Dreaming of financial freedom!

themadvix

Yay! That's great news about the house Charly! I hope it all goes smoothly for you.

Not such good news about the situation at your Dad's home - that's awful behaviour but I hope the measures put in place catch the cuprits - theft is theft and where it's just for sheer laziness and negligence it's even more disgusting.

Hope you had a good takeaway. Enjoy the decluttering!

try_harder

That must be the fastest house sale i have ever known ,well done you .

Moominmamma89

Congrats on agreeing a sale so quick x

Jessy103

Wow! Congrats on the house sale!! x

ch4rly2002

So... I never thought I would, but I have finally reached the point where I can't stand looking at Rightmove any more! We've been house hunting for the past couple of weeks since we accepted the offer on our house and I have looked at every house in Nottingham within our budget, some several times. We have been to see a few and sadly they have disappointed us when we have seen them in person. We did however get a text out of the blue from the lady in our 'dream house' that we were told in July wouldn't be selling. She's been having a think and although she can pay the mortgage and bills on the house by herself, she is thinking that if she sells to us she can downsize (there is just her and her child in the house at the moment) and be mortgage free. So, she has said we can buy the house for £380k if we're interested still (it was on for £380 - £400k). They are building new 5 bed houses up the road for £400k plus so it seems a reasonable price for a 6 bedroom, and it's location on the estate is brilliant - so peaceful. The only snag is that David Wilson homes still own a small slither of land at the end of the cul-de-sac that they kept in case they want to buy the house that backs onto it and extend the road through to build more houses - the houses behind have huge gardens and they could fit a whole street on the land. She mentioned that she'd thought about buying a 1m strip of land from the neighbour's garden to stop them doing it. That's a good idea, but we don't know 1) if they would want to sell or 2) how much they'd want for it. Luckily, her parents live next door to them still and she knows them (she grew up next to them) so she could speak to them about the possibility of doing so. If they're prepared to sell I think it's a good idea to keep it a cul-de-sac. We've also been looking at 4 bedroom houses, but our thoughts are that we want this to be our forever home so we want it to meet our needs now and in future. We hope to have children (2 or 3) and both have family living away so 1 or 2 guest bedrooms would be ideal. One bedroom in the 'dream home' is currently a study with built in double desk and book shelves, which would be perfect for us working from home but could later be converted back to a bedroom if necessary. The house is so light and airy too, we had a really good feel about it. I think the only hesitation is the £380k price tag as otherwise it is such a lovely house.

We have also decided to sell the rented house. We never intended to become landlords and the rules around tax are going to change over the next couple of years and Nottingham are talking about introducing a landlord registration scheme that means additional admin and fees, so we'd rather take the money now and keep it as a buffer in case anything happens with our jobs. That should mitigate some of the worry of going for a more expensive house. Hopefully, if all goes well, we should end up with a £50k emergency fund, which would definitely help me sleep at night!

Not much MSE news recently. I took my Grandma shopping and she kindly gave me £40. I am also going to be doing a stall at the local community centre's Christmas fair. I've decided to market it as a stocking filler stall with everything £5 or less. Everything I sell cost less than £5 so I will make profit from anything I sell and I hope by selling it cheaply I might sell quite a bit. The more I sell, the less I have to lug with me to the next house! It would also be a nice boost before Christmas.

ch4rly2002

I almost forgot, just had a MSE win this morning. When we showed the couple round who are buying our house we told them that we would leave the Dyson cordless vac for them as we had to drill big holes in the plasterboard so that we could fit the plugs to hold the charger to the wall. It's only a couple of years old so they were happy with this, and it saves us having to try and fill the large holes. DH and I have been looking at a replacement V8 model and the one we want is £550. I rang Dyson to ask if they have any offers on (last time I rang them and got a loyalty discount)... They knocked off £170 from the price and threw in additional tools and a tool bag for free! I'm very happy with that. They don't advertise the discount, you can only getting it if you ring them. They also do a 7 day guarantee so if you find it cheaper elsewhere they will refund the discount. We had wanted to upgrade to a V8 anyway so I'm really happy about that

Jessy103

Wow ch4rly, great news about the dream house and I wish you the best of luck with your decision! Well done with the savings on the Dyson! x

themadvix

Wow, a six bed house for less than £400k.... I'd be lucky to get a 4 bedroom one for that around here! Great news that it's available again for you and fab win on the Dyson!

ch4rly2002

Oh wow, it sounds expensive where you are Vix... where we're looking you can get a 4 bedroom house between £300k - £350k for an average house, but for really nice modern, spacious houses they can command a lot more. Where we're looking is a nice area, but it's not the most expensive part of Nottingham. The houses in the new build estate that are being built on the other side of the road from the estate our new house is on are going to be going for a lot more, so it feels like we got a bit of a bargain

ch4rly2002

Things seems to be going well on the eBay front, but I've found I'm starting to lose motivation for listing items. I must keep thinking of the benefit of taking time to list and sell items.

OnePoll is slowly creeping up and is at £25.60, which is still a long way off pay out, but I'm spurred on that I'm over half way there now. I haven't had much through on Prolific recently, so the balance is stuck at £6.03, but I'm confident that more will start to come through next year. To be honest, with all the time we've spent on getting the house ready for sale and visiting family / friends, I haven't had much time to do surveys recently.

I'm trying to be a bit more frugal with my spending. I found that we'd started eating out a bit more again, so I've bought a delivery pass for online grocery shopping. I'm trying to stick to online grocery shopping to stop me from picking up necessary items in the supermarket, or getting takeaway because we haven't got anything in. So far it's working, although there is minimum £40 spend to get the free delivery, even with the pass so I am buying more in bulk. Our porch is currently full of pop, but as it's fairly expensive at the rate we go through it, it is worth sacrificing some space until I can find a better place to store it!

I have my Christmas Fair stall on Sunday so I've started getting my items ready for that. I hope I sell a lot of items, if only to free up some space and not have to lug it to Nottingham with me!