*sigh* this may take a while

ohdearhowdidthathappen

I'm being a bit rubbish at updating... I think because day to day, there doesn't seem to be anything worth posting! We're just trundling along...
I'm on a massive mission at the moment to simplify life though, my brain is always so busy, I'd love to learn to live day by day rather than always trying to be 5 steps ahead of myself
Money wise, I think I may be due a tax rebate. I need to find out how to get it back though, HMRC website is a bit woolly!

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Busy few weeks... we've made the very un-MSE decision to add £30K to our mortgage.
We went to a broker as our fixed deal is coming to an end and we played around with the figures; by adding the money onto the mortgage, we've added 18 months onto the term and our monthly mortgage payments have gone down by £70! We've been throwing about £700-800 a month at the debts, we'll overpay the new mortgage to get the term back down, but at a more sustainable rate.

We decided that, for us, aggressive debt repayment was making us feel a bit tired and sad. The whole debt was from our build, so we don't feel bad adding it to the mortgage. We had the house valued and even with the increase, our mortgage is 45% of the value. We've left ourselves with £8.5k unsecured debt that we owe to my husband's dad and we'll pay that off next year with hubby's bonus, if not before.

I'll stay on here while we do that as it keeps us accountable and we also need to build an emergency fund

mark55man

every debt has an optimum form of funding - sounds like you just optimised yours. its a long haul not a sprint and sometimes a small decrease in ambition results in a large increase in liveability

I think you made a good call - especially not consolidating everything, only those things that you could trace to the build

ohdearhowdidthathappen

2 months away, oops.

So we've been enjoying the feeling of being relatively debt free. We're living within our means and keeping a close eye on our figures.

We've been decorating on a very tight budget that we've set ourselves and we hope to have finished the basics by the end of year. Time is as much of a barrier as money, it's tricky to decorate around work and 5 children We need to carpet the stairs and landing once all the painting is finished - usually we'd pop it on a card, but we're going to save up instead!

I decided to take the promotion at work rather than pursue the childminding idea. The main factors were earning potential and being risk adverse to the idea of being self employed. Also, I'm in my early 40s... do I really want to be looking after children for another 20+ years? Nope :cool: My youngest starts school in September, so I think that's a nice end to the young child in the house era!:rotfl:

Over the next month, I've updated my SOA and will post below. I'll give ourselves a mission or two. I do like plans and targets :T

Yellow_mango

Just dropping in to say hi! Your journey seems not dissimilar to mine, so I’ll be following with interest!

ohdearhowdidthathappen

This is where our money goes..... between now and next July, we have the following school trips to pay for.
Child 1 trip to Iceland - £1200
Child 2 trip to France - £350
Child 2 trip to Spain - £600
Child 3 residential trip in UK - £450
We've decided to downgrade our UK summer holiday massively this year, so that it should cost £500 rather than £2k and will put the difference in an account. Will then put £100 a month away into the account, so hopefully should be enough in there to cover
Child 2 also needs a passport as never been abroad before.
I'm excited for them all, lovely opportunities for them. Just don't want to get in a pickle paying for it

Starmummy

Hi Oh.
Really enjoyed skimming through your diary. careers and 5 kids with £135k of building work...are you super-humans?

The more I've done this debt journey thing the more I've come to realise there is no one solution to everyone's issues.

Wow older kids are expensive. We only have one (DD9) and she costs the best part of £100 a month just on clubs...thankfully no mobile phones and residential school trips just yet.

Good luck

SM

Yellow_mango

This is where our money goes..... between now and next July, we have the following school trips to pay for.
Child 1 trip to Iceland - £1200
Child 2 trip to France - £350
Child 2 trip to Spain - £600
Child 3 residential trip in UK - £450
We've decided to downgrade our UK summer holiday massively this year, so that it should cost £500 rather than £2k and will put the difference in an account. Will then put £100 a month away into the account, so hopefully should be enough in there to cover
Child 2 also needs a passport as never been abroad before.
I'm excited for them all, lovely opportunities for them. Just don't want to get in a pickle paying for it

Gah yes!! It’s neverending! My boys have end of term trips next week - “only” £60 and £36. DS1 went to Milan earlier in the year. £400 ish. The youngest has a ballet exam - that was about £60. Then they are going to PGL with their friends during the summer. That’s £300 odd each. Luckily I managed to pay for that with the last of my childcare vouchers but need to build it into the budget for next year.

I have said no to the £1000 ski trips the school keep trying to sell me...

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Yellow_mango wrote: »

Gah yes!! It’s neverending! My boys have end of term trips next week - “only” £60 and £36. DS1 went to Milan earlier in the year. £400 ish. The youngest has a ballet exam - that was about £60. Then they are going to PGL with their friends during the summer. That’s £300 odd each. Luckily I managed to pay for that with the last of my childcare vouchers but need to build it into the budget for next year.

I have said no to the £1000 ski trips the school keep trying to sell me...

Yes, I've said 'no' to skiing too. Our school goes to Canada and it costs £2500!! What?!
Child 3 residential school trip is PGL, I hadn't realised until recently that you could book them in yourself, I always thought it was just schools :rotfl: need to investigate further

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Starmummy wrote: »

Really enjoyed skimming through your diary. careers and 5 kids with £135k of building work...are you super-humans?

The more I've done this debt journey thing the more I've come to realise there is no one solution to everyone's issues.

Wow older kids are expensive. We only have one (DD9) and she costs the best part of £100 a month just on clubs...thankfully no mobile phones and residential school trips just yet.

Ha, not super human, just stupid :rotfl: everything seemed like a good idea at the time and now it's the boring bit of paying for it all!

Clubs can be pricey, ours all have (or had) swimming lessons and go to guides/scouting groups. We've had to say 'no' to most other extra curricular activities; time and money doesn't allow really. I encourage them to do clubs at school though. I sometimes feel a bit bad they haven't had the opportunity to learn an instrument or seriously get into a sport