Cheery's country living adventure

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  • greenbee
    greenbee Posts: 16,065
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    Glad you got your signature. Enjoy your booze.

    I rashly invited friends over for supper tomorrow, so need to work out what to feed them. When I find out exactly who is arriving at what time... I suspect that one individual may have miscommunicated with his wife :cool:

    Obviously rather than thinking about what I'm feeding them and doing the prep and cooking, I've been blitzing the house and garden. Lots of overdue stuff done, but I'm not sure it was entirely necessary. However the house is looking great. Garden is looking a bit dry and over, apart from the stream which is choked with giant weed!
  • Cheery_Daff
    Cheery_Daff Posts: 15,562
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    I think blitzing the house and garden is an admirable pre-visitor task greenbee! :j Hope you had a lovely time with your visitor :j

    Well it's been a weird old day here. Fine, but weird. My first day off (of 10) :j But the *weather*! Good gracious. Thought the fog was going to envelope us completely at one point, and I've not seen it rain so hard for a long time :eek: Definitely a day for sitting cosy inside :o

    Still, some things have been achieved :D We did trundle to a cafe for tea and a shared cake :D And I've done some scything of the lawn, and potted up some tomato seedlings, and shovelled four wheelbarrow loads of cow muck round my fruit trees :j

    And Mr Cheery made lentil soup for lunch, and I made kind of a no-meat balls bake thing for tea, so we've not eaten toooooo badly.

    Spent quite a bit of time holed up staring at the computer screen with one thing and another though :eek: quite a bit of matched betting... (it's kind of become my default staring-at-the-screen activity now which I suppose saves me from other internet rabbit holes :o and at least makes us some money in the meantime :o :rotfl: ).

    And I've done YNAB again - less than a week after last time! :j :j All looking acceptable (especially now I've remembered to transfer £500 from the savings account to cover what has already drip fed into the two regular savers :eek: Wondered what had happened there for a while!)

    That's all ticking along nicely, so thank you SO much to those of you who helped and encouraged me to set it all up at the start :j :j There's £1500 in one of them, and £1250 in the other (I can't remember which has what percentage interest now, although sadly I think the 5% one was reduced to 3% anyway after a few months) but it's building up nicely :j Looking forward to totting it all up at the end of the year :j

    Right, while I'm in screen-staring financial mode, I'm going to go and do my final mortgage calculations.. back in a bit...
  • Cheery_Daff
    Cheery_Daff Posts: 15,562
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    Right, mortgage calculations done and decision made :j

    If we pay a the biggest upfront fee of £1600 to get the lowest rate of 2.06%, we save a total of £696 over the no-fee rate of 2.26% over the five year fix.

    BUT if we take that £1600 and instead pay it off NOW (rather than paying it as a fee for the new fix to start in October), and take the no-fee fix of 2.26%, we save a total of £1097.22 over the five years :money:

    Goodness me I love this website and my increased financial literacy :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :money: :money:

    And also, psychologically it feels better paying the £1600 as an overpayment, rather than as a fee :rotfl: :rotfl:

    And yes, I am VERY grateful we are in the fortunate position of being able to pay off that lump some, partly from various little scrimpings and savings, and partly my recent MB efforts.

    Feeling very grateful tonight :love:
  • edwink
    edwink Posts: 2,955
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    Right, mortgage calculations done and decision made :j

    And yes, I am VERY grateful we are in the fortunate position of being able to pay off that lump some, partly from various little scrimpings and savings, and partly my recent MB efforts.

    Feeling very grateful tonight :love:

    Aww bless you Cheery. You are doing so well :)

    Blimey that £1600 mortgage fee nearly made me fall off my chair, that's an eye watering amount. For what it's worth had I been in your shoes I would have chosen the same mortgage that you have. As it is fixed for 5 years it will give you some breathing space and you won't need to sort it for quite a while now :j Good luck with the over payments. It all makes a difference in the end. We over paid on our mortgage as and when we could and each time we kept the mortgage payments the same because we knew that is what we could afford and doing that made a difference to our mortgage amount too. It's quite addictive once you start paying some off and all you want to do is pay more and more off but when you have a house and run a couple of cars it is not always easy but like you we threw all we could at it. We have been mortgage free for 10 years now and all I can say is keep chipping away at it Cheery because it is definitely well worth all the effort, seriously it is.

    Well done with the MB, you seem to have picked that up pretty sharpish you clever lady. To be honest I wouldn't know where to start with it. I keep popping on to your thread to see how well you are doing with it. How you find the time with your work and other commitments is amazing. You are certainly a little grafter that's for sure.

