Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

I am thankful to be up in my HQ, Bailey's Babe. One of the builders is still stuck on the previous job so the one who is here is getting on with the central heating installation & he has started with downstairs. There are some very odd noises floating up from downstairs, including one like a dodgy old euphonium tuning up!
F x

maryb

Foxgloves, just popping in to say you need to be very sure about the life insurance.  We had one which was tied to the mortgage but it didn't necessarily pay out what the mortgage would have been if it hadn't been paid off.  It was in the terms that it paid out a reduced amount if the mortgage was less.  I stopped paying our when we switched to a flexible mortgage which allowed us to offset savings against the balance.  Because the policy would only have paid the net amount, we would effectively have lost our savings for no benefit from the premiums

foxgloves

Maryb - I think I know what you are describing. I've read & inwardly digested the small print & this policy runs for the full 25 years. The monthly payment remains the same from taking the policy out to the month when it ends, but what it pays out on death of the policy holder reduces in line with the amount of the mortgage left to pay - I think this is why it was a lower monthly premium than other types of policy around at the time. I am fine with that as our only reason for taking the policy out was to be able to pay off our mortgage in the event of a sudden death. I had a more complex policy myself which did include an investment element, so as to provide a pot of money at the end of the 25-year term. However, it turned out to be a complete dud, as the monthly payments were inadequate for any kind of meaningful pot & when the company (a big well-known one, I might add) tried to increase my monthly payments from £36 a month to £113 a month with an addendum stating that they may have to increase further in order to provide anything like the final promised pay-out, I cut my losses & cashed out, taking out a much simpler, cheaper term of mortgage cover policy. I have worked out what we could add to savings & even if we save all the remaining monthly premiums to the end of the entire 25 year term, we still wouldn't have a sum equal to what they would pay out even during the final year. I hope I'm making sense....I've had power tools & smoke alarms on & off all day & I think my little grey cells are suffering!
F x

foxgloves

Hello m'dears,
A quick flash of sunshine first thing when I popped out to see if the local sparrowhawk had left me any more unwelcome gifts, then that was it.....rain for the rest of the day. Not as bad as other parts of the county, though. Mr F texted to say it was like gotterdammerung further north where he works.
Today is my Big Budget Day, so I have been ensconced up in Foxgloves HQ, number crunching, while the builder got on with the central heating downstairs. We have quite a few solid floors, so he'd been working out where all the pipework can go to best effect. I think having lots of extra heating downstairs will help to sort out all sorts of annoying problems.......especially frozen pipes right at the back of the house & mould spots from condensation on the lobby ceiling. No nasty surprises on the budget, I'm pleased to say. Nothing came to light re the extra £400 I reckoned I'd got last week. I am pretty sure this is to do with how I originally budgeted for the Kitchenaid mixer to which I treated myself. I can't find any errors. I am not devoting any more time to forensic examinations, as at least it is an accounting error in our favour. I have added half the money to various of our savings posts & I will add the other half to savings as soon as I can get through to our savings provider to update my phone number. Apparently I can't do any management of my online savings account without speaking to an actual person about this. Naturally with them being understaffed because of Covid, the phone queues are 40 mins+. I waited for a while, but then the recorded message changed & informed us only to stay on the line if we required urgent access to withdraw our money, so I gave up because I am wanting to pay in. I tried the 'chat' option, which infuriatingly allowed me to type out my query, before telling me that there are so many people waiting my query wouldn't be logged & to try again another day. Ah well, it won't hurt to wait. I'll pick a less busy time another day.
My eyes are tired from so much screen, number crunching & filling in my money book, so I intend to put my feet up tonight & do nothing more energetic than eat my dinner, watch TV & knit a mitten! Ooooh, be still my beating heart, the excitement of my life.....
Love to all, especially to those who have had a difficult or upsetting day today,
F x

Baileys_Babe

I am glad you were able to be ensconced in your HQ whilst the builder worked elsewhere.

We had a tiny little bit of sunshine first thing, just enough to tease and since then it has become darker and wetter throughout the day. I listened to some music from the late '60s & '70s to brighten my day and danced around the kitchen

Onebrokelady

We have been the opposite way round. We started off with torrential rain until after lunch with a bit of thunder and lightening thrown in and now the sun has come out 😀

foxgloves

Oh my goodness, has Autumn arrived early? I started the day in a summer dress over cropped leggings & sandals, but am now wearing woolly socks (NOT with the sandals, I hasten to add!) & a shawl, as the wind shakes the chimney & the rain once again tries to seep under the front door.
It's been a day of progress on the home improvements front, with another big radiator (kitchen) installed plus further pipework, before the builder turned his attention to stripping out the downstairs loo which is to be poshed up & turned into a utilty room. I was dreading the moment when he actually removed the loo. You see, it's never been 'right' in various ways which kind of tend towards it having been a Mr Numpty installation circa late 1980s. More recently, there'd be a regular unpleasant vaguely seweragey whiff in there, which was very random. I thought the seal had probably perished around the pipe, but logically I'd have thought this would cause a permenent smell, rather than a smelly week followed by say, 2 months with no smell at all. Because it was so random, I'd completely convinced myself that there was a horrendous plumbing nightmare lurking beneath, probably running into many additional £££s. So when the builder called out 'Can you just come & look at this', I braced myself. But the loo was already outside in the skip (the seal was the problem) & he actually wanted to ask me about some weird & dodgy electrical wiring! 
Everywhere feels pretty chaotic, with stuff everywhere, but I've done a few useful things: Ironed, picked 800g courgettes, made courgette curry to go with something we're eating over the weekend, put the grocery shopping away, sorted out face masks for the next few days, baked bread & cast off & sewed up a mitten.
I've just said to Mr F, "Won't it be lovely to be able to get up a bit later tomorrow & just to chill out". I'd completely forgotten that he has to go to work, whoops! I think I'll bake something for when he gets home. I am also considering making some more chutney as we are overwhelmed wirh apples atm, the strong winds having fetched down heaps more. 
I'll see how I feel when I get up. 
Cheers for now, 
F x

Onebrokelady

Glad you got rid of your loo with out any drama 😀  autumn has definitely made its presence felt here,its been really windy and there's lots of leaves down, also along the lane where I walk B there are lots of acorns on the ground, I don't think the squirrels can keep up with them,I've never seen so many. The air smelled autumnal today too,it had that first day back at school smell about it 😊

foxgloves

I love Autumn, OBL. It's absolutely my favourite season.
F x

Onebrokelady

foxgloves said:

I love Autumn, OBL. It's absolutely my favourite season.
F x

Me too, summer was always my favourite season but since I've become a lady of a certain age I prefer the coolness of autumn, I see it as more of a new year beginning rather than January