Reducing Debt - being accountable and taking responsibility

DrSpendLittle

In other news, B4rclaycard took their standard direct debit out of my account this morning - £44.38 - which means my £1,000 payment didn't cancel it out. Not a significant problem, It'll have to come out of savings. Will adjust my signature.

Plans for the day are WFH and keeping the house clean for viewings. We've some lined up. In a few days time, we could have sold our house and be putting down a deposit for the dream new build. Eeek. That all seems a bit too perfect though and I'm prepared for a battle to sell and missing out on the other one. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, as they say.

In terms of spends, I've an Oc4do shop coming later and DF and I need to reconcile decoration spends. We also need to pay a conveyancing bill. I may walk down later to the solicitors do that. Only £28. I can get a quote for house move conveyancing at the same time.

DSL

DrSpendLittle

So the upside of Barcl4ycard taking my direct debit is I have now paid off over £13,000 of debt!!

Whoop Whoop

Only £947.81 and 25 days to go!

redofromstart

Great going on the debt clearance.

Investing in a few plants, or planted pots is a good plan, you can always take them with you after all. I've still got a couple of houseplants from when we sold ours. In 2005 or so .

I also still have quite a few under bed storage boxes for the same reason. Everything went in those and under beds, or stacked in the wardrobe. Those sucky vacuum bags are good for that too.

Starmummy

Wow! It really is all go.

I know what you mean about replacing one goal for another. My plan is similar to yours, once the debt is gone I'm going hell for leather on saving up a deposit so me and Mr S can buy together. I have no concerns now that my determination will waver. I can't wait to see my savings start to multiply.

enthusiasticsaver

DrSpendLittle wrote: »

Enthusiastic - I've spent quite a lot of time going over my anticipated 'new house' budget in YNAB where I account for bigger utility bills etc. I've also used a lot of different calculator tools to try and get some sense of moving fees and expenses and I've got quotes from local movers already. I'm hoping its all fairly accurate. I've also done a hypothetical furniture plan for each room in the new build dream house and costed the items up, mainly via Ikea to start off with. I've also done square metre estimates for carpets / flooring and blinds. Now that was expensive! All a bit geeky if I'm honest We'd need to cashflow furniture over the first 6 months. Carpets and blinds would be a priority for moving in. For older houses (which we haven't seen any we like yet) we'd look to consider the costs of bathrooms, kitchens, roofs, windows, gardens, driveways as well. We could easily spend £50-£80K less on an older house and have those expense bringing it up to our taste. Definitely makes me want to push a bit more to secure the new build dream home if we can.

Sounds like you have it covered. We did not buy a new build as none going up in the right area but our house was around eight years old, recently extended and had new kitchen and bathrooms luckily to our taste. The new builds which went up a few years later were so much more expensive with smaller rooms and gardens so maybe also look at houses which are not brand new but also don't need total renovation. There can be a middle ground.

Kitten868

Hello there,

Just read your diary and wanted to say well done. I have two questions. Did your mis selling claim on your bank account go anywhere? And secondly does the housing development you want to buy from not have any deals? I've been looking at houses for my friend and my Facebook is flooded with new builds offering 105% exchange and price reductions or stamp duty laid or £10k towards home improvements (carpets etc). Seems mad that you aren't getting these offers.

Best of luck with the move xxx

DrSpendLittle

Hi Kitten :hello:

My miss-selling claim for my packaged bank account went nowhere. I couldn't be bothered to challenge Barcl4ys claim that I did benefit from the other extras. I think I activated the mobile phone insurance, so felt my counter argument wasn't strong enough. This was all about 18 months ago now. I've closed the resolver case.

Funnily enough, we've been discussing deals with the developer all this week - we hadn't been able to have such discussions until we were proceedable, which we are now. However, the deals they are offering just aren't good enough to entice us to bite. The sums just don't work in our favour. To be honest, the thought of living in that house with such a big financial commitment was making me feel ill I'm secretly glad the developer won't agree to our incentive requests (£19K stamp duty and some extra work totalling £10K for free ) as it makes the decision for us. We'd much rather spend £100K less on a house and live a much more comfortable life with the option to upgrade windows / bathrooms etc to our taste. And have ££s in the bank too!

DSL

DrSpendLittle

What a busy week. Madness at work and madness at home with viewings. We think we have a buyer. They're coming for a second viewing this weekend but have made an offer They are proceedable too (have sold and are renting) so I suspect will be looking to move in fairly quickly This is somewhat scary as I haven't yet built up my moving fund. Super DF to the rescue

We've decided against the enormously expensive new build as the builder won't meet our inducement needs and we don't want to be broke. I'm relieved as I was beginning to feel sick at the thought of such a big mortgage payment for so long.

The whole process has been very financially clarifying - we now know what we want to spend, what we expect to get for it and what we are willing to compromise on. Or not.

So, with our house nearly sold (fingers crossed ) we need to get our skates on looking for somewhere to live!

There is one other house we're interested in that I would consider to be a compromise. I will arrange a viewing for next week I think. It's had offers on it (according to the estate agent) but they aren't proceedable offers. Plus, its at least £140K cheaper than the enormously expensive new build

In other MSE news, its all been very benign. No significant spends over the past few days. In fact, I think I managed two NSDs this week.

Today has been a NSD. I've worked from home.

20 days, 5 hours and 15 minutes to go :beer:

DSL :j

enthusiasticsaver

That all sounds brilliant DSL. I think if the thought of the large mortgage was making you ill then deciding against that is the right call. Fingers crossed that you find something soon and you get the offer you want from your possible buyers. Even if it all happens relatively quickly even a short chain move can take a few months. If you don't see something you like are you willing to move into rented?

DrSpendLittle

Yup, Enthusiastic, we're willing to move into rented accommodation if we can't find anything suitable. I'm hoping it will take at least 8 weeks to transact the sale. The interested party are cash buyers so they may want to be in sooner rather than later. That said, they are renting so will have to give 4 weeks notice. Lets see.

If I could stretch it to May 30th, I'd have about £2.7K saved which would be good enough. DF would top up the remaining fees. I've guesstimated it'll cost about £7.5K to sell / buy (exc. stamp duty). If we don't buy straight away, we'd still have deposits and possibly storage costs to account for, which would probably match the conveyancing / survey / mortgage arrangement fees.

I've recently been thinking of selling my communting car as we don't need two cars anymore, so I could always sell it early and add a further £2.5K - £2.7K. Lots of options... Fingers crossed it all goes to plan.