My 5 year plan

onedaysomeday

Well done! :dance:

LegBeforeWicket

Brilliant news! Well done, sir:j

fatrab

I've never met a letting agent that wasn't an absolute shark.

My eldest son rented a 1 bedroom flat last June through a local letting agent and from the day he moved in had nothing but trouble. He paid his deposit and first month's rent in advance but when he got his keys there was a problem. The front door lock didn't work. It unlocked ok, it just wouldn't lock. Obviously this was reported to the agent and he was assured it would be fixed within the hour. So 3 days later my son went and bought a lock and fitted it himself as neither the letting agent or landlord had managed to get anything done.... This was a clear sign of how things were to progress.

My son calculated the cost of parts and his time (day off work and travel to collect parts) to be around £100 in total and advised the agent that it would be deducted from the second months rent. The agent agreed.

Prior to moving it had been agreed with the agent that the bathroom needed decorated urgently as there was dampness on the ceiling and it needed a freshen up. But after 3 months in the property this still hadn't been addressed, and further to this the dampness was spreading. This was reported to the agent month after month but absolutely nothing was done, just excuse after excuse and false promises that something would be done.

So by the time January came, my son decided he'd had enough. He started looking for somewhere new and found another flat last month. He handed in his months notice and moved out of the old place and the keys were handed back to the agent on the 5th March.

Now I know you'll never believe me here, but then there was a problem with his deposit. There was nobody available to inspect the flat from the letting agent so he'd have to wait for the deposit to be returned. So he waited, and waited, and waited, and called, and waited, and called again. Eventually on the 16th March he was informed that the deposit would be paid into his bank that day. Guess what???? It never arrived!!!!

On Monday (19th) I was on a course which just happened to be around the corner from the letting agent's office, so on my lunch break I popped in for a friendly chat with the manager and by luck the owner of the property was there. Aside from tying to blame my son for the dampness (which was in the flat before he moved in) and accusing me of being "hostile", they had no record of the £100 being agreed for the repairs, they denied agreeing to pay the deposit on the Friday and made every excuse under the sun as to why essential repairs hadn't been carried out, blaming the landlord's brother of all things. I was having none of it, and informed them of what the likely consequence would be if the deposit was further withheld. Cut a long story short, the deposit was in my sons account an hour later.

Now, as seems to be the norm these days, my son was very quick to leave a glowing review for the letting agent on Google and Fbook, the latter of which the agent replied to. My son kept his review factual, pointing out the failings of both the agent and landlord. Now this is the bit that really got me..... The agents response was:

"Sorry for your experience but your tenancy agreement was with S******* Letting who have a space within our office. The landlord & owner of S******* dealt with your father yesterday. We at L*** M*** allow S******* to market their properties through our web portals but we at L*** M*** do not manage the properties for this landlord"

At no point in time was my son informed that he was letting from S********. All his agreements, paperwork, emails etc were from L*** M***.

It reminded me of renting a little flat years ago in Glasgow and the day I moved in there were 20-30 medicine bottles lying in the kitchen and the place looked like it hadn't been hovered in a decade. When I moved out I had a proper set-to with the letting agent as they deducted a "cleaning charge" from my deposit, which I eventually got refunded.

I thought times would have changed, and in this day when a company's reputation can so quickly be tarnished with bad reviews on Google, Fbook etc that folk would make more of an effort to get things right. Clearly, I am wrong.

Anyway, my son has his money back and is enjoying his new flat, and seems to have a (private) landlord who actually wants to keep them in the flat. The boiler wasn't working properly when they moved in, but an engineer had visited and it was fixed within 4 hours!

Have a great weekend!

Rab

enthusiasticsaver

Horrific experience for your son. Renting properties is a lottery, sometimes you get a great landlord and other times totally unscrupulous. My DD rented a flat while doing her PhD at a University in the Midlands. She had a funded bursary but the landlord was charging £400 per month for 1 bed flat. It was convenient to the University and relatively modern but letting agents were useless. Landlord put flat up for sale with sitting tenant (our DD). We ended up buying it by remortgaging our mortgage free house. We just asked her to cover mortgage and service charges and her rent was reduced by 50%. We made around £5k profit when we sold it 5 years later.

fatrab

Just received a letter from the finance company acknowledging my overpayment. It also states the breakdown of how the credit is applied. £568 saved in interest alone.

