Cheery's country living adventure 11 March 2018 at 8:28AM edited 30 November -1 at 1:00AM in Mortgage-Free Wannabe 1.9K replies 152.4K views

Cheery_Daff

Hello lovely people :hello:

I'm Cheery, been around these parts a long time now and had several DFW diaries over the years, most recently here.

We are two - Mr Cheery and I. We've been together over 12 years now, and last week we moved from the middle of the city to the middle of nowhere. We were snowed in within 24 hours and unable to leave for a week :eek: Quite an introduction to country living :rotfl:

I now have a mortgage for the first time in my life :eek: Mr Cheery had one before, but as it was near the end when I met him, we never added me, and then it got to the end of its 25 year span a few years ago. Now we have a brand new one, and I would like to pay it off as soon as possible

It's going to take a while - we've borrowed £215,000 over 25 years :eek: :eek: A reasonable rate though (1.8%), fixed until Sept 2019. Our monthly payment is £890, and I'd like to overpay by £10 at least - with the aim of on average paying off an extra £110 a month to take it up to a round £1000.

If we don't pay it off early, it'll run til I'm 62, and Mr Cheery is 80 :eek: :eek: :eek: :rotfl: A good incentive to get on with it

Sadly our building society doesn't have online banking for mortgages (bloody ridiculous) and only sends annual statements, so it looks like I'll be ringing them up every five minutes for a new balance

I would love it if you dropped in occasionally for a nice cup of tea, especially if you brought along some cake

More details in a minute :j

Cheery_Daff

So, a few details (I'll warn you now I type very fast and therefore waffle a lot :rotfl: )

I work full time, been in this job for 2 years and I love it It's back in the city - I could walk there in 20 minutes from our old house, but now it's an hour's drive away :eek: However, I can work at home plenty of the time so on average we shouldn't have to be back in the city more than a couple of days a week, and we can usually combine activities so we both go in at the same time. My wages make up the bulk of our household income at the minute.

Mr Cheery is self employed, and his earnings have taken a bit of a hit in the last couple of years as he's done the bulk of the decorating of our old house before we sold it. He's also taking on most of the practical sorting out of the inside of our new house. This is great, because between us we can do most things, meaning we rarely have to get someone in :money: He's also ace at sourcing furniture, tools and all manner of stuff from Freegle and the like, so ultimately saves us a fortune :money:

Our new house has more rooms than we are used to, a fabulous view - and 11 acres of 'poor quality grazing pasture' that as yet, I have no idea what I'm doing with :eek: Mr Cheery is sensibly in charge of sorting the house out - while I have been lumbered with the responsibility for 'outside' :rotfl: Yesterday I laid a path, filled in a pothole and put up a bird table Suspect I'm going to need to do a bit more than that... :rotfl:

Tescodealqueen

Just saw this so have subscribed to cheer you on xx

Cheery_Daff

So - finances

I've used YNAB software for the last few years so I have a good idea of how much we spend on different things. However, our new country budget is going to look quite different - we're not used to having 2 cars, or LPG, or a septic tank...

This is a rough list of costs and I'll add to it as things appear.

Monthly direct debits
£890 mortgage (was £0)
£160 council tax (was £107)
£60 electricity (rough guess, was about £40 in old house but several rooms here don't have radiators)
£80 gas (again, rough guess - this is roughly what it was before, but the boiler here is 20 years newer and there's a thermostat - we're also on LPG rather than mains gas so it'll be slightly more expensive. Paid £390 upfront before we moved in, and the tank was 73% full)
£37 internet and phone line (same as before - I know we could get cheaper but happy with provider, and need something reliable for working at home etc)
£13 water (was £54 before, but we have a septic tank here so no sewerage/drainage charges)
£20 mobiles (we're both on sim only deals with giffgaff - I'll lower mine slightly next month now we have working broadband)
£25 my union
£2.50 wildlife trust - might switch this to the new local one
= £1287

Annual things
£150 TV licence
£278 house insurance (pretty sure we'll be able to get this cheaper next year)
£977 car insurance :eek: :eek: We've just got a second car for the first time, and I've only ever been a named driver so have no No Claims Discount :eek: Insurance for the old car is just under £200, new one is £777 :eek: Car itself only cost £565 :rotfl:
£100 breakdown for both cars - might be able to combine next year
£160 tax for both cars (new one is £30, old £130 I think)
= £1665 / 12 = £138.75 a month

So together that's £1425.75, leaving roughly £1200 for everything else.

