Looks worse when it's written down!!

enthusiasticsaver

It is good you are aware that using equity to clear debts is not usually recommended but to make doubly sure you don't fall back into bad habits I suggest you close all but the oldest credit card so you can't be tempted. Moving house is a spending trigger for many.

GTBT123

Sea_Shell wrote: »

So have you re-mortgaged for an extra £100k and kept the cash back?

Sorry, my previous post wasn't very clear. No we haven't remortgaged/added anything to the mortgage. We ported our old mortgage over to the new property & then there was enough equity in the sale of the old house to pay the rest of the purchase price of the new property & have £100k equity left over. The only bills we have increased are our home insurance, which has gone up by £2 per month and our water bill is currently higher because we're on a meter so they have estimated it until they take a new meter reading in 6 months.

Two of my credit cards are already closed down as I had previously transferred the balance using a balance transfer deal and then closed the empty ones. I have 3 cards open at the moment. I'm going to keep 2 open. One has only a small credit limit of £1000 on, which I keep locked in the glove box in my car for emergencies like breakdowns. The other card has a £14000 credit limit on it which I am going to reduce to £5000 and keep that for home emergencies. Hopefully I will never need to use these because I have had my savings pots set up for a while now, only been putting little bits in at a time but it all adds up. These savings pots are for things like Home stuff, clothes, christmas, birthdays etc.

The money we have left over from the house is sitting in my savings account at the moment, but the interest rate is rubbish, so I need to start looking at better savings accounts this week. I know interest rates on savings are pitiful across the board, but I also know I can do a lot better than the 0.2% that my savings account is currently offering :rotfl:

On the money saving front, I had a letter from our new gas & electric supplier last week. It is SSE, which I know is one of the more expensive for my area. In the letter they have said that I'm currently on their standard tariff as we're the new home owners. So today's job is to get on the comparison websites & see what deal I can get.

It's crazy to think that this time last year I was Christmas shopping & wasn't even keeping track of how much money I was spending on people. This year is so different. I have just started buying a few things but before I even bought anything I set budgets for everybody & have set up a spreadsheet for each person. Every time I buy something I put it in the spreadsheet with the amount spent so I can see how much money I have left. I started saving for Christmas in January when I had my lightbulb moment, so it's all working out very nicely at the moment

Sea_Shell

Sorry I must be being thick...but if your new house cost more than your old one, how have you ended up with £100k equity spare, if you've not increased your borrowing??

GTBT123

Sea_Shell wrote: »

Sorry I must be being thick...but if your new house cost more than your old one, how have you ended up with £100k equity spare, if you've not increased your borrowing??

Sorry, I just read my previous post again wondering why I've confused people. I noticed a word in my previous post that I imagine caused this confusion. I have edited it now as what I was supposed to say was our new home was not more than our old house. I put wasn't MUCH more, which I realise sounds like it was slightly more, when in fact it wasn't more so we were able to port our mortgage, use some of the equity and take the rest of the equity as cash. So basically old house was worth £365k with a £150k mortgage, new house was £265k so we just ported the mortgage of £150k over, which left us with £215000 in equity, so used £115k equity then to pay the remaining amount owed to buy the new property, that left £100k cash to us (not exact figures but thereabouts). Hope that makes more sense now.

Sea_Shell

Thanks for clearing that up....I wasn't going mad!!!

GTBT123

Sea_Shell wrote: »

Thanks for clearing that up....I wasn't going mad!!!

Haha, no not at all, it was my fault. That's what happens when I'm rushing & don't read something back!

It feels very strange at the moment not having the debt. When this all happened I was very excited to know we'd be able to clear our debt and be debt free, but now that we are I don't feel excited. Instead I feel like I have a huge responsibility now to not only stay out of debt, but also to be careful that we don't fritter away the money that we have in the bank. I hope that with everything I've read on here can help me stay on track.

Today's job is to get the grocery order done. I have it delivered most weeks because it stops me spending money unnecessarily on 'treats'. I've got my list so I'm going to order everything to be delivered tomorrow. I also need to do a meal plan to get me on track for cutting down our grocery bill and hopefully lose a bit more weight for Christmas.