Twinklie returns to the property ladder

twinklie

The boys have started their private swimming lessons. The first on DS1 managed to cut his foot open and DS2 refused to get in the pool! 

The second one, DS1 randomly swam amazingly on his back (he’s never done it before) and DS2 got in the water! What a difference! It was madness. 

Easter holidays have been busy so far (we only finished on Thursday last week), so we are having a quieter at home day today just to try and catch up with ourselves. We are all pretty tired. 

Very MSE so far.
Fri - walk and picnic.
Sat - library stem club and play date at friends. 

Sun - garden fun.
Mon - movie, swimming lessons and chores. 

Today is a very wet day so aside from walking the dog it’s going to be an at home day. We are going to run a big competition for the wooden engines apparently. So that should keep us all busy. 🤣

twinklie

April update

DEBT 

Made up of car loan and DH's phone.
I've decided to take this off because I have to rely on DH for updates on these and it drives me potty. But I'll keep a check on it separately. 
Start of year total debt = £5,432 

SAVINGS
Aim to save £400 per month to build emergency fund and for rainy day expenses (car, house maintenance etc.).  DONE (with a bit extra). 

 

MORTGAGE 

Current daily interest - £13.92

We now own 24.21% of the house - current rough valuation actually puts us as 35.19%.

3 rooms owned (5 if I go with the higher valuation).

Paid off 15.34% of the mortgage. 

Current MF date - Oct  Sept AUGUST 2037. Another month gone!

I'm really pleased we nearly own a 1/4 of the house and there's only 85%ish of the mortgage remaining. 

Obviously depending on what happens with house prices etc I'm still hopeful our LTV will be below 65% when we remortgage next year. And to keep on track with this, a £100 OP has been made today. 

Big spends this month will be sorting the decking and laying a patio - doing the work ourselves though so will hopefully save a few bob (fingers crossed). 

twinklie

First none MSE outing of the holidays planned. Trip to the cinema tomorrow. I just bought a £1.01 travel insurance policy to get Meerkat movies so I could use the discount code. So that brought the cost down a bit. 

DS1 is old enough to get a CEA card now, but I'm not sure if we would go to the cinema enough to make it worth paying the £6 for it. I'll have a little think. If we used the CEA card 1 adult would get in free, then the Meerkat would mean we'd only have to pay for 2 of us I guess. Hmmm.

twinklie

Cinema went down a storm they absolutely loved it. We’ve just spent today playing in the garden. The poor dog is broken, she’s not stopped bless her.

The great garden makeover starts tomorrow which is anxiety inducing. Hopefully, everything goes smoothly. DH is doing the work himself and reckons we will save at least £2K with him doing the work himself. Fingers crossed it all goes according to plan. 

At the back of the garden I started tackling the ivy and realised that we are likely to need to replace ALL the fence panels. Sigh. It’s not something we need to do straight away, but it will need doing. 

twinklie

Ok complete change of plan. We lifted some of the decking to find the drains a complete mess, what they had done to build the decking is a sight to behold as well. 

Basically it’s going to be a bigger job than expected. Soo we’ve put it on hold for a couple of weeks to sort the drains first. 

In the meantime we were in the garden and noticed our back neighbours had pulled out one of our fence panels. They are a lovely old couple so we’ve kept an eye out to see them to offer to go halves on doing the fence at the back. 

Saw the lady only to find out her husband died last August! I’m horrified we hadn’t noticed. She was keeping herself busy started chopping at the Ivy only to find that particular panel had disintegrated in her hands. So she was trying to fix it by herself bless her. 

We’ve said we will do all the work and she’s offered to go halves on the panels. We are relieved and I think she is too because she thought she was going to have to pay someone to do the work. 

I’m secretly looking forward to it. I think it I’ll be really therapeutic getting rid of the Ivy and having a lovely fence. So we are pressing ahead with that in the meantime instead. 

Humdinger1

@twinklie what a pain about the drains! Clueless amateurs have a lot to answer for!  You are deffo doing it the right way round....onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx 

twinklie

So it’s still the Easter holidays for us as we were late breaking up. We had an eventful day yesterday. We met up with extended family on the park for a get together.

Whilst we were there my mum collapsed, which was all pretty scary but as there was an event on there were paramedics there. So that was pretty lucky. They spent loads of time with her and the only issue they found was really low blood sugar. 

So now she’s got to have blood tests to see if they can see anything. She’s been eating and drinking throughout the day so her blood sugar should have been much higher than it was. 

Then today the kids and I went to the pharmacy to pick up my antibiotics (chest infection), then to drs to collect blood test and sample stuff (over 40s wellness check). 

But on the way back my youngest fell over and really took a lot of skin off his hands. So we popped back into the pharmacy to get him patched up. They were great with him, although he wouldn’t let anyone clean his hands. So they used antiseptic spray to try and clean it and I’ll just have to hope he will put his hands in the bath in a bit to get the dirt off. 

Did more work in the garden. Just need to get the fence panels now because I’m stuck without them. 

twinklie

A lovely day at home in the garden today. Ivy wars is ongoing and the kids played in the splash pool…further ruining the lawn. Oophs. 

twinklie

Took the kids to an outside play barn yesterday. Which means all told I reckon we’ve spent £50-60 over Easter. Including food, which less school dinners (from £60) works out at £36.50 above normal spends. 

As that’s for a two week school holiday I will take that. I’ll be honest I think the glorious weather we’ve had has massively helped though. We’ve done a lot of walks and garden play. 

We’ve forked out £185 on fence panels for the front and back garden though. But that has nothing to do with the school holidays. And we will be spending a fair bit I imagine next month on our 9 day holiday in Scotland - I’m soooo excited. I intend to ignore MSE life on holiday, or at least not let it dictate what we do. 

twinklie

I’ve finished the holidays sick as a dog. This chest infection has really got me. 

I’ve also got all my new marker stuff through from one of the exam boards, so once I complete that I should get £50 - less tax etc.