Getting rid of a London-sized Mortgage

Tropically

Hi Amram!

We started out with $318,000 and then tried to rebuild our savings after buying a house. We made some overpayments in 2017 but 2018 was a crazy year where we had our wedding, our honeymoon, moved to the Cayman Islands and I bought my very first car! We didn't manage to make any OPs in 2018 and I do feel bad about it. But we didn't take on any debts for any of the other items so I do feel happy and lucky about that. We're still trying to organise some immigration things for my husband so we were cautious about not keeping the cash liquid.

As it stands we have:
Mortgage: £285,443.36
House Emergency Fund: £10,758
Buffer: £8,500

I am dying to put that buffer towards the mortgage, but at the moment I don't even have a proper place to live and I am staying with family! It's in a Santander 123 account getting 1.5% interest, and our mortgage interest rate is something like 1.9% (agg, is it bad I can't remember) and so I don't feel like we are missing out too much.

Amram1234

Wow, that sounds like you did a lot of 'life events' last year. Our mortgage is at 3.09%, so I'm constantly thinking about how little in our emergency fund I can leave vs overpaying the mortgage.

Are you planning on OPs this year, how is the rental of your place going?

jodles16

Congratulations on all these wonderful things you are achieving! Amazing diary!


Jodles

Tropically

Amram1234 wrote: »

Wow, that sounds like you did a lot of 'life events' last year. Our mortgage is at 3.09%, so I'm constantly thinking about how little in our emergency fund I can leave vs overpaying the mortgage.

Are you planning on OPs this year, how is the rental of your place going?

The rental is going really well! We have a really nice family and they are paying on time and hopefully keeping the place nice. So hard to tell and I have a strong emotional attachment to the house so I worry. I have not had any reasonable cause to worry though so all good!

I have three side hustles now, in addition to my job. Travelling biodegradable glitter salesman, luxury villa inspector and freelance review consultant.

We have decided that we want to buy a property here too, so I am saving up extremely hard for that. We are on one income but have few living expenses, just food, transportation and our mobile phones. While I like being a mooch, we can't do it forever and so I would like to be in a position to buy at the end of the year.

My Santander regular saver matured, and so our house emergency fund is up to £13,000.
I dare not check on my Stocks and Shares ISA because I can't contribute to it while abroad and I have a feeling it has temporarily gone down in value.

I have $9,000 saved up for the future house. I need $30,000, which will be tricky. I set myself the goal of saving $20,000 in 6 months but only achieved less than half due to needing to get a car and other expenses like immigration.

Tropically

I now have $12,000 for my future house fund!!

I have had some really excellent wins. RyanAir actually paid out a Delay Compensation scheme from January 2018!!! Over 600 squids, so very happy about that.

One of my side hustles has also payed me 650 GBP, which is fantastic too. They owe me another 400ish in two weeks time.

This has brought our house emergency fund up to £14,500.

We're not 100% sure we are happy though. My husband is struggling with homesickness and so am I sometimes. I mostly need him to be happy. He keeps defaulting to me and saying that I need to be happy. He basically keeps saying that he is not happy and his only solace is that I am. But I'm not, unless he is. He is unemployed right now so that's taking a toll. With luck he will find a job and then it will get better. We come back to the UK this month anyway!!

mfmaybe

Sorry to hear you have doubts. In my experience it's not a great place to be jobless. I enjoyed my 2 years (working!) but that was enough for me. My sister did 9 years, but are glad they left. Others I know are there forever and love it. There's just not much to do, really! Does your OH dive? That was definitely the most fun thing I would do of a weekend. What is his field of employment?

It's so expensive to fly back to the UK too. I was always counting down the days to my next trip home or my next visitor.

Tropically

mfmaybe wrote: »

Sorry to hear you have doubts. In my experience it's not a great place to be jobless. I enjoyed my 2 years (working!) but that was enough for me. My sister did 9 years, but are glad they left. Others I know are there forever and love it. There's just not much to do, really! Does your OH dive? That was definitely the most fun thing I would do of a weekend. What is his field of employment?

It's so expensive to fly back to the UK too. I was always counting down the days to my next trip home or my next visitor.

