Getting rid of a London-sized Mortgage

Tropically

I have sold another thing for the wedding and so we are now only £113 over budget. Making headway.

I've sold a few more things as well. We are up to £188 now.

My partner and I have been together for over 6 years. We've been married for just over two weeks and I've just had the shock of my life. He is carrying nearly his maximum overdraft. I don't really know what to do, I feel heartbroken. Where did this come from? He keeps saying that he told me but I know he didn't speak honestly about it. He is away for the week and so we can't really discuss it. I'm so mad.

Tropically

Hooray hooray, the deposit came back. Minus a justified £50 and a questionable £9, but that brings the wedding within budget including the stamps we'll need to post the items. I also sold a few things. One of which a lady paid me nearly £10 over the agreed price for, and I had to run into the road with no shoes on to give her the money back.

Apparently the overdraft is items for the wedding that he wanted to pay for himself but that he had cash flow issues... There were a number of excuses. It has been rectified and I told him he has to find the £70 lost in overdraft fees unnecessarily.

I have still selling off my worldly goods. Tragedy befell me today. I left my lunch somewhere between my house and the office so not only will I have wasted perfectly good food, but I also had to buy lunch to compensate.

julicorn

Tropically wrote: »

My partner and I have been together for over 6 years. We've been married for just over two weeks and I've just had the shock of my life. He is carrying nearly his maximum overdraft. I don't really know what to do, I feel heartbroken. Where did this come from? He keeps saying that he told me but I know he didn't speak honestly about it. He is away for the week and so we can't really discuss it. I'm so mad.

Oh god! :eek: That would freak me out. I remember finding out that my boyfriend (now husband) had a maxed out overdraft when we moved in together, but that was just after finishing his degree, so I guess not that unusual (my reaction was still pretty ott, and he ended up paying it off very quickly because fun money was basically cancelled for half a year or so).
However, after 6 years together and getting married I would really expect him to be much more open and honest about something like that. Wow.

Tropically

julicorn wrote: »

Oh god! :eek: That would freak me out. I remember finding out that my boyfriend (now husband) had a maxed out overdraft when we moved in together, but that was just after finishing his degree, so I guess not that unusual (my reaction was still pretty ott, and he ended up paying it off very quickly because fun money was basically cancelled for half a year or so).
However, after 6 years together and getting married I would really expect him to be much more open and honest about something like that. Wow.

I am annoyed too! I'm actually extremely annoyed and we sat down and went through all of his accounts. I asked him to plot his overdraft over time. He claims that I knew about it but I definitely didn't. It makes a mockery of me using JobSpottr, doing surveys, selling items etc., if he is paying huge overdraft fees. It makes a mockery of me every month plotting all our accounts to look at our savings and how they are growing. He definitely wasn't as honest as he should have been. We looked at the last 6 months of spending together, and there isn't unknown spending on there - so that's good. I'd be worried if I saw massive amounts sent to gambling sites etc.

He said that he didn't want to take money out of the joint account (even though they were wedding expenses) because he wanted to manage it on his own. It was a pride thing. Since it's a pride thing, I've decided to let this go on this very one occasion because:

• There was a pride thing associated with my parents contributing to the wedding, and his family not contributing anything. He wanted to prove that he was covering certain expenses on his own.
• He is moving continents for me and is leaving a very well paid job to go to no job at all. He is very worried about being a 'mooch'. If I admonish him too much, it will lead to further feelings of being a scrounger off his new wife.
• When we move abroad, we are living with my sister for a bit, further exacerbating the 'mooching' aspect. He will be unemployed and living in his sister-in-laws condo. It's not very 'manly' (even though I think concepts of manliness and male pride are dumb).

So I am not angry, but very suspicious. I will be monitoring this closely. Hopefully I'm not making a new diary next year saying I'm getting divorced.

julicorn

I can see that, and it sounds like you are handling it well. It does indeed sound like one of those 'male pride gone too far' kind of situations, which is not exactly a great excuse, but probably something that can be worked on (and that would take a know from a situation like this). It also sounds like something that would build up over time, so maybe he felt like he could somehow iron it out on his own. The 'but you knew about it' attitude would annoy the hell out of me, but I guess that can be a coping mechanism as well.

