Reduce to Increase...Towards the Forever Home...

jenni_fer

The summer holidays have flown by and lived up to their expensive expectation although not how I expected.
We had to have a new boiler during August so that made a bit of a dent that I hadn't anticipated.

Still, baby steps are better than nothing.

September isn't looking too bad, but with a 4th birthday at the end of the month it could go off the rails at any point!

Current net position (£74,370.74)

jenni_fer

September is proving to be expensive as feared, all the little bits for birthday parties and school trips are adding up fast.
Consequently, I've just set myself a target for a very lean £300 October Supermarket challenge. I genuinely have no idea what we spend on food etc so hoping this will focus my mind a little.

A small monthly saver in ds' name matured last week, In order to take advantage of the Nationwide kids saver rate a couple of months I 'loaned' him the equivalent money back so repaid myself with this.

Current Net Position (£73,014.00)

jenni_fer

Taking part in the October grocery challenge which has focused my spending a little this month, making do without that 1 item we needed and therefore not going and buying a handful of other things at the same time.

Making the most of having a good savings month before the Xmas spending kicks in, it only gets more expensive as the kids get older!

Current Net Position (£70,223.04)

jenni_fer

Just done a sweep of the current accounts / squirrelling away of some work expenses paid.

Off to update the grocery challenge thread, have been pretty good on the grocery front but Xmas and half term mean that the credit card has taken a bit of a bashing this month as expected.

Current Net Position (£69,816.55)

jenni_fer

November is a good month

DH had a bonus at work which has bumped the savings nicely.
December will be horrifically expensive as the credit card bill grows by the day but that's to be expected with Christmas on the horizon.

Grocery challenge for November is tracking under, and I've been really good at taking food to work with me having added that into my total.

We've been to drive past a few house this weekend, the sort of thing we'd like is soooooo much more expensive than what we have now and the size of mortgage required really quite eye-watering. Concentrates the mind somewhat!

Targets for the rest of the month:
- Finish Christmas shopping without going wildly off-list
- Continue to eat out of the freezer
- Look around for a new regular saver to replace the one due to expire at the end of the month.

Current Net Position (£60,784.06)

jenni_fer

New Year, new overpayment.
By 9am on 2nd Jan I'd made this year's overpayment, that 5 figure mortgage is now in sight!

With the remortgage window fast approaching I've been trying to do some sums to work out the best next move, wish I had a crystal ball to work out when the right time to move is!

January is a good month to focus though, managed to get DH to switch our joint account with me for the switching bonus and reduced our mobile bills too, small steps but steps in the right direction.

Off to read some other MFW diaries for a little inspiration!

Current Net Position (£55,394.72)

savingholmes

You are making good progress on the mortgage

jenni_fer

As with most of us I'm sure I didn't finish January feeling quite so positive. The credit card bill containing Christmas has just been paid and February looks set to be an expensive month with Car Insurance and MOT both due plus needing to pay for our holiday. I know savings are there to be dipped into for exactly these types of things (And I budget to do so) but it's still really painful seeing that net debt number go up not down and I'm not looking forward to that.

Still, current account balance a little low but haven't yet had to do that dip.

Current Net Position (£52,884.83)

jenni_fer

Feb was crazy expensive as expected. BUT holiday paid for, car MOT'd/serviced/insured for another year.

We had a bit of a flurry of activity at the end of the month and got the house tidy enough to have it valued. Interestingly, two of the agents gave us one price and the third gave us a much (£35k!) lower one which threw me a little.
It was all systems go to start looking seriously for a while, but then this coronavirus stuff kicked off and suddenly there is nothing coming on and I'm also not overly keen on inviting a string of strangers into my home! 
There has been a couple of things we quite liked the look of, but they are all listed with 1 agent who fails to respond to email/rightmove requests. I need to get round to phoning but it's a pain and I'm pretty grumpy about having to. The stupid thing is, the house which was/is my favourite has been reduced in between them failing to email me back and now...crazy!

Our fixed rate runs out pretty soon so we're trying to work out what to do for the best (Obviously staying put and paying almost 5% is NOT an option!) flitting between a standard mortgage and an offset, one we can pay down as aggressively as possible until we manage to move vs extending the term back to 25year so we can port and borrow more when the time comes. So many unknowns and I don't do well with uncertainty

Current Net Position (£52,685.35)

jenni_fer

Looking at the date it was only a month ago I last posted but it seems like a lifetime ago!
The holiday paid for is obviously not going to happen, although we are in limbo waiting to see if it cancels so we can have a refund or we have to reschedule it but I'm very nervous about the lack of travel insurance around at the moment.

We never did see any of the house I was talking about. We did view one property which looked great on paper and for a really good price, but it turned out it was really quite small and the location wasn't great. Quite glad we didn't fall in love with it now!
I've pretty much decided that moving house is completely off the table until 2021 so back to concentrating on how small we can make the current mortgage rather than doing affordability calcs and the like for a new bigger mortgage. 
We're currently coming through the COVID-19 crisis relatively unscathed financially but I'm well aware that could change at any point so not having a huge mortgage is a comfort at this time.

We contacted our mortgage broker re the remortgage but haven't heard back from her yet, hopefully we can sort that soon so I can set up a new spreadsheet for the new rate etc.

Spending-wise March was a fairly good month (staying in pays!) and April looks like it should be ok too.

Current Net Position (£50,796.57)