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

ruby_eskimo

Trip to the bank was a little frustrating - no counter service offered on a Saturday so had to wait in the very long queue of people who couldn't use the cash machines to do what they wanted, and only 1 person "assisting".  It appears DH had a block on his account that they couldn't work out what is was for.  Then they tried to tell him that the transfers would be classed as CHAPS payments and wanted to charge him £25 for each transaction; didn't like it when I asked what the threshold was for a CHAPS payment and pointed out that he could spread the transfers over a period of days to get round the costs 🤣  So we're waiting for the payments to clear before I update on OP's etc.

But in even more exciting news, apart from 1 voucher I need to pick up at the weekend, I've finished my Christmas shopping 👍 And it all came in bang on budget too 🥳 

ruby_eskimo

Well the payments have finally cleared and we're now at about 66-69% LTV (depending on which valuation you use) 🥳🤯🥳  Can't believe it really.  It sets us up nicely for 2 years time when we'll be looking to move to the "working life house" as DH calls it - essentially the house we'll live in till we look to retire (barring any emergencies / needs to relocate). 

Mortgage free is still a long way off, but we've also got a target to pay everything off in 21 years because DH likes the sound of "mortgage free in '43" 🤣

ruby_eskimo

Back from Lisbon and had a really good time (apart from a bout of food poisoning that hit me the night before we went...🤢😒) so the first 24 hours was a bit of a wash out with just chilling in the hotel.  But after that we saw lots of things, walked a lot of steps and ate some amazing food.  Was nice to relax and not have any pressure on what we were doing and the weather was lovely and warm too.  

Right time for a goal update:

Money

- Overpay the mortgage by at least £5000: Smashed this thanks to DH 🥳
- Max out the LISA: Getting there slowly.  Over 70% of the way there
- Build the emergency fund to £10,000: £8003.19 / £10k 
- Reduce my personal spending: Bought some more second hand clothes on Vinted and ebay which were bargains (brand new dresses with tags for £1 which are great for WFH so I'm not wearing leggings and t-shirts all the time, a Monsoon winter coat for £30 which is still retailing for £150 in store and a French Connection jumper for £11.95 which is over £50 in store 👍)  Apart from that November is looking on the low spend front.

House

- Declutter 365 items: DONE 🥳  
- "Renovate" the Kitchen: Still need to buy that blind...
- House to Home: Painting of the doors has started, and we've agreed that the last job we need to do is carpet in the bedroom (we have half carpet, half laminate in there...don't ask...)

Personal

- Learn a new skill: Still need to start the calligraphy classes 😏 and it's been almost a year since I bought the kit...
- Visit a new (to me) place in the UK: Done, had a great time!
- Visit a new (to me) country: Done 🥳
- Read 52 books: Done! 🥳
- Build healthy habits: Still keeping up with the daily walks, vitamins and being mindful of what I eat.  Have really noticed a change in my arms and legs and my general energy levels.  Weight seems to be staying the same recently which is good but I would like to lose a bit more fat...

So 4 goals definitely achieved and a few more we can get done this year with a couple rolling over to the next calendar year.  Have already started thinking about what I want to achieve next year but will wait till January to firm them up.

ruby_eskimo

Woah, where did November go?  And there's only 23 days till Christmas?!? 🤯🤯🤯

November was a little bit of a blur.  Notable moments were:

• Launched my main project at work and it's gone pretty well and not as scary as I thought it could be.  However now I'm being rolled out to present about it at other organisations which is VERY scary.
• Best friend came to visit for a lovely girly weekend full of food, wine, games and fun.  Lots of long chats about life and plans (and a bit about money) were had, visited Winchester Christmas markets and accidentally discovered the world of competitive jigsaw puzzling 😂
• I caught Covid and have spent the last week in bed.  Over the worst of it now but it was pretty harrowing for a moment there, especially the insomnia and struggling to breathe.  The 4 vaccine doses since I had it in March 2020 definitely sped up the recovery period greatly (thanks science!)
• Our washing machine stopped working and it turned out that despite using anti-limecale stuff in every wash, we live in such a hard water area, that it makes little difference.  Basically it wasn't pumping out because everything was clogged with limescale, but managed to get sorted with doing multiple back to back cleaning cycles with deep cleaning solution and manually draining it all out.  There we literal sheets and chunks of limescale coming out 😳

Now we're into December.  Luckily I wrapped all my Christmas presents a few weeks ago, so that's one less thing to worry about.  I need to do cards soon, but will wait until I'm testing negative to do that.  DH put the tree up yesterday while I sat on the sofa directing him where to put the decorations 😂  Hoping to start getting the rest of the non-perishable Christmas food next week so again, less to worry about in the run up to the big day.

Right back to getting better!

LadyWithAPlan

You are so on track its impressive - but the fact you have  finished your xmas shopping and come in on your budget  is wow! (I have bought like 2 things I think..)

ruby_eskimo

LadyWithAPlan said:

You are so on track its impressive - but the fact you have  finished your xmas shopping and come in on your budget  is wow! (I have bought like 2 things I think..)

I do the "save a £1 a day for Christmas" challenge so basically save £31 a month for presents and cards throughout the year and any extra cash I have leftover from the food budgets throughout the year goes into a separate pot to pay for the extra food we buy for Christmas.  I usually start buying presents in October because I buy a lot from small businesses so want to make sure I leave enough time to get those orders to me (especially with how unreliable the post has been recently).  I think Christmas presents are really the only thing I'm actually organised about!

ruby_eskimo

We haven't even finished this year and I'm already looking towards the new year and what I want to achieve and the goals I want to set myself.  

So far I've decided that the word of the year for 2023 is SIMPLIFY

• I want to reduce the amount of stuff I have in the house which will help me streamline how we live 
• I want to build on the work I've done this year and continue to build routines that work for me
• I want to stop spending money on unnecessary things so I can achieve my goals quicker, while leaving room for living life

and I think "Simplify" kind of encapsulates all of that.

Will have a think over the next couple of weeks to get some concrete goals in place but thought I'd set my intentions now.

As for what we have been doing with the rest of this year:

• We're all ready for Christmas.  Only things left to get are vegetables (which I'll wait until the veg wars start next week in the supermarkets) and cream for the Christmas pudding
• Emptied the money from my health and beauty pot to pay for hygienist and hairdresser appointments
• Christmas cards are written and just need to be posted this evening
• Visited Glow at Wisley on Friday to see the Christmas lights.  Even though it was cold it was very enjoyable and DH particularly liked the fountains 😆

I think I'm already in the "wind down for Christmas" mode and still relish that I'm now in a job where I can do that, without the fear of something breaking on Christmas Eve that I have to fix or not having time off over Christmas.  This may be the last year I have that luxury as there are plans afoot to possibly change my role next year but we'll wait and see, not going to worry about that too much yet.

On the MSE front, I've just renewed our home insurance (the renewal quote from our current provider was the cheapest out of all the comparisons I did) and I've paid the car tax which came through the post this morning.  Need to do some reconciliation with the credit card this evening as the money for both of those came out of different sinking funds.  I need to get better at reconciling next year!

South_coast

Ooh, I like the idea of simplify 👍! I could probably do with a bit of that myself!

ruby_eskimo

Thanks SC, I can see it being a universal word that means a lot to different people, just need to work out what it means to me!

South_coast

Yes, and then I can copy 😀🤣