Either way, sounds like it's something you're working on - hopefully he is as well.

Tropically

Trial by fire is trying to move abroad in your first month of marriage!

Phew. We've been so busy at work. My husband has been working until 10 or 11 at night each night. We are trying to keep it together and trying to sell as much as possible and give everything else away so as little ends up in the landfill as possible. It is tricky!! We are on box #15 and I have officially 1.5 weeks until my last day in the UK for a while.

We are leaking money at very corner! Maybe our accidental BTL will turn around, but so far it doesn't look that great! I definitely prefer investment funds for profitability. For those interested, we have spent nearly £2000 on yearly management fees, EPC, gas certificate, tenancy referencing, tenancy agreements etc. We are using Upad and a property manager. Hopefully, after all these upfront costs, we just have the mortgage to pay. Our tenants have agreed £1500 pcm, our mortgage is £1280. That will leave us with a whopping £680 of cash profit each year! Certainly not the big bucks.

But, we will be getting £800 worth of equity each month, so that counts for something.

I have sold some more wedding paraphernalia and now we are a few hundred pounds below our budget, yay! We have sold some more things, not making too much money but probably a few hundred as well. I can see that selling things would be great for debt-busting. Not so great when you don't have that much. Ziffit/momox/webuybooks etc are lifesavers. We've got £50 this month and it's so straightforward.

I got my last paycheque which has my paid out holidays (yay!) and the final balance of my season ticket loan (boo!) I also realised that because it took a few months to process taking out the loan, I won't get as much back in a refund as I have paid! Overall, I have £500 more than usual this paycheque which is good.

Tropically

Hello my sweet friends. It's been a long time since I've updated and over the last few days I have been catching up on all you stories.

Our tenants' paid second months rent, and should be paying the third soon. Once they pay the third month then I'll REALLY like them. Our mortgage is currently £287,158.19.

My husband and I are both doing well in Cayman. We've got a job and a side hustle each! I have been loving YNAB and it's been really helpful for managing everything. We have about £5k in our joint account, and we both want to increase this as per my flow chart I made earlier. We want to pay more off the mortgage but we're just not ready yet.

We need to buy a car here! It's so hard to resist the temptation to get financing. For example, I inquired about a used car at a dealer and they said I could get a NEW car for $200/month financing. I am trying to resist and buy a car within my means. I have saved up $5,000 for a new car here and want to buy a car worth $5,000.

It's such a shame about the markets though, makes the calculations of net worth very sad.

Tropically

About this time last year, I had set the goal of overpaying the mortgage by £7k. I must be the absolute worst blogger on here because I haven't overpaid at all this year. To be fair, I:

• got married
• went to Asia
• moved abroad
• got a new job abroad
• bought a car

So it's still be a very good year. I have thought about overpaying every day but wanted to keep some cash reserves for all of that! We have not gone into debt at all.

My husband and I have started Monday Money Talks, where we go for a short walk and run through our bank accounts, any major purposes,

Our honeymoon flight was delayed by 8 hours, and I've just got confirmation that we will each get about £500 as compensation. Win!

I am so close to the last month on my Regular Saver! I have £2200 in it and so just need one more month and then I will put it into our buffer account.

I made that flowchart a while back and said that we wanted a £7800 buffer, but we've decided to get it up to £10k. It has £8,300 in it and so with the £2400 plus interest that is coming soon, we will be over the amount.

Should I make an OP for £1k this year just to show that I am committed? I want to... I will check with the husband.

Unicorn_cottage

Hi Tropically!

You are doing amazing stuff with your finances - is really inspiring. I never got my head round YNAB maybe I should give it another go now that I have knocked a lot of our debts on the head. About that potential £1000 overpayment...maybe run it through one of those calculators & see how much interest it would save you over the course of the loan. I always find that inspiring

UC x

Amram1234

Hi Tropically,

Thanks for sharing your story, I have been following your journey for the last few months and have found it really useful. Where are you now with your mortgage?

Thanks,