    Big (((((HUG)))))

    Edwink x
    **3.36 kWp solar panel system, 10 x Ultima & 4 x Panasonic solar panels, Solaredge Inverter **Biomass boiler stove for cooking, hot water & heating **2000ltr Rainwater harvesting system for loo flushing - **Hybrid Toyota Auris car **1 ex-battery hen - RIP Pingu, Hoppy & Ginger ****Hens & Ducks**** chat thread. http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5282209
  • Karmacat
    Karmacat Posts: 39,459
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    What a great result for all your hard work, Cheery - all of it, from the scything to the financial research to the MBing. I definitely think you deserved that cake :) and a whole lot more. Hope you've got something nice planned for your time off, but I bet you have a great time anyway.
    2023: the year I get to buy a car
  • greenbee
    greenbee Posts: 16,065
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    I think blitzing the house and garden is an admirable pre-visitor task greenbee! :j Hope you had a lovely time with your visitor :j

    It was lovely thanks :)

    It was nice to cook properly (and have the space to do it ... although I did have to dig through boxes looking for my hand whisk!), and feels very odd to have a full fridge and a tidy house. It's actually as if I live here and not just come back to unpack/do laundry/repack.

    So I now need to bite the bullet on the outstanding work on the house and get into the habit of inviting people over a bit more often! And also start filling up the freezer again with ready meals for when I'm back travelling. I'm hoping it'll warm up again soon as I have lots of nice salad stuff to use up!

    Well done on the scything. I've got mine out and sharpened it, but I'm a little reluctant to use it (I only have a small patch to do). I also need to repair the hand sickle I use for clearing weed in the river, as oiling it means one of the rusted-in screws holding the blade on has come out so I need to find another one before I can use it again!

    Well done on the mortgage decision too. I found the maths quite frustrating, but I'm glad I fixed for 5 years this time as its worth it not to have to do the paperwork quite so frequently!
  • debtfreeoneday
    debtfreeoneday Posts: 4,802
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    Well done on having the amount to OP and its good to know you have the mortgage sorted for 5 years isn't it. Mortgage fees are so wrong!
    DFW (08/08) £64,346.53 Gone (02/19)
    MFW (08/08) £118k Gone (09/23)
  • ElmoR
    ElmoR Posts: 398
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    Love the image of you scything Cheery :)
  • lindez
    lindez Posts: 642
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    Just caught up wow cheery you have been busy again. Loved all the mortgage working outs it has helped me too so a big thank you. My deal ends this week 2nd August I did try and sort it out in June but had so much hassle missed paperwork etc. Anyway I decided to let the deal run to the end because I want to pay off a lump sum payment and start again. x
    MFWB#2
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  • Cheery_Daff
    Cheery_Daff Posts: 15,562
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    Evening chums :hello:

    Glad all my witterings have helped you lindez! :j :j I always get so much from reading the nerdy details in other people's posts :o Love it that we can indulge ourselves in that ridiculous level of detail here :D

    Speaking of which.... I have just made my overpayment :j :j :money:

    Decided on 'just' £1200 rather than the £1600 I'd planned. The £1600 was only because that was one of the fees on the new fixed deal, and while we do have some savings, we are also in the process of trying to acquire a builder (or a building qualification, which, as usual, would be cheaper, quicker, and a lot less hassle :mad: ) :rotfl:

    We already had £675 saved up for overpayments anyway, from the marriage tax allowance and various surveys etc, so I've just transferred the other £525 from the matched betting pot :j :j

    Balance should now be roughly just under £201,000 (they can only give to the nearest £100 over the phone for some annoying reason), and with the usual August payment of £889, that should take it pretty close to being under £200k, which is what I wanted when we re-fixed :j

    Going to wait til I've got the letter about this (probably next week now), and then press the button to apply for the fix.

    Oh! The only thing is, I asked for it to be taken off the term, as Martin always tells us to, and he said I couldn't :eek: and would have to apply for a new mortgage if I wanted to reduce the term. I mean, I don't actually want to 'reduce the term' officially to 20 years (or whatever) - I just want it to not reduce the monthly amount, like Martin says, but the words Martin uses are 'reduce the term' so... I got all confused and just told him to do whatever, but I wanted to keep the monthly payments the same :o :rotfl:

    I understand that this will come back to bite me in 15 years when I'm close to the end and won't be able to overpay more than 10% (although I confess I don't quite understand WHY :o ) but since we're just fixing for 5 years now, and will be VERY unlikely to be able to overpay more than 10% a year in the next 5 years, I'll worry about it later and just carry on overpaying as usual now :o

    Did I tell you I'd joined the MFW three year challenge? Started the year at £208k, and I want to be at £175k after the three years is up (in Jan 2022). Basically that just requires us to overpay by £200 a month now for the next 3 years so that should hopefully be nicely doable from MB dosh if nowt else :money:

    All very jolly!
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