Half a house

the_cross_rabbit

:j well done on passing your test:j
CRx

wishingthemortgaheaway

Woohoo. Well done.

Silence101

Thanks! Mr S has seen a car that might be suitable, although we might just insure me on his car for the time being.

daisy_1571

_party_Congrats Silence, it's a major step getting your driving licence well done

Daisy xx

Silence101

Thanks! I've taken the car for a drive, with the whole family in there! Less daunting than I imagined!

In other news, I've had to dip into our savings again, so we really need to sit down and sort out our finances, as I don't want to fritter money away on nonsense.

Silence101

Oh wow, it’s been a long time!

Not much to report overpayments wise since the last update, but we’re about to sign another 3 yr fixed deal. The last 2 years we’ve managed to OP £14000-ish thanks to an inheritance. We won’t be able to OP anything close to those amounts in the foreseeable future, but the current plan is to OP £50 a month, and save as much as we can, and review our savings every 3/6 months to see if we can afford to send more over to the mortgage.

As we’re planning on staying put for at least 3 years, I’ve started making a list of (mostly little) things we could do to improve the house, for our needs. We’ve bought new curtains for the children’s room, as we’d been using some I’d made for a previous house but they were too short, so let a lot of light in, which in summer means no-one was going to sleep at a reasonable time. They should arrive sometime next week.
We need to build a few more shelves for the built in cupboard, as we’ve been using a small chest of drawers, but it’s far too small to be practical, and basic shelves will improve the usability of the cupboard.

And we need to buy new (to us) furniture, as we’re expecting number 3, and got rid of all baby paraphernalia in an attempt to make the most of our space in a previous house. I’ll be looking on fb marketplace and gumtree, to keep costs as low as possible, especially as in the grand scheme of things costs etc are only used for a fraction of the child’s life. We also need to find a sofa bed as we currently don’t have space for any guests and as most of the family lives far away we would like to have some kind of sleeping arrangement to offer.

wishingthemortgaheaway

Welcome back and congratulations on the impending arrival. How exciting!!!

Wish.

Silence101

I forgot to say, we didn’t shorten the term this time so we still have 33 years to go on the mortgage, but I am rather risk averse so preferred the smaller monthly payments, figuring that in the end we’ll still end up paying it quicker. We have also decided not to buy anymore shares until we can afford to buy the whole house, as I’ve read that buying more shares could make it trickier to sell down the line. Time will tell if this is the right decision, but I’m happy with this choice at the moment.

Silence101

Thanks Wish! Baby is due in January, which feels like it’s very soon, even though I’m only half way through the pregnancy!

Silence101

I’m hoping today will be a nsd, as yesterday was expensive due to school uniforms and tomorrow my car has its MOT :eek:
I’ve given it a quick wash, and hoover, but I’ll probably have to redo the wash as it wasn’t very thorough...
We’ve been back from our holiday for a couple of days and haven’t unpacked yet, so that’s also on today’s list.

I’ve just remembered today won’t be a nsd as we have the 20 week scan, and we have to pay for the photos. So hopefully it’ll be a low spend day instead.

The whole house needs a good tidy up, we managed to make downstairs presentable before leaving for our holidays but upstairs is a whole different story (excuse the pun).

Yesterday I sorted through Mini 2’s clothes. We usually put them in the clothes bank at school but now we’re expecting mini 3 and have no idea if it’s a boy or a girl, we have to keep all the outgrown clothes just in case, so we’re going to have to rethink how we store them!