Frugal, thrifty, make do, mend! Let this debt come to an end!

YAHDi

Look up Conchus for shampoo and conditioner bars. It’s a small, one woman business (my friends daughter in law) and the products are lovely. 

Elisheba

Evening, folks,

I'm glad everyone is having good results with green bleach. It's so good we can clean things properly when needed without poisoning our water.

 I shall indeed have a look @YAHDi I am so annoyed I found a good brand I'm not allergic to and they immediately do a bunk 🙄

I was doing a lot of financial thinking earlier on today about the best way to go about Plan Buy a House. I looked at various ways to go about things and I think the best way will be to pay off the remaining bits of debt as soon as I sell the car, and put the rest into savings, and save the money I have spent back up again. The original plan had been to put it all into savings and pay off the debt piecemeal.

The debt looks to be around £5.5k and although it's all interest free, it will look better on a mortgage application if I've been debt free for 12-18 months, and can show I have been saving hard for the same amount of time. Shows good spending habits and financial resilience. I'll still have enough in savings to get the £1k on my LISA this year, and again next year. So in 18 months I should have £12k plus for a deposit, as well as some helqthy bank statements.

One of the big benefits to the new twist on the plan is that I will be able to see every penny I save going into that house savings pot and it will be supermotivating. I respond well to concrete targets, so saving will feel better than debt reduction. It'll also help me game-ify the savings process a bit. How low can I go on my food budget? How much more can I put aside than I have budgeted for?  'Keep the heating off to buy a house!'. That sort of thing 😆. 

Another benefit is that I'll need to have the car sale sorted out, and a new car, by the end of January really. That's when the interest free ends on one of the CC. So no matter how faffy and annoying the whole process is, and no matter how much I want to procrastinate and put it off, I have a deadline I need to work to. 

Other than that financial thinking, I did manage to get bread made so had poached eggs on toast and mushroom in butter for dinner. Clothes have been put away and downstairs hoovered, so I'm fairly up to date on house things.

Tomorrow I need to hoover the stairs and upstairs, write some Xmas cards, drop old tenant's letters in a post box, change the cat litter, walk silly dog, and go through notes on a service I'm helping out with on Sunday. Oh, and also do a day's work 🤣. Dinner will be either more brocolli and Mac cheese, or baked potato or bread and soup. Will see what I feel like when I am hungry tomorrow.

Oh and I spend £8 at the carol service today on the raffle and collection. But I did win two new bird feeders in the raffle, and of which I do really need, so great result there!

Sleep tight, everyone.

KajiKita

Oh I love it when you win something in a raffle you *actually* need or want - Mr KK won a really pretty coin purse recently which I am now using 😊

The clearing the debt completely once the car is sold sounds like a good shout and I think will be more motivating / satisfying than doing it slowly. You might need a new thread title then! 😉😊

KK

Elisheba

@KajiKita Well, clearing off the debt completely might be somewhat of misnomer.  I still have a bank loan that won't be paid off until 2030, but I basically ignore that as it just comes down slowly in the background. And I owe my ex my half of the OD he paid off, but he doesn't want that until after I buy a house.  But all the stupid annoying debts on cards will be gone.  

Elisheba

Guten tag, penny pinching professionals!

I was having a quick look at the different options on savings accounts this morning, in anticipation of have some cash after the car is sold.  With the OD gone I would quite like to move over to S@ntander for my banking and take advantage of their 1% cash back, and 6% instant access savings account up to £4k.  I not sure if moving banks might reflect badly on my credit rating though?  Bearing in mind it will be 12-18months before I am actually in a position to move, it might be okay.

With the £3 account charge that would be £17pm cashback, £240 interest a year if it had £4k in it for the whole year, and currently £150 for the bank switch - which would be £594 extra to go towards the move.  Plus the £1k on the LISA, and that's £1500 before I even start saving.

I'm feeling the cold today for some reason, although the thermometer says it isn't any colder than yesterday.  Still my electric footwarmer and teddybear oodie are on, and I'll see until I can get to the evening before I put on the heating.

I filled up the new fatball bird feeder I won at the raffle last night, and put it out this morning, and the fatballs are half gone already.  Poor birds are starving this time of year. 

