Keep calm and carry on....

ruby_eskimo

Streetbees sounds really stressful, don't think I could cope with having to pull everything out to find a specific item for them!

South_coast

It's definitely quite labour-intensive for 20p 🤣! But it makes a nice change to answering questions about Sky, or banking, or insurance, or any of the other dull things that normal survey sites have. And I do like the fact there's no minimum - I've earned that 20p and I'm flippin well having it! 

Not sure how much I'll be able to do once I start work, as they seem to get put on at about 7.00am and I'll be getting in the car then 😮😮😮!

themadvix

Not all of them involve pulling everything out of the cupboards! But at least you're not stuck sat down all the time! Agreed that the no minimum is a good thing and as you say SC, they're more interesting than some.

South_coast

That's true, I don't think I needed any photos for the ones I did yesterday - they just all came at once today!

At least I didn't get the hair removal one again. I mean, there's only so many ways I can make a disposable razor look interesting....

South_coast

I've been deliberating about the mortgage....😮

My current fix runs until March 2023. The original plan was to have the balance cleared well in advance of that, but now I'm going to be on a much lower income that's not going to be possible. It's not really going to be feasible to remortgage then, as either the balance will be too low for a new deal (definitely a first-world problem, I know!), or the fees would be too ridiculous in comparison to the balance. So I've been thinking about what I would need to pay in order to finish at the same time as the fix runs out, which would be c£450/month, which I don't think I'll be able to commit to.

Then I thought, what if I stop thinking about the overall balance and the timescale to clear it, and instead focused on making it a more manageable outgoing by reducing the payments, suck up the fact that I'll be paying more interest, and put any surplus income into starting to build the refurb fund. So I've just chatted with the bank, and they reckon I could bring my monthly payments down to about £90/month by taking into account the OP's I've already made. Which sounds great, but £36 of that would be interest so the balance would only be coming down by £54/month 😮 And that would go on for another 20.5 years!!! So I'm not sure I like the sound of that either!

So I'm not really sure what to do now. I think the answer is probably to just stick to Plan A, overpay as much as I can afford and see what it looks like closer to the time 🙁

In slightly cheerier news, it turns out BF did a little of his own shopping in Lidl when he picked my stuff up last week, as he added a couple of items to my shopping list today. Don't think I have turned him just yet, and of course it now means I've paid for his shopping and created more work for myself (who's the bigger fool there, I wonder 🤔?), but hopefully he will transfer me the money without too much nagging!

And I'm up to £69.30 on this month's free money 😀

Grogged

Could you not borrow more to bring the refurbishment forward and be able to get a better deal?
I know it sounds wrong, but that may work out better for you?
Especially if you time it to your advantage.

South_coast

😳 I think I could have contemplated that if I hadn't put so much into OP's so far, but now I'd see it as borrowing back my own money and paying a premium for it I think 😮 Don't think I could bring myself to do that!

South_coast

South_coast said:

At least I didn't get the hair removal one again. I mean, there's only so many ways I can make a disposable razor look interesting....

I think the universe is reading this diary.... I had a survey about disposable razors last night - and some of them looked much more interesting 🤣!

South_coast

More thinking about the mortgage 🙄 and I think I'm being a bit of a wally. My back-of-an-envelope figures suggest that even if I only make the 10% fee-free OP's in the last two years of the fix (do-able), switching to SVR on the remaining balance at the end will only make the monthly interest go up by a pound or two, so hardly worth worrying about. So the focus is on building up 2x 10% so I have those ready to go straight away, then anything above that goes onto the mortgage straight away to bring forward the end date. Once the mortgage is gone, I automatically have an extra £250/month for the refurb fund, so hopefully this will make saving up faster than paying off!

Now I just need to, er, start work....

ruby_eskimo

I have no idea what to do when it comes to re-mortgaging so at least you have a plan!  I'm thinking of trying to do a shop at Lidl next week and see if DH notices (he's a Sainsbury's man through and through usually) as he's not minded the Tesco food we've been having for the last few weeks with our vouchers.