Half a house

Silence101

Thanks!
I'm glad to hear your lawn has improved. I thought we would have to wait until spring before seeding it but I've seen some road sides being seeded now, so maybe we could start. I assumed nothing would grow now it's getting cold.

I still can't believe our original mfw date. If we stuck to it, we'd never be in a position to buy the second half, and I can just imagine the rent part would be a big problem once we've retired. And no one knows what financial position we'll be in 10 years, let alone 35 years time. My dream is to overpay the 10% allowed but as I'm not working yet (youngest is still at home) and we have to pay the rent part, we're not able to overpay that much for the time being. If it was a straight forward mortgage we would be able to give it the £300 a month we pay on rent towards OPs, but that's not the situation we have, so I will keep OPing what we can, in the hope we can buy more shares soon-ish.

Silence101

First of the month.
I've just realised that I spend £50 a month on different commitments, that are non negotiable, which means I now need to decide if they are included in my £100/month spending challenge or not. At the moment I'm going to try and include them, but I might regret that by the end of the week!
Other goals are to cut down on alcohol and fizzy drinks again, I started fairly well last month, but I didn't even try the second half. Now we're settled, and that I don't want to waste my challenge money, I'm hoping to improve from last month.
I'm going to start writing a list and try and only go shopping once or twice instead of buying stuff as soon as I think of it. The frustrating thing is none of the stuff I buy is particularly expensive, but this huge mortgage for half a house is affecting me more than I would like, and it feels like I shouldn't buy anything that isn't needed. I need to be careful that I don't take it to either extreme and then spend my time miserable because I can't buy or do what I want.
It's going to be a very fine line between working towards my goals and being unnecessarily frugal and angry about it.

daisy_1571

Silence, I think you have got it in one there, it's all about balance, not spending on everything that pops into the families heads but equally not scrimping so much or resenting any frivolous spending that life gets miserable.

We finally got a balance when we decided all monies in (ie salary) go into joint bank account but then a monthly amount of 'pocket money' went back out to our own individual accounts to spend on whatever we wanted, or presents for each other etc. At first that amount was only £25 but it was psychology at work to think you each had a bit own money. Then we refined it further by setting up what we called our 'home' account' and set up a standing order to go from joint to it weekly. This means we don't worry about month end, we get money in there every week to buy shopping, petrol etc. A month is too long in my opinion to try to work budgets, remember about s/o or dds still to come out etc. A weekly account works so much better as long as you remember some months 5 payments will come out, others only 4 but that should be balanced by the twelfths of money adding up each month for insurance, car tax, TV licence, etc all the annual amounts.

Hope this helps, you are doing really well.

Daisy xxx

PS - It's lovely when you first get to let go of stuff you made do with and start having things around you that you enjoy and have actually picked yourself so enjoy your new look lIving room. On this line, wander over to the kon mari thread (on the old style part of the forum I think) or pop to library for her spark joy books. This will save you a fortune in rethinking about buying stuff.

Silence101

Thanks! Yes we need to rejig our finances and a joint account with separate "pocket money " accounts might be better especially as every time Mr S gets a payrise I get less tax credits, which is good for the family but we're at a stage where we need to change the way we've divided the money between us.
I have been reading Kondo, and it really helped release a lot more stuff from the house. We still had a ridiculous amount of stuff to move, but it all seems to have found a home, so there's progress. Much more than any previous attempts, although there's still some areas that need work, and I know quite a bit are still "just in case" so we could be more drastic, and it's a work in progress, but it's looking so much better than before.
My main sticking point at getting the house neat is laundry, no matter how much I try, I have piles of clean clothes waiting to be put away, and I don't have the motivation to do so. Maybe that should be a daily goal for November. At least, thanks to Kondo, we've managed to get rid of a lot of the clothes so in theory it's easy to put them away.

daisy_1571

Terribly simplistic solution alert - never let a'pile' grow. If it comes in dry from the line, put it away. If it comes off a clothes horse, put it away. Soon as something becomes a pile it gathers it's little friends and then is even more of a pain to put away.

Just something that helped me

D xx

Silence101

Yes, it's crazy how quickly a pile grows into a mountain, I find that with paperwork too! My mission this afternoon is to eradicate the current pile.

Silence101

I woke up excited as I OPed enough yesterday to get us under £77000 except that it still doesn't show up on the app. By the time it registers tomorrow, the added daily interest might have overtaken my OP meaning we'll be back in the £77000 range. It's not quite the outcome I was hoping for, but at least I know that technically we are under the first milestone. Mr S should be transferring some money later today, so I can hopefully OP enough to cover the interest charged for the month.
I've transferred all the spare cash from our rent account back to the ISA. It's not going to gain a massive amount of interest, but better than the 0% it was accruing in the other account.
I've realised that our savings are less than 5% of our mortgage debt which puts the figures into perspective (I was quite happy with our savings as a safety net but as a means to buy more shares it would hardly cover the cost of the paperwork). As I'm mostly dividing amounts between OPs and savings, we should see a steady improvement in our savings, little by little.

wishingthemortgaheaway

You are going to be there is no time. Small, steady steps. But don't forget to enjoy the house too, you've worked hard for it. Enjoy it.

Silence101

Thanks! Because I've moved around so much, I seem to get used to new houses pretty quickly. Apart from the boxes in our bedroom acting as a reminder, it feels like we've been here years. It's strange how quickly new becomes normal. I just hope I don't get itchy feet in the next few years! Maybe we'll be able to go travelling instead of having to save for moves every 2 years or so.

Silence101

The OPs showed up this morning, including the one I did yesterday, so we're now in the £76000s and if I'm correct we're never going back into the 77 range.
So far this month we've OPed £176.54! I don't know if we'll be able to add to that, maybe a few pennies here and there. We're due a few refunds from council tax and utilities from the old place, but we need to save those to pay for the current bills when they show up (could be a few months as it's a new build, so we need to start transferring an estimate into our savings so it's there where the bills turn up).

Did a NSD yesterday, even though I had to go into town. It's a good hour walk each way and the last few times I've spent a fortune on food, so this time I prepared a few snacks to keep us (the youngest and I) going.
Today might be a NSD, it depends if I'm going out this evening. As it takes so long to walk anywhere I probably won't bother. (I'm not happy with the location of the house, it really stops me from doing a lot as it takes so long to get places. I haven't got a licence yet, but we wouldn't be able to afford 2 cars so my situation wouldn't be any different. Mr S doesn't realise it as much as he drives everywhere. At least the house is nice enough)
I guess I'm going to have to figure out a way of not being so stranded, and might have to buy a bus pass to give me a bit more freedom. I'll have to discuss it with Mr S.
Tomorrow is definitely a spend day, as we're going to a charity Halloween party. Hopefully it won't be too expensive, but I'm not sure what to expect.

But yay, we've reached the first goal of getting into the £76000s!