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

debtfreeoneday

Enjoy the achievement!  

ruby_eskimo

Thanks @debtfreeoneday, it's definitely been a long time coming and will enjoy every month that we're in "one-derland" before we take on a bigger mortgage next year.

Weekend was a very festive affair with mulled wine and mince pies at a friend's on Saturday and then the in-laws over on Sunday.  Received some lovely gifts (new reading light to clip onto books, some euros for our Olympics trip next year, vouchers for a meal out, chocolate and bath stuff), cooked a lot of food and now definitely in the festive spirit. 

Managed to finish my 52nd book of the year last night so have achieved my reading challenge again.  Going to pop that back to the library after work and have a browse for something new to tide me through the festive period.

It's pay day on Wednesday which is only 2 days earlier than usual so won't be such a big stretch into January.  By being a lot more mindful on the spending front so far this month, I've managed to have quite a bit leftover in my current account so I might actually be able to max out this year's LISA then.  I usually use the money we save in February and March by not paying council tax to top it up but looks like we'll be there a lot sooner this year 👍  

I need to try and work out what my savings targets are for the next 12 months so I know where to direct any excess money.  It's at times like this I wish I had something like YNAB to help me manage that but I'll stick to the spreadsheet for the moment.

Update from over the weekend:

Spent £113.30
In: 3
Out: 33
Balance: -30
NSD: 11

Used up a few more beauty products and had to buy replacements for things that will finish by the end of the week (which I've ordered for collection from Boots on Wednesday).  Will count those IN's when they are physically in my hands.

LadyWithAPlan

Congrats on the 1's Do you have a plan for when you want to upsize into the 3's?
My Mortgage may well be in the 3's so..

I think the getting together with friends and family is the best part of the festive season.

I have just started ynab - after decades of my own monthly budgeting, spreadsheets and lots of bank pots to shuffle money around.
I hate to say this  as I refused to look at ynab for years but ynab is definitely going to help me save much more despite the fact I do well income wise and I am fairly frugal -  the extra  self imposed discipline of ynab  - so where I overspend on a category I normally 'hide' by using my large bank float, or my cc,  whereas ynab makes you allocate the excess spending from another category immediately  so you really see the impact of spending on your own goals  plus the detailed historical reports  are really annoyingly fabulous.
They also have decent target goal calculators embedded so you can state ££££ by a date and it gives you monthly goals, and where you are at.
I could build a similar dashboard but the UK bank integrations along with this rigid framework  and super quick ability to see where one is at is definitely  worth the cost.
One can also set up other budgets - so in theory I could choose to import old bank data and find historical spends - if I get bored in the new year  

ruby_eskimo

Thanks @LadyWithAPlan - I'm hoping we'll be in the 3's but might be the 4's with the house prices around here and for what we would like 😳  Our super cheap fixed rate ends at the end of November next year so we want to kind of time it around that ideally so we don't have to worry about early repayment fees for leaving a fix or porting a mortgage etc.  In the timeline I'm thinking June / July to start talking to brokers about what we could afford and what those mortgage deals could look like so we can do some calculations.  I'm also hoping that by then I might have had a promotion at work (wheels are in motion to try and get me into the next pay bracket) which would give me a couple of grand extra on paper and pay progression as I've just hit the top of my current pay band.  So we have 6 months to get the house decluttered and ready for sale and get some extra money in the bank / paid off the mortgage.

You're really selling YNAB to me, so I may be checking that out in the new year...🤣  It's that allocation of "extra" money that's appealing to me because I often flounder if there's anything spare and just chuck it into a random savings pot.  Going to use the time between Christmas and new year to work out what our goals need to be for next year and try to get a zero based budget in place, and probably sign up to YNAB while I'm at it 🤣

Can't believe tomorrow is pay day but it means I have enough left in the account to max out the LISA for the year finally 🥳

LadyWithAPlan

Yes the YNAB is brilliant for tracking the 'extra' as I was finding my savings rate had slowed down as I kept spending unnecessarily  - as ynab only allows you to assign money that is in your accounts as  cash (so no forward budgeting of money not yet received) .. and if you over spend on a CC etc it makes you  move money around to clear the overspend - or have a giant red CC mark 

Check out the Nick True Mapped out money YT videos on ynab - I watched a few before I set anything up and his beginners set up 2022 was invaluable as I just followed his steps
There are also the Toolkit reports you can add onto YNAB (no cost) again there is a Nick True video - these give better reports, forecasting graphs and   better customisable dashboard add on.

