Can definitely do better!

new_mortgageeee

A bit of a gap since my last post! I've had to divert from the original plans for the last couple of months as buying a new house suddenly felt a lot closer! So, I've reduced my regular OPs to just rounding them up to 00.00 (just over £100 in total), and then popped just about everything else into the new house fund - which reached its £40k target about a week ago! It's now just over £40k because of the monthly interest, but I'll let that build up in there until it's needed for things like legal fees, surveys etc.

Otherwise, things are ticking along fairly well. Paid my self-assessment bill today, so I'm formally up to date with all the big bills that were outstanding. With the new house budget reached I'll now redirect to re-building my emergency savings following new bathroom etc. and the monthly bills account. The S&S ISA standing order of £100 a month has kept going throughout.

As an aside, I'm just about to sit down to a very cheap dinner, but one that smells fantastic! Spicy chicken thighs (dry rub of ginger, garlic, salt, pepper and lots of turmeric all smushed up in the pestle and mortar) with a rice salad. The chicken was on offer in M&S and I've done enough to keep me going for a few days! :beer:

new_mortgageeee

Strict(er) budgeting now in force; I've decided that now is the time to fully work for myself :eek:. I've got an established client base, and can fairly well guarantee a regular income just from my spare time - at least, it's been fine for the last 18 months - so the theory works that I should be able to do it full time. I'll probably not have a better opportunity; moving in with my partner and sharing expenses, very little in the way of financial responsibility (just a small mortgage on my house) and no kids etc. I feel like I at least have to give it a good go for a couple of years. I've set myself a tentative timeline of the end of October, which would mean giving my notice at my job at the end of September. I'm not wedded to this if something happens in the mean time, but it's nice to have something to aim for.

Currently working to minimise my necessary outgoings (and stop the unnecdessary ones!), which includes renting out my house once we're in the new house (hopefully pre-Christmas) to cover the mortgage for a couple of years. I had an estate agent round last week and that all went well - their estimated rent minus fees and the like would more than cover my mortgage payments and income tax on the income. And that's all I really need at this stage. It'll take a lot of pressure off needing to earn a minimum amount every month.

OPs will stop until I've found my feet a bit I think - once I know where I am I should be able to resume, but I'll want all the cash I can find initially, even if just to stop me worrying! I should still have c. 10 months mortgage payments in savings, or 5 months for all outgoings - in the (hopefully unlikely!) event that I manage to loose every client on day one! I've also had for a long time a life/illness insurance policy that'll pay out if I'm ill and unable to work.

I'm also simplifying my 'savings' accounts (currently have several current accounts paying max. interest) on the basis that I'll probably have less cash splashing around to make the minimum deposits into each account each month. So a careful tracing and cancelling of standing orders between each account, leaving me with just one (two until a regular saver dies in November), and £500 ricocheting between the two.

Trying (mostly successfully) to limit my weekly shop to £30 rather than £40. This is hard because a) I'm coeliac, and any gluten free food is always ten million times more expensive than normal food, and b) I like chocolate - and the gluten free chocolate is usually the most expensive... Really trying to curb that aspect of my weekly shop. General food spending is helped at the moment as my allotment is producing food by the bucket load. Although I am vaguely justifying all the veg as counteracting the cholcolate...

As an aside, I've got back into Prolific recently with about £20 over the last few days. Has anyone else noticed the fees for Paypal withdrawl have disappeared? Or do they not kick in below a certain figure? I've cashed out £5-7 three times with no fees being applied. Bonus!

new_mortgageeee

Insomnia has some benefits... managed to pick up a £4.50 prolific survey early this morning!

new_mortgageeee

New house is on! We've had an offer accepted on a dream cottage :j. Quite a small house, but the garden is wonderful at just under half an acre. We'll be aiming to grow a lot of veg, have chickens for eggs, and maybe some bees at the far end! All very MSE :T It'll probably be at least Christmas before we're in; the couple selling still need to find their new house so could well be in a chain.

I'll do a big update when everything goes through, but it's looking like we'll have a new mortgage of c.£240k on 60% LTV. Once things have settled down a bit we'll work up a new set of targets. Happily OH is keen on OPs already :j

NMx

new_mortgageeee

Well here we go... just waiting for the contracts to exchange and firm up the completion date, but everyone is gearing up for the 13th Dec! Just over two weeks away :eek:

We need to do some big budgeting once we know what the bills are likely to be, and it’s all going to be a bit messy as my income will likely be significantly less than OHs (I’m about to be fully self employed with a new business) and we need a system we’re both happy with to divide this up. However on the plus side, the mortgage is based entirely on his salary alone so should be readily affordable for us both.

Looking forward to crunching some numbers :j:j:j