Buying a house without a mortgage

Frugaldom

Kaz2904 wrote: »

I too have financial OCD. It drives me nuts when my figures are off and I sit there twitching for the whole month because I have spent all of my money!

Hi Kaz, just wondering how your financial OCD is doing over the festive period. Mine's worsening by the minute after weighing 'Phil the Pig' and seeing he was 2005g... I wanted to try to poke a penny out of him with a knife so he was bang on the 2KG mark!! :rotfl:

Frugaldom

Hello

My first port of call for property finding is www.propertyfinder.com because it always perks me up a bit when I see really cheap properties. :rotfl:

I looked at the prospect of taking on a mortgage, which is possible when self-employed, but most lenders charrge a premium rate IF they'll even consider it. Other than that, it would be a commercial mortgage so I could still work/run a business from home. The cheapest I could find was 1.5% over the base rate but they were only offering up to 60% mortgage. Hmm... let me see... save up about £40k plus associated fees, make that £45k and then pay someone else 8% (variable) interest plus repayments and insurances for 20 years or rent and save up 50k for a fixy-up and gain earn about 6% interest p.a. If I could save £10k per year, I'd have the house bought and paid for by 2012, even saving £5k for 10 years, I am confident enough that there should always be relatively cheap property and I'll not need to fork out thousands in interest for a place that could take me 20 years to pay off.:D

bails

Oh, I forgot to say, I have financial OCD too :rotfl:My total is really bugging me!! Will make that site my starting point, thanks.

Frugaldom

bails wrote: »

Oh, I forgot to say, I have financial OCD too :rotfl:My total is really bugging me!! Will make that site my starting point, thanks.

Hi Bails, your PM mail box is full and I can't reply to you :rotfl:

Kaz, Bails & NYK - founding members of the financial OCD sufferers association - I promise to get my house figure rounded off before the end of January. Once I list my eBid items and make a few more sales, that should help

pavlovs_dog

hows the financial OCD treating you so far in 2008 nykmedia?

i love your brick - what a fab visual reminder of your goal

Frugaldom

pavlovs_dog wrote: »

hows the financial OCD treating you so far in 2008 nykmedia?

i love your brick - what a fab visual reminder of your goal

Hi Pavlov's!
The financial OCD is doing OK so far, I just try not to read too many signatures and that way I can't see the pesky odd pennies. However, I've just completed a reassessment of my personal budget for 2008 and had to make a couple of small corrections to round up or down to the nearest sensible pound. I've another week to go before the interest pays into my savings, which normally means I need to top it up to round it off to the nearest fiver but other than that, everything is fine. Glad I didn't get shot of the Premium Bonds, mind you, as I had a £50 win, which went (virtually)straight to the brick. One day, I'll can say straight to the wall! :rotfl:

So, how are you doing? What's new and what's cooking in your money stewpots?

pavlovs_dog

congrats on the win. better than a slap in the face :j

my money stewpot is bubbling nicely. our plan is different to yours as you'd be lucky to find a garden shed round our parts for less than £70k :rolleyes: that said there is a definite sign of a slow down in the market in my area. i spotted it through my obsession with browsing rightmove, but the figures seem to back it up. £100k certainly looks like it will go further now than it would have 6 - 12 months ago. shame that we're not currently in a position to take advantage of the slowdown.

if the current trend continues then things might be easier for us in 18 months time, which is the earliest point we could even entertain the idea of buying. whereas our friends all seem to be buying typical starter homes and 'yuppie' flats :rolleyes: our aim is to think longer term, by getting a fix-it-up home that we can grow into as we start a family. dont know if it will be the 'forever' home, but it will certainly be the 'next 10 years at least' home. we might be upto our eyes in DIY and renovations but at least we wont have to move again for a good long while, something that my friends dont seem to grasp. they want it all and they want it yesterday!

Frugaldom

Hi Pavlov's and everyone else - no Premium Bonds win this month and nothing major to report. It's all quiet on the savings front with just one small major set-back: I had a couple of small (supposed) investments that have done so badly that I'm having to write them off and start a 'recouping fund' to get back to where I was previously. :mad:

On top of that, I keep thinking of other things that I'd like to include in my house budget - like a woodburning stove connected for heating and hot water. That'll add about another £3000 onto the budget, but I've also found out that there are grants available for installing alternative energy supplies. Read about these at www.lowcarbonbuildings.org.uk Let's hope they are still available by the time can afford the house :rotfl:

I got 4 free tickets for the 2008 home building and renovating show! :T We're making a weekend of it in May (this is what passes as entertainment in my book ) Tickets are quoted at £8 each, but if you go to www.homebuildingshow.co.uk then you should still be able to pre-order some freebies. My 'wish list' is growing but, conveniently, the 'recoup fund' is about bang on target to cover the woodburner heating system, so that'll take care of that.

Further to the discussion I had somewhere about the HI accounts, I can now recommend the ICICI / HiSave account for surplus funds awaiting transfer to new ISAs. They pay interest from the very first month you pay in! :j

I really should stop researching - I keep finding more info that really could persuade me to consider the possibility of starting from scratch and building! I should stop watching Grand Designs!

Frugaldom

Following my research, I have increased my initial budget from £57,100 to £60,000 to include an eco-friendly heating system into Stage 2 of my 'master plan', which increased that to £7,900.
Stage 1 still remains at £2,100
Stage 3 still remains at £50,000

Hope everyone is managing to keep on target despite the drop in interest rates. Roll on April and the new ISA allowance! :T

pavlovs_dog

interesting idea about the woodburning stove. when we lived in a new build housing association property a few years ago, it had solar panels on the roof which were directly linked to the heating/hot water system, which saved us a small fortune. not sure how much it cost, but could be worth investigating. they're very effective, even on cloudy days.