Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

So do I! 😂

Nothing much financial to report today, bit of a rubbishy day all round really. Didn't sleep well, only one student turned up for my 9am class, and the rest of the day was just foggy both outside and in my brain 🙄 Struggled to get anything substantial done at work, although I did tick off a few minor things.

We did take a car full of stuff to the tip at lunchtime though. They have a huge bank of textile bins - they take actual clothes (and presumably do something useful with them, although I'm not sure what), but they also take textiles in not great shape too, which is good, as we have plenty of those 🙄 So that's another car load gone. 

Been for a walk around the local town this evening. We've been doing this lately, as too many walks round the lanes in the pitch black were getting a bit wearing... streetlights make a nice difference! Tired now though...

Cheery_Daff

Morning chums, and it's another foggy one today (although I'm pleased to report that my brain feels rather less foggy than yesterday, thank goodness...). 

Today is exciting, the builder (potential Kitchen Rescuer) is coming this afternoon. Trying to think how to impress and not scare him... 🤔 At the minute he's my only option (must remember not to tell him that...). 

Having an interesting flashback to a few years ago. Because I stupidly drained to much into premium bonds, the current account is a little precarious, with a fortnight still to go to payday. Been a long time since I've had to check every day, transfer between accounts etc, and there have been a couple of times when I've gone to buy something only to think no, that can wait (or I can do without). 

Obviously it's not the same as before, because the money is all there, I just don't want to take it out of premium bonds now it's gone in! But it's made me remember that background stress of waiting for an 'overdrawn' text from the bank 🙄 It's making me very grateful that I don't have that as my daily reality any more. This is a nuisance, but it could be very easily solved if I wasn't so stubborn! 😂 (and I may well cave before the fortnight is out if it gets too much hassle!)

Right, best get on. Going to get as much done as I can before 12, then meetings til 3, then kitchen man (and it'll be four by the time he goes so I might just stop then...)

Fortune_Smiles

Hope kitchen man comes up trumps @Cheery_Daff.  Can't wait to see the progress pictures when you get started.  A new kitchen is very exciting.

Fortune x

Cheery_Daff

Tis indeed exciting. In this case it'll be a new kitchen AND a new bedroom! It was two bedrooms before, both small, and couldn't use either because of the dodgy joists and risk of falling straight through into the kitchen 😮

The kitchen was actually a kitchen before, and a 'snug' (although the whole thing has now been a building site for about 18 months). 

Currently we have living room, bathroom & temporary kitchen on one side of the house, two storey building site in the middle, then my study and a bedroom on the other side. 

So when all that space is back in use, it's going to be like having a whole extra house! 😮😮😁

Anyway, he texted an hour ago to say he'll be here at four... best use the time to get a bit of extra work done!

rtandon27

Fingers crossed that the Kitchen Rescuer is a good 'un!

Karmacat

I love calling the builder the Kitchen Rescuer that's nice.  Hope it's been going well.

Cheery_Daff

Goodness me, kitchen rescuer was here for almost TWO HOURS! 😮😮😮 Lots of measuring, talking through suggestions etc. I suspect it may end up being a little more expensive than my initial hope... but necessary I think... we'll see.

In the meantime I'm back on the case with matched betting - it would be nice to offset a little of the cost at least so I didn't feel we'd run all the savings down...

Cheery_Daff

Hmm, trying to work out what to do about savings, so these are just some initial thoughts...

We were initially hoping to spend about £10-15k - my feeling after taking to geezer yesterday is that it'll end up being £20-25k... 😮 I should wait for the actual quote really... it feels like SO much, but I'm not sure we have a choice really (I will of course try to get another quote, but have failed on that front so far!)

So. I'd like to build a bit of that back up again, and am just pondering the best way to go about that. 

I could stop paying extra to the mortgage, and drop monthly payments back to their required rate. That would give us £3000 by August (when we'd likely be paying the builder), and a total of £5400 by the end of the year. 

But what would I do with it?? We'd still have a reasonable stash in premium bonds after this for all reasonable household emergencies and planned spends, so...

I suppose I'm just wary of running savings down and not building them up. Maybe instead of stopping mortgage OPs when there's not really any need, I'll get properly back onto matched betting, and try to build up at least say £3000 by the end of the year? Then after we've paid the builder, we can see what it feels like, and maybe drop the mortgage OPs after that (putting the money into premium bonds). 

Yes, that sounds like a better plan - o point stopping mortgage OPs just yet when there isn't really a need... 

And who knows, we might have had a nice premium bonds win before then which might cover the cost of the kitchen even if it's not a whole million 😂😂

greent

It's the Cheltenham Festival this month - lots of opportunities there for  on  good moneyMB if racing is something you're ok with (I know some don't play the horses because of their beliefs)

Baileys_Babe

Getting back into the MB and offsetting the renovation costs by £3k sounds good. Once you have received the quote you can decide if you need to make any further tweaks to your plan. 

Are you able to reclaim overpayments to your mortgage?