously poor at that (I have to say First Utility have always refunded without a prompt when we’ve been with them!).

Airtime rewards has also reached the £10 payout threshold at the weekend so Ive requested that onto my phone bill; will show in the May payment, so Ive already added lines to send that £10 to the mortgage alongside the £5 coming off my payment due in a few days from my first payout through that. This is all from Christmas gift shopping that we did, and I’m impressed that you don’t have to go via their app or anything; its done just from your card details! Low effort and quick paying really 

SandyShores

Sounds like your moving plans are really picking up pace now.  I'm rubbish at decisions, but we had a kitchen island built in one of our old houses and loved it - it was very well used.  However, afterwards I saw our neighbours and they had a sofa in their kitchen and I was kind of wishing I'd done that.  Its made me tend towards more flexible living, as the kitchen island was, of course, not movable so I couldn't have a change around.  We had a sofa in our last kitchen/diner (it was kind of an L-shape room) and the sofa is one thing I miss in our new kitchen/diner - somewhere for one of us to relax and chat after work whilst the other does the cooking.  I think I might just have to get some new very comfy dining chairs once lockdown is over when I can go and look at them and hopefully try them out.

Kittenkirst

Hi SandyShores- good to know your island was well used. We think it will give us some more much needed worktop space, as we do cook a lot from scratch, as well as being less formal than the dining table for eating and chatting. The comfy dining chairs sound like the best of both worlds- fingers crossed on being able to go and find some soon, I’m hoping the lockdown easing goes according to plan and we start seeing the numbers really dwindle as the vaccine uptake increases 🤞 

We are hoping that there is enough space for the island and the sofa, and maybe not have a dining table? Ill see if the floor plans can attach but from memory of the showhome kitchen it would work, however the show home kitchen was the right size but the countertops/appliances and doors have all been moved for the model on our development (kinda annoying really!)

https://www.redrow.co.uk/-/media/redrow-co-uk/files/properties/template-floorplans/january-2020/030220/nhl-oxford-efoxfodm3-web.pdf  I can’t work out how to add images- so this is the link.

Productive day yesterday both with the day job as I’m getting more stuck in now, and also with olio/ facebook marketplace and raising funds. The eBay money for the jeans cleared so £6.81 over to the mortgage, £5.25 cleared on Prolific so I also sent that to the mortgage. I had my phone DD come out for £15.65 so the £5 saved with airtime rewards I also chucked across to the mortgage. 

I dropped a new laptop bag off to a friend I made via instagram/Olio and also collected some Pepsi max cherry cans someone was giving away and a khaki faux leather jacket in my size which is perfect for spring. 

We also tried collecting a “too good to go” bag from Waitrose at services last night- girlfriend has seen them a few times and commented so last night we ventured out to do it. There was no-one in the services which was a little odd but we collected our bag and are eating lots of it today. We got for the £5:
-Sushi big box £5.25
-2 x chicken satay snacks £2 each
-croissants & pain aux chocolat multipacks (£2 & £1.85 respectively)
-Higgidy sausage rolls
-Quorn savoury egg things 

So the value of the food was high and we worked out we paid abou 27% of the price, however I’m not sure if that selection is good for us really. However, we now have the sushi for lunch (its absolutely fine), I’m having pain aux chocolat for brekkie, mum-in law is having the quoin, dad the chicken satay. And both in-laws love a good pastry so will eat the croissants & pain aux chocolats!

Today in my breaks I am chasing
* our solicitors- we’ve not heard back yet about the buyers searches which were due back on 27th-
* the mortgage advisors as the valuation was Monday last week for our new place and we’ve not heard anything further,
*Redrow about viewing an empty version of our house to understand the kitchen sizing etc and help us decide on the island.

After work I have an olio pick up of some tins of fruit salad which we can walk to, and then we are going to start packing our linen cupboard tonight and then tidying up the outdoor pizza barbecue from last nights pizza in the sunshine ☀️