It is definitely not a great place to be jobless. In general society is quite materialistic, though not among the friends that I have made given that I still wear hand-me-downs. We both dive and love it. We go most weekends. He has been offered not one but two jobs today! He has to decide between the two. They are lowered paid than his job in the UK but it's a step up in the right direction.

Financially, life here is pretty excellent. Despite only being on one income, we are saving 80% of mine. That's thanks to no housing costs and shared living expenses. I am driving around now, whereas in London I never drove. But I have a 35 mpg car so it doesn't cost too much. We are making friends and I feel more positively than my last update.

We are back home next week, yay! Can't wait. Is it cold?

I coughed out a major expense this month though. I am going to be participating in a Carnival! I have to wear a skimpy bikini with loads of feathers! I don't quite have the body for it (I have always been the female version of skinnyfat) but that doesn't matter, apparently! Unfortunately the carnival costumes for my husband and I set us back nearly $800!! And that was for the backline rather than the most elaborate ones. I don't think I will post a picture though, I don't think MFW can handle it!

Our previous reputation for spending horrendous amounts at the pub is gone, as our go-to now is to go to the beach! Free and still involves beer though. Last month we spent around 200 GBP out. A vast improvement from before.

Between our holiday, carnival and random expenses I saved about $2,000 last month so we are up to $14,000 in the house fund.

We thought we were going to have a split tax year, but my husband actually hasn't made any money internationally for the split tax year so it's not required for him. That means we have topped up his ISA with some of our savings. I hope to see them grow! He moved 11k into them.

I have stopped selling biodegradable glitter, and sticking to one job and two side hustles. We are $20k from our next $100k increment in net worth and even though that is pretty far away I am still trying very hard.

Tropically

Woo! He has a job!! It's just temporary but he will be clearing about £2300 for the next three months. Definitely not something to complain about!!

Tropically

So many jobs, but yet so little progress!

I currently have three jobs. My regular 9 to 5 and two side hustles. One is going very well and I have doubled my client base - to two clients!! The rate isn't as good with the second client but I will be able to find efficiencies and do my work faster. The second side hustle is fantastic - luxury villa inspector! Every once in a while I go in and check these ultra-fancy 4-figure-a-night properties to make sure they are clean and the TVs work. It pays $100 per visit and the visit takes about an hour, so it's at a very good rate and I enjoy it a lot.

My husband got a job. A proper job! He is earning slightly more than me, which will make him very happy. Interestingly, through life we have often leapfrogged each other in salary. He'll make a bit more, then I'll make a bit more, then he changes jobs and makes a bit more, then I change jobs! I think that's good for making us feel equal. He's definitely feeling happier. He's showing the true nature of how unhappy he was with the move at first now that he is feeling better about the whole situation. He is making new friends and learning to drive. Plus we have had a few friends book in to come down at the end of the year and are going back to the UK around November as well.

On the plus side, our networth has now reached £300,000 for the first time!! I thought we would reach it last month and so was disappointed when we didn't. But am pleased to see that we have reached it this month! Our house equity is approximately half of that, and it does include pensions. I realllllly want the curve to start looking like an exponential curve rather than linear. I want that compounding interest on top of the savings rate. We have investments in addition to regular savings accounts. We owe £280,000 and have £80,000 outside of our pensions in ISAs so we are still extremely far away from mortgage neutral.

We still have no housing costs and share living expenses which is a massive help. We wouldn't have reached there without the last 9 months of paying no rent, and having our tenants pay our mortgage. We are looking at getting our own place but to be honest everything is working out really well and I don't feel a pressing need. We'll see what my sister says... I think she likes the food and us doing the chores that she doesn't have time to do.

I also received an £8 cheque in the post - to the Cayman Islands!! I learned that you can post in cheques to banks!

Tropically

Righto, so my car has broken down.... I think it might just need a new battery.

And we've had an offer tentatively accepted on a condo here, with the idea of moving in December. Of course much can go wrong. If we get it, we might be the largest mortgage debt on this whole forum! A friend of the family wanted to sell to upgrade and we were looking to buy something as I've really been wanting a second property. There is a 95% chance that it could fall through.