Champagne Lifestyle on a Lemonade Budget.

mrs_slapshot

Hello everyone - I have more or less melted into a heap 

Lovely to hear about your lives, and to read all your binge recommendations - I rarely watch tv these days; I think the last thing I binge watched was The Walking Dead. Loved it but it's gone off the boil for the last few seasons. I tend to watch YouTube a lot these days - short videos so I don't get sucked in for too long (although there are way too many ads lately).

Wednesday - I'm so sorry about your cat . My heart broke when I had to have my last cat put down several years ago. She was blind and incontinent bless her, no life as she kept bumping into the furniture and was bewildered. I keep thinking about getting a pet...maybe one day.

LL - I'm glad you made it through your anniversary day 

Phoebe - your garden is enormous! Three lawns!! I can't cope with one  I feel I have gone a little mad with pots this year....

Well I viewed a grand total of five houses this weekend (including the one I thought was going to be 'the one' - big disappointment). But.......I did find the one! Not what I was looking for as it's a terrace in a part of town I wasn't considering, but it looked so lovely and neat on the photos. I was the first to view on Sunday, offered asking price on Monday and they accepted!! I'm very excited...already planning on knocking down walls   

The other great thing about it is the price - I can reduce my mortgage by £30K which means if I overpay I can have it paid off in the next five years - mortgage free by 60! That would be amazing. I had to start again when me and my ex divorced 8 years ago, with a 23 year mortgage. This will bring it down to 8 years and like I say, if I overpay enough it will be paid off. Result. And I also will have money left over to do the renovations I want to do. I'm so happy - just keeping everything crossed for smooth transactions all round...

I'm away in the south west for a few days at the end of this week too; will be nice to have a weekend off from househunting/thinking about house/researching houses!

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

everything crossed 🤞 for you mrs_slapshot

sheilavw

fingers crossed Mrs Slapshot on the house, sometimes it works out like that, what you expect to like is a let down, they say that you know within minutes whether its the right house for you.

Well done Sugarbaby on the refund

Bubblesmum

Hope all goes well @mrs_slapshot.... moving is so stressful... but yah to the goal of debt free at 60....

My thoughts with you Wednesday .... we said goodbye to our beloved cat last December... we miss him loads, but do have the antics of two others, about 8 years ago we adopted two and realised having a second around was great comfort..... never forgetting the other.....

I love all the home grown dramas such as Morse and Lewis, Call the Midwife, to add to the list Death in Paradise and Vera. 

Our dont like Americam comedies, however during Lockdown we watched West Wing and I am partial to ER. 

My champagne moments this week, was a cheeky pizza, gin, and "wild rose" a british film on amazon Prime about a country singer from Glasgow - with Jesse Buckley and Julie Waters having worked hard in the garden and we sat outside watching on the laptop.... bliss 

sugarbaby125

Mrs Slapshot I hope all goes well with your house sale and the sale of your new home.   

sugarbaby125

sheilavw said:

fingers crossed Mrs Slapshot on the house, sometimes it works out like that, what you expect to like is a let down, they say that you know within minutes whether its the right house for you.

Well done Sugarbaby on the refund

Hello Shelia, 
I did not receive a refund. It was a Covid-19 council tax hardship payment. Everyone who was already in receipt of some kind of financial support from their local council with their annual council tax bill automatically qualified for the payment of £150, paid directly into their personal council tax account Our government awarded each council the funds back in March 2020, but Lambeth council seemed reluctant to pass on the money to the 46.000 plus council tax households that qualified for the £150 payment. 

After several phone calls to Lambeth council tax department, I finally received the £150 payment. 

Wednesday2000

Thanks for the comments about my cat. xxx

Mrs Slapshot - How exciting! Good news about saving some money as well. I have set up Rightmove alerts and there seems to be a lot of properties coming onto the market. People must be trying to sell before the stamp duty holiday ends.

I'm the opposite as I love some of the American comedies from the 1990s. Frasier is my favourite. I don't watch much British TV at all, apart from the news.

sheilavw

that was good then Sugarbaby, shame you had to keep calling to get the money though

helensbiggestfan

Good Mornjng my lovely friends

Fantastic news Mrs S.   How exciting.  And even better that you have found somewhere under budget so that you can overpay that mortgage And get it paid off quickly.  I'm trying to do the same overpaying each month so I can get rid ASAP. In my case it was my husbands long illness that wrecked my finances and scuppered my retirement but like you I've fought back and things are now on an even keel.  Not rich, but I have enough and I'm content.  

I will probably need to sell up and downsize to be completely mortgage free but whilst I'm paying more interest on the mortgage than I can get on my savings it makes more sense to throw any spare money At the mortgage rather than having it sitting in the bank losing value, especially as savings don't even keep pace with inflation.  (Obviously keeping an emergency fund of course). 

And tbh I'm not really spending much - no holidays, no eating out, not buying clothes.  My biggest current expense is my chiro treatments but I'm taking the view that it's an investment in my health, well being and hopefully my longevity.  😊

The main spending for the next few months will be on the house and garden.  Maybe a new car next year but I cant see me splashing out on foreign holidays or even restaurants for some time yet.  My champagne moments now are all of the domestic variety.  Yesterday was a typical example, DIL and GS here for the day. I had a rest from WW and we tucked into a fab tapas style lunch. Lovely day but tiring so today will just potter about, catch up with myself. .  Thankfully a lot cooler here today.  

Its not quite the 2020 I had envisaged and hoped for but one day.........😁.  

phoebe1989seb

Fantastic news, mrs_slapshot! How exciting for you to have found *the one* and to be making plans for turning it into yours 

I suppose our garden is fairly big, although we started out planning to buy somewhere with much more land than the half acre plus we ended up with! The original intention was to buy a place with *land* and to that end we looked at properties with up to 20 acres, thinking we'd keep some animals (donkeys and some real sheep, not the resin ones currently inhabiting the orchard, lol!) and possibly run a glamping site. Somehow that all changed and we ended up creating a garden instead....or starting to as I'm not sure we'll ever be finished  Hopefully we'll be getting a few chickens next year.......

Champagne moments this week have mainly been creative ones - finally completing the decoupage work on the second cabinet (total cost for both £1 as the cabinets were free, I already had the paint and the botanical prints were £2 but in the end I only used half) 

I also used some free wallpaper samples to cover a couple of cylindrical tins to make additional small utensil jars. These and the cabinets just need varnishing......

Finally I used some excess eggshell to brighten up a car boot sale Moroccan table for the courtyard and repainted the small log store with paint that was heavily reduced when a local Homebase closed!

Just boosted my vase of sunflowers with a few cuttings from the garden. The crocosmia in particular have been fab this year so I could afford to thin them out a little and a Darcey Bussell rose had almost snapped off so that came into the kitchen too ......

After the storms, it's much cooler here today so looking forward to a less uncomfortable weekend.....hope it's not too sweltering where everyone else is!