Diary of our £230,000 mission

chelseablue

comeandgo wrote: »

Chelsea, in your SOA, are your cars really only worth £2?

HAHA! No, I'd say mine is worth about £2,000 (it's 10 years old)


My OH doesn't have a car at the moment, we are picking up his lease car next weekend (he's like a kid at Christmas at the moment waiting for it!)

chelseablue

I found out at the weekend where our local Aldi is so can do our food shopping there now.


Hopefully be cheaper than Tesco

zolablue25

chelseablue wrote: »

I found out at the weekend where our local Aldi is so can do our food shopping there now.


Hopefully be cheaper than Tesco

If you are currently only spending £250 a month on groceries then it would be going some to be cheaper than that.
Wish my grocery bills (2 Adults and a 12 year old) were somewhere near yours.

jodles16

Hello wanted to wish you the best of luck, our mortgage is a little lower than yours and I find it is so important to find the balance of OPing and having fun, carrying on work on the house etc. It can be hard to get that balance initially!

I know with N@west if we pay over £1000 at one time the monthly payment reduces, the thing is if your OPing the monthly amount doesn't matter as when the overall mortgage amount drops down you pay more capital each time if that makes sense? I was quite annoyed when they reduced mine as I hadn't realised that would happen but I randomly checked, therefore I had to increase my OP to make sure the same amount was going in.

Congratulations on the home, I hope you settle in quick!

Jodles

chelseablue

zolablue25 wrote: »

If you are currently only spending £250 a month on groceries then it would be going some to be cheaper than that.
Wish my grocery bills (2 Adults and a 12 year old) were somewhere near yours.

I just looked at last months spreadsheet (I keep a spreadsheet each month of what we spend) and we actually spent £392 :eek: on groceries from the supermarket and 'just popping to the local shops'


And that £392 doesn't include the couple of takeaways that we had. It does include about £40 on my OH's tobacco


Determined now to spend less on food

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Hello,

Very good luck with your journey. You will save a lot by going to Aldi, we really noticed the difference when we switched. Their beans are pretty good too!

We were with the Halifax and although making overpayments online was nice and easy, it didn't always reduce the interest as the machine just thought we were making our monthly payment early. We found it better to do it over the phone and make it really clear to the person on the call that it was a capital repayment. Otherwise, you could lose out on interest.

I do hope you enjoy the journey. Re your soa, I see nothing for clothes. Thirty years is a long time to wear the same things! However, even with children, it is possible to get by on very little if you mix and match carefully. And you can get lovely children's clothes at NCT sales and suchlike.

All the best,

Squirrel ����

chelseablue

Im in a bit of a dilemma regarding overpayments.


The house we're in needs every room re-decorating (we've only been here a month so want to make it more 'ours')


So if I send all spare money each month to the mortgage they'll be nothing left for the work that needs doing in the house.


So, Im thinking maybe whatever is left after bills send 50% to the mortgage and the other half to my savings account for doing up the house.


Sound like a good plan? Or is there a better way of doing things that I've missed?

Luckyinlife

You need to make your home yours in terms of style.

So i would do the house and just keep a small amount of over payment up if you can try to cut a few months off the term if you can

I bought my place just over a year ago and spend 12k on full renovation i could of lived in it and overpayed that amount but you need to enjoy your home. The mortgage will still be there next year to overpay

pollyanna24

I agree with the other posters. It's easy to get carried away with overpaying, but you have to find a happy balance. You have just started your mortgage and as someone else said, the mortgage will still be there next year to overpay.

I've decided to keep an emergency fund and anything over that, just throw at the mortgage. Some months, it might be nothing, who knows. Cos of the way my mortgage works though, I will save up to have a £500 overpayment.

Nick0101

Congratulations on the purchase! With you buying in the South East you're likely to see a good increase in the house price over the next 10 to 20 years; there's every chance that you could do away with your mortgage pretty quickly by selling and moving to a location with more affordable housing (UK or otherwise!). That's obviously not a simple decision, but I've always found it reassuring to know that the worst case scenario is moving to another property with no mortgage and a similar (if not bigger) sized house!