Keep calm and carry on....

Jessy103

Fantastic progress, SC! Well done, you should be proud of yourself

coldcazzie

That is truly amazing, and well worth having pride in yourself! 

South_coast

Thank you so much you lovely lot 😍 I didn't want it to come across like I was bragging in view of the current economic meltdown, but told myself it's been a 4-year project and I should feel pleased with myself - it's only the last few weeks that have been Weird  (another word I am giving a temporary capital letter). 

The original plan was to take it out over 17 years, as that would see me finishing in a "0" birthday-year, but the bank said that was unaffordable and insisted on 25 years. It was the broker that suggested I could OP to stick to the original schedule (I had already discovered MFW while saving for my deposit, so not sure why I didn't think of it myself 😡). As it stands, I should be done and dusted by the 0-birthday before - in your face, bank 😀! It's been BF and my parents that thought I was bonkers (the only people I told in real life). My parents get it now after I spelled out to them a few months ago that 1 month's OP had taken 9 months off the end date, but BF still thinks "life's too short". Have a feeling I may have the last laugh on this (and she who laughs last of course laughs longest) 😂😂😂

V8D

That’s absolutely fantastic, SC. 😀

I’ve not had chance to read through your whole diary yet, do you know roughly how much you’ve been op’ing per month? 

Jessy103

You've done great SC and I look forward to hearing about how you've told bf what for! People are so judgy when it comes to how you don't spend your money, like it's such a bad thing to save! 

South_coast

V8D said:

I’ve not had chance to read through your whole diary yet, do you know roughly how much you’ve been op’ing per month? 

Hmmm, it's varied wildly over the years. When I took the mortgage out I was on a much smaller salary, so probably started out at about £150-ish a month. The last couple of months I've managed about £1500-ish, so it's been pretty different! Consistency is definitely the key and sticking to the mindset constantly

South_coast

Jessy103 said:

People are so judgy when it comes to how you don't spend your money, like it's such a bad thing to save! 

I'm always fascinated to see how people spend their money, I find myself wondering how people manage to go on fantastic holidays and find myself thinking "I couldn't afford that" - and then I realise that actually I could! I just choose not to! You're definitely right about the general aversion to saving though, I wonder if it's the same in other countries or if it's part of the British thing of playing down other peoples' success? Not sure I've explained that very well, but hopefully you get my drift. I do wonder what people think I spend my money on though, I drive a nice car but in many other (and hopefully slightly less obvious) ways I live like a church mouse! Where do they think it goes? 

South_coast

I'll give you a real-life example of BF Jessy:
Last summer, he asked me to return some clothes he'd bought online and re-order them in a different size, because "You're good at that sort of thing". Brushing aside him trying to direct me to his account number and password etc, I waited until he went outside and then placed the new order online in my name so that I could get him a 10% discount for me being a new customer as well as 15% TCB for me because it was being done in my name. I went outside to tell him of my success and he shook his head " You're unbelievable" - I'd just saved him £15! 

Not living together and being in complete control of the MFW project has definitely worked in my favour 😂!

Jessy103

I completely get what you're saying. I think people assume I'm poor because I don't spend my money. They don't see me spending it so automatically think I just don't have it! I do think the same as you though, I could go abroad every year and put the dogs in kennels but instead I look for self catering cottages in the UK, where I can take the dogs and take a lot of my own food!

I'll be honest, SC, if you'd come out the house and told me about the clothes saving, I probably would have asked you to marry me! 😂

coldcazzie

South_coast said:
You're definitely right about the general aversion to saving though, I wonder if it's the same in other countries or if it's part of the British thing of playing down other peoples' success?

We, as a society, definitely have a general aversion to talking about anything money related at all, and I don't think it works in our favour tbh. It's just kinda of avoided in conversation, even if the conversation is about how much money you have and how much something will cost - that whole "I can't afford that" but the actual nitty gritty of the affording is glossed over. I've gotten over it largely - having to have a money conversation at every potential client interview I go to cured me of it fairly quickly.

We are trying to foster a good relationship with money in our children, and I don't know whether or not we're doing a good job. I might say "we can't afford that" to them about something, and what I mean by that is "that particular expense isn't accounted for in our budget, and therefore it's not something we can do right now without taking money away from other things that we consider to be more important" and to me it's a statement about priorities. But sometimes I say "we can't afford that" and Big Small interprets it as "we have no money at all and might not be eating this month" and starts thinking about having to buy groceries with her pocket money. Now some of that is her anxiety (she's gotten the tendency to catastrophise from her dad!), but some of it is her not being involved with my budgeting, our priority setting, and lacking the life skills to be able to see the nuances of the financial situation that we're in and of what adulting is like. Do I throw her in the deep end and show her all the ins and outs of what I'm doing with my spreadsheets and savings accounts coming out of my ears? Probably not. But I am trying to reassure her that "we can't afford that" doesn't mean everything is awful; it means we don't have "spare" money and every penny already has a job. And probably I also need to change my language to be more clear, because it isn't that we can't afford whatever it is, it's that we're choosing not to spend money on it. Saying that we're choosing where we spend money (or don't) is coming at it from a different perspective, and of course it then also allows for a shift of priorities if something comes along that is suddenly important, and we want to choose that as well.

That was a bit stream of consciousness.

TL;DR: yes we're a bit hampered as a society when it comes to talking about money, and I think it's something we all need to actively work on.