Lovely to have some summer 2024 plans on moving  and fingers crossed on your 2024 promo as well.
I am also decluttering ahead of a 2024 house purchase - good to have a goal to work towards - I have been doing the minimalism game v successfully.

ruby_eskimo

Thank you for the recommendations, will check them out in the background today while I'm working from home on my own.

Payday today and I've managed to MAX OUT THE LISA! 🥳🥳🥳🥳  I've also bought another £1000 of premium bonds as we had a bit extra hanging around in the easy access emergency fund so thought I'd put it to work.  Because of my focus on NSD's this month, I had a bit left over in my fun pot so I've set up a new pot in my Chase account that's the house slush / moving fund.  Once I've been to the supermarket tonight I can add in the extra left over from the food budget from last month.

Have to pop into town tonight after work to pick up my Boots order and then the final supermarket run for Christmas day veg and some essentials to get us through the next week or two 👍

South_coast

Cracking work on the LISA - with 3 months to go as well 👍!

debtfreeoneday

I really struggled with ynab. I was forever having it not balance. 😬

Well done on your reading challenge. I’m on my last book now to hit mine though I did set a silly challenge this year.  But books are my thing.  Next year it will just be 100 books as I want to tackle some big intense books and am determined to get my ‘want to read’ list down under 150. 

misslolu

ruby_eskimo said:

Thank you for the recommendations, will check them out in the background today while I'm working from home on my own.

Payday today and I've managed to MAX OUT THE LISA! 🥳🥳🥳🥳  I've also bought another £1000 of premium bonds as we had a bit extra hanging around in the easy access emergency fund so thought I'd put it to work.  Because of my focus on NSD's this month, I had a bit left over in my fun pot so I've set up a new pot in my Chase account that's the house slush / moving fund.  Once I've been to the supermarket tonight I can add in the extra left over from the food budget from last month.

Have to pop into town tonight after work to pick up my Boots order and then the final supermarket run for Christmas day veg and some essentials to get us through the next week or two 👍

Great work on maxing out the LISA!

ruby_eskimo

Happy New Year one and all 🥳

We spent NYE watching an NFL game (Buffalo won!) followed by a film (A Haunting in Venice) and eating some M&S party food.  Rather sedate for us and just the way we like it 😆  Christmas was also a lot less busy this year and we enjoyed spending time just the two of us, which seemed to involve a lot of jigsaw puzzles.  

Last year was a bit of a weird one, with lots of highs but also lots of lows.  Definitely not the worst year by any means (2017 still holds the record for that one) but still not great.

So this year, 2024, I want to continue on my Simplify journey (it was the word of the year for last year) but I also want to Grow as well.  Still trying to work out what those mean to me but it's not about being a "better" version of myself but allowing myself the space and time to develop into a whole person - not just the person who works in this field, or likes this thing.  People contain multitudes and I want to explore and develop mine without putting pressure on myself.

One of the overarching goals is to get the house "move ready" as we'll probably have to start the hunting / selling process about June.  The last big "project" for this house is getting the carpet laid in the main bedroom as it's half laminate, half carpet in there at the moment due to the old owners having massive built in wardrobes they laid the laminate around.  It's been a hangover from 2022 I think but we actually went and looked on Saturday and managed to get an absolute bargain and it's being fitted in 3 weeks.  Basically we found a remnant that was the size we needed (with a little extra) which will closely match the rest of the carpet in the house.  The great part was that it was already reduced as it was a remnant but then that particular carpet had an extra 50% discount on it, which they actually applied as well.  So we paid about £400 for the carpet, underlay, grippers and fitting and saved £645!  Budgeted £750 for it so was pleased to get a bargain for something decent.  It also means that as we have to move everything out of the room, it's the perfect excuse to properly declutter and evaluate what we really need in there.

Continuing my tracking of things into the new year and so far on the 2nd January:

Spent £0
In: 0
Out: 0
Balance: 0
NSD: 1

which is a pretty good start to the year 😆