Project Mortgage Neutral Begins

ajmoney

EatingTheElephant wrote: »

Going out for a picnic sounds lovely, if it were my hubby he would really appreciate a cheeseboard style picnic - lots of different cheeses and different biscuits. I, on the other hand, would love a cream tea one with scones, jam and clotted cream!

You sound like us! I am thinking of doing ploughmans in a box, tailored to what we do and don't like, not sure yet if Mr AJM may be better staying at home and getting over this bug so will decide tomorrow when I go food shopping.

ajmoney

I heard a while ago about changes to life insurance this year, I have tried to find some information on it but and struggling, can anyone point me in the right direction please?

ajmoney

I am planning on slowly doin work to our gardens, I have no idea how I eventually would like it to look. Our front garden has some overgrown borders and grass, I have no idea what the plants are and the back garden is just grass. I would like to roughly make a plan before I start but am not sure how or where to start. Can anyone give me and pointers or suggest any websites or apps I can use? I am not particularly green fingered so will be learning as I go!

ajmoney

I regularly read other people's threads but don't often come onto my own so thought I would update, for my own records really.

I went back to work for the day yesterday and luckily am spending the rest of the week working from home. I am find work unbelievably stressful which has massive mental and physical repercussions. A lot of it is self-made pressures but I am going to have a chat with someone at work to hopefully help him get my other colleagues on side to understand that the hours I work aren't the same as theirs so I shouldn't be expected to be in all the time. I had a chat with Mr AJM the other day, I have decided to try and be more decisive and if I then need to change my mind at a later date it will be better than making no decisions at all; there is no way I will make it to the summer otherwise.

I am using the next 3 days to try and get some of my work completed, I have no idea how people manage to work from home, especially artists etc. Waiting for or getting inspiration is taking far too long, I am arranging a piece of music for someone in my band to play and it is not going very well! I have made a good start, going to have lunch and then see what I can do in just under 2 hours before I go and pick Mr AJM up from work.

Moneywise, this month has been a little tight so we have had to dip into savings, everything should be fine now so long as my service and MOT is ok tomorrow. I think Mr AJM is worried a little about money with his new car so I am going to try and sit down with him tomorrow night and make sure he has everything covered. I am still hoping to clear our larger mortgage in summer 2018 and he would like to also but I don't want it to come at the cost of our life...watch this space.

ajmoney

Tonight I am very grateful as Mr AJM has helped me reduce my wordload, stress levels and anxiety about it all to a massive degree. I have a lot of music to get organised for a competition in 9 weeks. I had found exactly what I wanted to play and as I couldn't get it all I was going to arrange it myself which is an awful lot of work to do, so much that I have been putting it off. I played him what I wanted to do and let him know what my workload was and we have found a much easier way, I only have 1 piece left to arrange and 2 to tweak and should get it all completed by the end of Sunday. If I can get back to work on Monday evening with it all ready to print it will make my life so much easier. Hooray for having a husband that knows my job inside out and can help me. I would have helped with his reports that he needs to do but he left them at work in his haste to get home for the weekend.

poddle911

Ah, what a hero - well done Mr AJM! Hope you don't spend all of the long weekend working 🙂

ajmoney

poddle911 wrote: »

Ah, what a hero - well done Mr AJM! Hope you don't spend all of the long weekend working 🙂

I plan to see what I can get done today, unfortunately it ideally needs to be done by Monday night to help my stress levels.

We are biting the bullet and probably getting ready of $ky today. Our bill has just gone up due to our offers ending and according to my call with them yesterday will go up again next month to £112,99:eek: I rang to ask what they could do to help and their suggestion was to get rid of some of our packages even though we use them or our home phone, the other option was give us an £8.50 discount. Erm...I don't think so. We are currently looking at other options, we do like HD channels, but we are preparing to leave. If $ky offer us an amazing deal we may be persuaded but it would need to be amazing.

The discussion will then be what do we do with the extra money, OP or have a bit extra for ourselves...I may try and sort Mr AJMs monthly finances to show we can OP it.

ajmoney

We have done it, $ky tv has been cancelled as the retention deal wasn't worth the paper it was written on. The phone and broadband get cancelled as soon as our new provider gives them the nod which gives us a bit of time to look around and see what the best deal is for us. We are going to wait until the $ky tv has gone before we make any decisions about going with anyone else, we can always hope I get one of Martin's super deals in the meantime. Mr AJM was very impressed with the way I dealt with the phone call, each time pointing out why what they were offering wouldn't work for us, no lies just the plain truth. I feel empowered and a bit free of the hold that these companies have over us.

A_Frayed_Knot

Be prepared before your deal ends for their retention dept to phone you with an exciting (not) offer.

I managed (although not for everyone) to get bt tv and internet for £5 a month, with line rental paid up 1 year in advance - only a few months in and it has gone up to something like £7.50. A bit peeved as actually thought paid up in advance meant no extra charges - if only. Oh, and I went through TCB, can refer you if not already a member, got £50 card and tcb of £100 back from them

ajmoney

I'm never entirely sure if my calculations are correct but even with Mr AJM dipping into his savings our current savings value should equal our large mortgage total by January 2018 :j I expect this to come forward, Mr AJM isn't saving much but I am. We have agreed that when we have this money we should pay it off although a lot of this money is from our S&S ISAs so we would need to look into how this works. I think this could be a good Christmas present to ourselves. It will take 2 years from that point to pay off our smaller mortgage but we will look at this then to see if it makes sense to do this as we would need to build our savings back up. So long as the smaller mortgage is paid off by September 2022 I will be happy. The thought that the whole of our mortgage could be gone 8 and a half years after we moved into this house is quite exciting.

Anyway, the money shuffle has been done so I will see how I can improve my own wealth over the next month.