I ordered a lot of my Xmas presents yesterday and was able to pay for all on them on Am£x, so will get the 0.5% cashback next November (although I must remember I need to spend £3k on Amex in a year to get the cashback, and I may well not meet that if I switch over to S@ntander and their 1% cashback).

Still need to change the cat litter and walk silly dog today, so I'll need to get on that soon.  Still not sure what I want for dinner tonight. 

Take care, folks and stay warm and cosy,

foxgloves

Very exciting to hear about possible house buying plans, @Elisheba. I think one of the main reason people of around my age managed to buy a house in their 20s (well, I was 30, but what's a year?) was that 95% mortgages were very definitely a thing. I remember I planned to finish my Masters degree, get my first professional post, then buy a little terraced house. The 1st 2 parts of the plan went swimmingly, but on the house buying front, I was stymied by one of the mad property-buying frenzies in which house prices rocketed very quickly & even people who had offers accepted, later lost out as other interested parties gazumped them by offering a higher price - unfortunately this was & probably still is, legal in England. All the pretty little edge-of-city terraces I'd had my eye on were very quickly beyond my price range so I had to stay put in my rented flat waiting for the market to calm down, moving up a few more salary increments at work & then I had another go. This time success. At the time I was buying, there was a building society offering full 100% mortgages & I was very keen on having one of these, but when I went for an appointment to see what they'd be prepared to lend me, the advisor was off sick & it seems hard to believe now, but nobody else in the entire office could work the computer!! I thought this so unprofessional I didn't go back & instead went for one of the many 95% mortgages which were then on offer. I know house prices were much lower back then than they are now, but so, of course, were salaries. I think finding 5% deposit was achievable for many people in a way that the madly high deposits which have been required in more recent years just were not. I have genuinely felt for all the people desperately wanting to get a foot on the ladder & greater housing security, while at the same time, seeing so much of their money leaking away in ever-higher rentals. 
Back then, I had debts but not credit card debt, which came later, but when I came to buy our current house jointly with Mr F eight years later, we were asked about our levels of debt at the time (especially a big chunk of Mr F's debt from losing money on a house which he had not long ago bought with his ex). The mortgage advisor added it all up & deducted it from the maximum we would be able to borrow. We didn't intend to borrow the maximum available, so this didn't affect our plans, but it was definitely a bit of a kick up the backside. However, it was stupidly still another 6 or 7 years before the Lightbulb Moment struck & we decided finally to live within our means.
I hadn't realised until you mentioned it that 95% mortgages were once again available & I hope this does help many more people off the rental merry-go-round & into greater security. Good luck with your plans. You do sound very resourceful & I think, like me, you take pleasure in life's simpler, beautiful things, which does make a frugal lifestyle easier.
F x

Elisheba

Very quick update to say I looked on my water account, and it turned out they have just done a reading of my meter. I think it said I have used 12 or 13 cubic metres of water since June. Anyway the long and short of it is they are lowering my water payments to £12 a month for the foreseeable!

I am so glad I got a water meter fitted! If you will recall, I got it fitted after the water company bill for 24/25 came in at over £50pcm which I thought was ridiculous. I spoke to them and they reduced that to £35pcm which is their unmetered rate for low use, and that has been what I've paid since even with the meter as they needed 6 months data before they could alter anything. 

So that's over £38 a month saved on the original figure, and £23 a month on what I was actually paying. What a fab result! Just goes to show - only flush when you must, and you don't need a shower a day to keep the doctor away 🤣🤣🤣.

That's £276 that can go in the house fund next year 😁.

 

fionaandphil

Is your boiler costing a lot for just hot water? We have ours on all year on constant. In the summer when it's water only we find that we hardly use any oil, thats for family use for showers, washing, dishes etc. We only use a more substantial amount once the heating goes on in winter. We have the heating set for 3 x 1 hour per day and then boost when required or use the fire. Without it our house quickly gets cold and damp. Everyone is different but I definitely couldn't cope without hot water on demand - I'm too soft!

Well done on the house plan - sounds very promising 

Makingabobor2

Excellent result. Well done. 

KajiKita

Great result on the water meter charge update 👏😊
No chance of a refund on what you have spent since moving in as you have now proved your usage?

KK