Nervous new diarist with not one but two mortgages to clear!

JennyP

Finally got the letter through saying first mortgage cleared. Lovely feeling.



Made a sale on Amazon too - a pair of Doc Martens that I bought at a shopping outlet but that were the wrong size when I got them home. I made a ten pound profit by the time I'd paid P&P and Amazon's commission. They were no good to me in the box though so am effectively £70 up! Useful!



My camera broke. Hubby kindly bought me a new one for my birthday but my old lenses do not fit it so I have two telephoto lenses to sell now. Probably listing them in a couple of weeks as I feel too stressed and busy right now. They won't get loads as they were fairly cheap ones to start with but they should get a bit.



Making a little headway on our house too. The plumber is booked for mid October so I have till then to find new radiators and a new bathroom suite, hopefully at decent prices. The house will start to finally feel like our own then.



Finally had a lot of hassle off one of my tenants. I let one place room by room with bills including broadband included and plusnet stopped working. It's only been two weeks and I got onto plusnet within an hour of the tenant letting me know but they have failed to fix it yet as it's an Openreach problem and complicated. He's been so nasty about it - blaming me and saying I should give him financial compensation. Sometimes I hate being a landlord. The other tenant affected messaged me and told me that he is in despair of people who think that no broadband is a serious issue given all that's going on in the world and that I should relax and not worry. It was a lovely message and cheered me up. Nevertheless, spent £60 yesterday on a mobile broadband device to try and give them a back up till it's working again!

JennyP

I haven't posted since September - 6 whole months - but thought I would today as I paid £3638 off my second buy to let mortgage. That's the maximum allowed in a calendar year. I can't pay off anything again till next March. Well, I could but I'd pay penalties.



I reckon there's about £24K still to pay and that in 3 years I can clear the lot penalty free if I've saved enough.



Saving hasn't been going well though. I had a change of tenant in one property at Christmas and even though it was only empty for two days, somehow the date changing on when the new tenants paid screwed up my current account's cash flow. Then another tenant change in February which was really stressful as he'd left things in an awful mess and then I was ill with an awful migraine and I ended up with a void of three weeks which was costly. I had to bail my current account out using my savings account so the money I had saved for the eventual pay off in 2022 has gone now.



In the last six months though, we've had extensive work done on our house. I feel like I am constantly painting what with the rental properties and redecorating our home after the builders. That's progress at least.



Still have a massive amount of unwanted stuff that I keep meaning to ebay but I never get motivated enough. It's all the hassle from buyers that puts me off. You read of so many people being conned by buyers. I keep giving stuff away instead on our local facebook page. Still, hopefully that brings me good karma even if it doesn't bring me hard cash!



Trying to save money on groceries by growing food this year. Have started no-dig gardening after reading Charles Dowding (Dowling?)'s website. Have a few cardboard and manure covered beds at the moment but our seedlings aren't germinating very quickly on the windowledge. Gardening is an expensive business though - not sure we'll really save much. We enjoyed an absolutely huge amount of fruit from our garden last autumn which caught us by surprise as we didn't even realise we had fruit trees. Hoping to make the most of it a bit more this year.



Anyway, that's my very dull update! Not sure if anyone will read it but hey! It spurs me on a bit just to take stock by writing it!