Get a grip woman!

[Deleted User]

Duh I see you drove it home!! Excellent ��

enthusiasticsaver

Enjoy your new purchase.

Suffolk_lass

How funny, one of the couples in the Village came calling yesterday (it's a bit like that here) except I never thought they really approved of us for a number of reasons I won't go into here. I have been on a minor charm offensive and hey presto - we do something in their sphere of interest and they call round. They are a bit older than us and retired 7 years ago (later in age than us) but are still active and enjoying their big retirement purchase (their motorhome was brand new when they bought it(!)). Anyway I was happy to let them look inside and they were (apparently) impressed by the space and internal layout and storage. They were also generous in recommending a local place to look after all but the mechanical bits and a nearby camp site for us to try out. Both look excellent and we will explore in September, hopefully.

I am going to explore how much that hexagonal matting costs with a view to using our other drop kerb to provide more parking spaces. I don't want to put anything impermeable or permanent down though

Karmacat

A genuinely shared interest is good, and it sounds like your charm offensive really worked well

Suffolk_lass

Radio silence over here while some urgent RL stuff got done. Lots of hedges attended to (more today) and a drive being engineered to park second car on.

We are off to run some chores, that includes picking up a set of stainless steel pans for under a tenner within five miles of home, thanks to selling groups on FB. This will help to kit out the van (I can't bring myself to call it anything more grand. We will also fiddle with gas supply, electrics and water today to make sure they are as we want them.

I can see the grass not being cut at this rate, must get on!

Karmacat

Sounds good to me, SL! It was raining here this morning - did your grass get cut?

Suffolk_lass

Nope! As I suspected, it fell off the end. We did cut all the hedges but not all the shrubs and packed up all the clippings - 4x1-ton builders bags of them. It meant the electric hook-up, gas checking and so on also fell off the list - but I did pick more courgettes, peas and some more potatoes for supper - delicious!

Suffolk_lass

Right, did some significant tidying of accounts yesterday and transferred another £613.10 to the mortgage so the balance is now just over £29,900 and progress is maintained, albeit slower than it was. With two more pay-packets from DH we have to decide how we will pay this down from September.

Having just booked the van in for a major service, and still having most of our holiday to pay for, I am just keeping an eye on our cashflow situation. With three years until the mortgage runs its course we might just let it run and Tilly tidy it away, we just cannot decide.

This is such a fortunate position to be in, compared to many that I feel something of a fraud, even deliberating about it on this board.

enthusiasticsaver

What interest rate are you paying on the mortgage and can you get better by putting it in savings? I don't say investing because as we all know that is not guaranteed.


Presumably you can repay from your DHs lump sum or continue to pay it down as you have been. What term is it over now?


I expect your DH is looking forward to retiring now. I can hardly believe I will have been retired 2 years in December. Time just flies by.

Suffolk_lass

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

What interest rate are you paying on the mortgage and can you get better by putting it in savings? I don't say investing because as we all know that is not guaranteed.

1.24%, hence it is still there, and should drop to just over £1 a day interest with this OP

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

Presumably you can repay from your DHs lump sum or continue to pay it down as you have been. What term is it over now?

Yes - the bu**eration factor is that we want to do a long trip in Autumn 2020 that would benefit from early booking, at least the flights. We also have DH's DC pension but we wanted to draw down next financial year rather than this, so that his normal rate of tax applies then - otherwise it will tip him into higher rate tax (and the shortfall in his pension up to the Tax-free allowance further reduces the payable tax if we wait until April).

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

I expect your DH is looking forward to retiring now. I can hardly believe I will have been retired 2 years in December. Time just flies by.

That is an understatement. He has really resented me staying up later and staying in bed later (in the nicest possible way) and is very tired. He is marking the A-level mocks this week and even had to attend a twilight training session last week. He has just seven more early mornings now.

We were going over our options to increase our NI Years and one of his is to do 1-2 days supply teaching. Personally I think we should do some exam invigilating and set ourselves up as self-employed - there are many options but these minimise the amount we would pay to Class 2 voluntary contributions