Ruby's Bought a House, Now I want to Own It!

russetred

Aah well, we had no choice as our's is a right to buy and we are both in our 50s. So small mortgage and small term.

ruby_eskimo

Morning everyone. Productive weekend here and not too expensive either! Managed to take apart the old dining room table and put the new one together, took apart the old built in wardrobes and the old bed and now they're in pieces in our garage. Will list all three on ebay tonight and see what we can get for them to add to the decorating fund. Then spent yesterday cleaning the old rented flat ready to hand the keys back tomorrow. Heading there again tonight to finish off the last little bits.

Really hoping we get most of the deposit back - if not all of it, as that's £1200 that I've earmarked for the holiday fund. The only thing against us is the massive damp problem in there, which the landlord was well aware of and said 3 years ago that he couldn't do anything about until we'd moved out.

Other than that, nothing much else on the agenda money wise today. Just need to take a final meter reading from the flat and get the account closed and then our new one set up with EDF - they appear to be the cheapest for fuel in our area and we can always switch once we have a better idea of our usage.

ruby_eskimo

Morning everyone! It's Friday, YAY!

DH handed the keys back to the letting agents on Tuesday and their assessor seemed happy with how we'd left the place - just need to wait and see what they say with regards to the deposit. Going to phone them Tuesday if we haven't heard anything by then.

Making my first order with Muscle Food today - have a voucher for a £40 package that will feed our meat needs for a month. Heard good things about them, so just hoping I can fit it all in the freezer!

On a MFW front - had my appraisal at work yesterday and they are thinking about promoting me! That would mean an extra £3.5K a year on my salary which would be a great help towards extra payments. There are a few hoops to jump through to get it but I'm feeling optimistic!

ruby_eskimo

Eeeek! Can't believe I haven't updated for over 2 months! To be honest not a lot has changed. We managed to get the full deposit back from the landlord on the old flat so that's £1200 that's gone towards our Disney holiday this year, we decorated the living / dining room thanks to some B&Q vouchers from the in-laws and sold the hideous built in wardrobes from the bedroom for £150 on ebay.

I've also started listing clothes again on ebay that I meant to get rid of before we moved and managed to get £50 off of my car insurance for this year! I did my usual comparison and it looked like my renewal quote was the best one so I just let it auto renew, but forgot that I'd changed the card details since last year (getting married and moving house). So when I phoned up to change them, realised I hadn't updated my marital status and that combined with the new address meant that I saved £50. So now I've paid under £300 for the first time since I passed my test 6 years ago! That extra cash has stayed in the car pot as I think I might need to replace the car sooner rather than later, but going to try and hold out till next year.

There's probably more but I've forgotten it all at the moment. Will update more when I remember!

pawlala

How's things going?

ruby_eskimo

Hi everyone! Well we've been in the house for almost 9 months now and I have to say on the MFW front we've failed miserably so far and haven't managed to make any additional payments yet! I've kind of taken my eye off the ball MSE wise, not drastically I might add, and I'm still debt free, but I have been a bit more frivolous than I'm comfortable with and now it's time to reign it back in and focus.

Things have changed a bit over the past few months:

We've decorated the lounge / dining room and the bedroom mostly. Next step will be the hallway or the second bedroom and then saving for a new bathroom and new flooring and doors. It's all starting to come together but I can't seem to get on top of the cleaning / decluttering so going to go back to the flylady thread and see if that can help!

On the job front I did get my promotion but it has come along with a lot more responsibility and stress. As if that wasn't enough, the company are now paying for me to do a MSc course at a uni in London so I've got all the fun of working full time and studying part time to contend with for the next 2 years!

Because of all the added stress, health wise I haven't been too great; colds, tooth infections, generally feeling run down. I'm now taking action and making an effort to eat healthily, take multi-vitamins and I've even started the Couch to 5K plan (half way through week 3 now!)

Finally we go on out much anticipated Disney holiday in 3 weeks and I can't wait! I think people at work are fed up of me and my countdown but it's the first time in 2 years that I will have had any significant time off work in one go.

As it's Sunday night, I'm going to put some laundry on, make a cup of peppermint tea and sit and plan out my week ahead. Hope everyone is doing ok and I'm going to make an effort to update more regularly here now that I'm back on it so to speak!

ruby_eskimo

*sneaks back in* 

Hi everyone, I've been gone from the site for a while but have remained debt free, but could do with some more accountability so thought I'd resurrect this old diary that didn't get very far! 

So an update for you all; we've been in the house for just over 3 years now and have managed to completely transform the garden (it actually has grass now!) and we've just had the bathroom refitted which we saved up for and paid cash for both projects.  I'm really pleased that we had the discipline to do this as I know DH can be a little impatient at times and just wants to get things done.  I switched jobs in January and started commuting into London again for work, which has been both good and bad in that I'm walking about 5 miles a day as part of my commute, the job is a lot less stressful than before but I am paying out for a season ticket loan which will be repaid over 10 months for the year.  That means take home pay is a bit less than it was in my prior job but I'm so much happier where I am.  

On the money front I'm on track to pay off my student loan finally in November which will give me back an extra £200-ish each month that I can throw at our mortgage / savings.  I set up a LISA with moneybox at the end of last year as my parents were telling me that they could have retired a few years earlier if they had more savings.  I don't really want to be like my dad and still working a full time job at 70, so although I have been paying into my NHS pension for 11 years, I want to make sure I have some back up as well.  I've also set up a Marcus account as a long term savings that hasn't really been allocated for anything but will keep chucking random bits of money in there as and when I can.

Hope everyone is keeping safe during these strange times.

ruby_eskimo

Morning everyone.  Hope you all had a good Easter weekend under the circumstances.

We took it upon ourselves to start the big declutter - no where near finished but our recycling bin is full, I have two bags of clothes to donate and the cupboard under the stairs is finally tidy!  I'm still surrounded by piles of papers that need to be shredded so will try and do a little bit each evening bu that's dependent on work; i'm being redeployed back to a clinical role this week to help with the corona impact so have no idea what shifts I'll be doing.  

On the MFW front, DH has said he could stretch to an extra £100 a month on the mortgage payments which would knock 5 years off the length of the term as things stand.  We're going to make an appointment to discuss with the bank once things are back to "normal" and see what they say.

savingholmes

Why do you need to meet with the bank to discuss OPs? Are you already OPing up to your limit - if not you should just be able to do it from your banking app.

Thanks for being an essential worker.

ruby_eskimo

savingholmes said:

Why do you need to meet with the bank to discuss OPs? Are you already OPing up to your limit - if not you should just be able to do it from your banking app.

Thanks for being an essential worker.

The limit on our OP's is really low so we want to actually increase our standard monthly payments if possible.  We split the finances in our household so that DH pays the mortgage and I pay the rest of the bills (it almost works out the same).  I then put the extra money I have after the regular savings into the OP's and then once I've hit the limit, the rest goes into savings.  DH has said he can afford to up the mortgage payments by at least another £100 a month which would be good.  We've got another 2 years to go on our fixed term so I don't know whether to try and negotiate now or just set the extra money aside and wait till we re-mortgage when the fixed term is up and try to throw some extra money at it then.

Woke up in a bit of a funk this morning which I think is related to still not knowing where I'm being assigned to this weekend.  Going to try and take it easy and only do the minimum of my regular job because I know this weekend is going to be busy.  Might even start working my way through the massive pile of shredding that we set aside this weekend.