We normally spend roughly
£100 treats budget (mostly spent in cafes )
£50 diesel (although this will likely at least double)
£150 personal spends between us
= £300

We also generally put aside
£30 for car maintenance (which we'll likely double now)
£100 house maintenance (might temporarily increase given the million things wrong with this house)
£15 birthdays
£20 Christmas
£25 professional memberships/magazine subscriptions
We used to wang £125 in a holiday fund and £75 in a separate fund for weekends away, but that was before we had a mortgage...

I realise I could be adding this up better I'm quite systematic about it in YNAB, but I started a new budget for the new house and it's only been running for a few days

I'm not aiming to cut everything to the bone to pay the mortgage off. We're generally not *that* extravagant, but we do like our weekend morning cafe trips (yesterday's cost £6.70 between us). We're also likely to need various things to help set us up here - eg a wheelbarrow :rotfl: Mr Cheery is on the case with sourcing cheap/free versions of everything we need.

Some things I will carry on doing:
* batch cooking (this slipped a bit when we got rid of the freezer... but Mr Cheery is finding us another one )
* taking lunch to work (I forgot two days last week - bad cheery!)
* trying to curb my afternoon vending machine habit my waistline needs this too
* all clothes from charity shops (and given the amount of cardboard wardrobes the removal men used we do not need any new clothes for the rest of our lives!)

One of today's tasks is to start planning the veggie garden, and work out if we can be ready for chickens in the next month or so :j :j

(I'll shut up now ) :rotfl:

shangaijimmy

Exciting times ahead. welcome aboard! Although the thought of all that outside work brings me out in a cold sweat!

stepuptothepl8

Woo-hoo!! Shiny new diary good luck x

Greying_Pilgrim

Happy new diary Cheery!

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Our new house has more rooms than we are used to, a fabulous view - and 11 acres of 'poor quality grazing pasture' that as yet, I have no idea what I'm doing with :eek: .............

MSE campsite ^ , jus sayin'............

Greying X

bexster1975

Very best of luck Cheery. Welcome and I shall follow with interest. Maybe a small business of some sort on that poor quality pasture land?

Bexster

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, lovely people already! Yay! :j :j :j :j

Many people have suggested a campsite - I confess I am not keen To be honest I don't like the idea of pandering to people's needs for unreasonable things like water and toilets :rotfl: Most of our land basically appears to be some kind of swamp at the minute too so you REALLY wouldn't want to be camping on it :rotfl:

Just been investigating the countryside stewardship scheme (thought it might give me some suggestions...). The deadline isn't til the end of the summer - thank goodness as it's going to take me that long to get my head round it :rotfl:

My feeling at the minute isn't to try and make any money off the land - I work full time and love my job, and it's pretty well paid so that's the main source of income for now. Mr Cheery has no interest in farming :rotfl: So there's no immediate plan to try and set something up financially (although should something appear we will consider it). We are reasonably clueless (although surrounded by more informed friends) so don't want to rush into anything

Sun's just come out so I'm going to take my map outside and start trying to figure out which fields are ours :rotfl:

shangaijimmy

Caravan storage?

Cheery_Daff

shangaijimmy wrote: »

Caravan storage?

That's on our list of 'things people have suggested we do with our land' already along with glamping, bunkhouses, camping, dog agility courses, alpacas/sheep/llamas/rabbits, pet cemetery, green burial ground, large ponds, horses etc etc etc :rotfl: :rotfl:

We're in a national park next to a footpath so we'll need to investigate restrictions relating to that. We're also quite sloping and boggy (and I confess I'm not sure I want to look out on a load of caravans :rotfl: )

We'll see