Result!

supersaver1000

Great on the overpayment - that's a lot of interest, good feeling not to be paying that.

Great on the weight loss too :T I am well and truly stuck in a rut with weight loss. I'm controlling spending and losing debt, just not getting as active as I'd like to and as a consequence not losing the weight. Feeling very blobby.

fatrab

Half way through polishing the car and the bloomin rain has come on, so thought I'd pop in for a quick update.


Had planned a nice night out for a meal at our favourite restaurant in Glasgow with Mrs fatrab yesterday but due to the trains being disrupted we postponed the meal and just went for a few drinks locally and got a take away on the way home. Still spent a small fortune but it was a planned spend as Mrs is going back to work next month.


This week has absolutely flown in, and I haven't managed half of the things I'd planned to do around the house. But the woodchip is stripped from the hall, the kitchen is painted and we got the wee car so at least there's a few things ticked off the list!


Rain looks to have stopped so back to polishing the car, I'll be glad to go back to work tomorrow for a rest!


Enjoy the rest of the weekend


Rab

fatrab

It's payday today and also my first day back at work following my week off.

So I've kick-started the week by making another overpayment to the car finance. I had some money left in my current account from last month so I've decided that going forwards, on payday, every penny I have over £2750 will go towards the debt.

I have the emergency fund if anything goes wrong, but the amount I should now be saving on fuel alone should be enough to bail me out if anything minor happens.

I'll also need to update my SOA today as my take home pay has decreased slightly. I've upped my pension contribution to 8% which my employer matches, so it made sense to take full advantage of their scheme.

I have breakfast and lunches sorted for the next few days and some dinners in the freezer so a couple of NSD's are warmly welcomed following a rather expensive week off.

Last week's stats:

Clothes - 40% (2 pairs of jeans and 3 polo shirts)
Car repairs - 16% (brake pads for the big car)
Fuel - 14% (filled tank in small car)
Shopping - 10%
Road Tax - 10% (£30/year for small car)
Eating Out - 8% (Mrs fatrab paid for the drink on Saturday, I paid for the food)
Travel - 2%

The small car averaged 65mpg on the way to work this morning, the big car was struggling to hit 30mpg on the same journey so hopefully I'll be saving over £150/month on fuel.

The next big thing on my financial calendar will be my tax rebate which should be sometime in May. My timeline looks like this:

May - Tax rebate
June - Remortgage
July - Pay home insurance IN FULL
July - Cancel mobile contract for tablet
September - Pay TV licence IN FULL
October - Pay car insurance IN FULL
October - Pay car tax (big car) IN FULL
October - Cancel my mobile
December - Cancel Mrs' mobile

This is going to be the year that I remember for all the right reasons.

Rab

JoJoC

Just catching up after the weekend - congratulations on the weight loss! Do you notice much of a difference in yourself? Also fantastic news on the interest saying that your overpayment made. I always find it an eye opener...

We just had out annual mortgage statement in and of a £604p/m monthly payment, £320ish is interest... That'll get better over time. We have only been paying down this mortgage for 3 years.

Your plan for the rest of the year sounds great. It must also be nice to see positive changes taking effect every month, there's always something else to look forward to money-saving-wise throughout the year. Less chance of feeling stagnant which can lead to self-sabotage... haha

fatrab

JoJoC wrote: »

Just catching up after the weekend - congratulations on the weight loss! Do you notice much of a difference in yourself?

Thanks


When I went clothes shopping last week I tried on my usual size of polo shirt in the shop that I usually buy them from and it was too baggy, so I'm down to an XL. The XL was still a little bit tighter than I'm used to but I think when I get under 15st it'll be fine. But the XXL was way too big. The belly and the moobs are definitely shrinking!