Babystep 6

rugbymadfamily

Hi BabyStepper, congrats on the debt pay down (must have a read of the diary!) and sounds like you are making great progress with the EF. Think shifting the focus to that rather than OPs was a great idea given the current situation. Anyway, best of luck and look forward to hearing about your future plans!

BabyStepper

Thank you, DancingInTheRain and rugbymadfamily. I am feeling pretty fortunate right now and very glad of the boost from my parents. They are really quite worried about the current situation and want to do whatever they can to help. 

I have ditched Dave Ramsey as a source of inspiration and found a new person to follow. Her name's MamaFurFur and she has a channel on youtube. She's excellent and I've been binge watching her videos. As a result, I have a new plan. 

According to her, if you overpay your mortgage by 10% (and that's 10% of your monthly payment, not 10% of the total balance due) then you can cut 3 years off a 25 year mortgage term. For the cost of £67 per month (my mortgage payment is £670) that seems like a great place to start. I put the figures into the mse mortgage calculator and it is correct.

So, my new plan is to do that, at the same time as putting away an amount every month for the possible house move, keeping the sinking funds going and paying into pensions. One problem I'm having is getting used to having various goals happening at once. When I was in a debt emergency it was ALL about the debt. But now, I can focus on a few different things at the same time.

Oh, and my debt free diary sounds like the stressed out rantings of a crazy woman.  You might want to give it a miss!   

savingholmes

Great that you now have a fully funded EF. Good luck with the mortgage OPs.

BabyStepper

Thanks for the support savingholmes - much appreciated. 

I was also wondering about giving. I've donated to a few different organisations during the pandemic but these were just one off payments as I felt I had to do something. Long term, what do we all think about regular giving? Do you do it? If so, how  much as a percentage of your income do you give? I think I still have a bit of a poverty mindset and I don't want to become someone who hoards their money and never feels secure enough. I think giving money away would help with this. Saying that, I have no idea what OH's thoughts are about this so I should probably ask him first! So, what are your thoughts everyone?  

BabyStepper

So OH let me know he already contributes to a local charity, £10 per month. And I've had a vague memory that I asked about it on here before and was reminded that giving clothes and items to charity shops, putting change into tins, buying poppies and badges and shopping in charity shops all counts as charitable contributions too. And I already do all of those things. Hard to quantify but a contribution none the less. 

There is a local charity I'd love to volunteer for but for a few reasons it's just not possible for me to do that. I'd love to give them a decent chunk of cash every month. I do feel that in the coming months and possibly years *gulp* of this pandemic we will need to look after each other much more than before. And I'm possibly in a position to help. But I'm just not sure. 

Maybe, as with most things, I should try it and see. I don't need to commit for life, just start payments on the justgiving page. Maybe I'll try that.  

   

Debsnewbudget

I am a trustee of a Parkinsons charity and we welcome donations but as treasurer I love the small regular amounts per month, like the £10 ones as that gives us a regular income we can depend on, rather than lump sums every so often(which are also very welcome) 
so start regular and small and you can always gIve more as one off payments.  

Drawingaline

I send regular payments to an equine charity in Egypt. I occasionally do one off donations to them too, but I know they really like the regular ones. I also donate to my church every month, via s/o rather than via collection plate as I never have cash on me. 

I also have around £10 a month which I can keep spare for any friends fundraising efforts for whatever, or sometimes just things on FB I feel I would like to give £5/10 too.

I did read an interesting idea of supporting three charities via regular donations (£10 a month or more, depending on spare money etc) so one local one, so could even be spending money on items for local food bank etc)  one big organisation (Oxfam, etc) and one other (so maybe an international one that is small or means a lot, like the Egypt charity I support) I am not quite ready for this, but really liked the idea.

ruby_eskimo

Congrats on the fully funded EF!  I also follow mamafurfur (but on instagram rather than her youtube videos) and she speaks a lot of practical sense.  

On the giving side, we make regular payments to Young Epilepsy and Epilepsy Action as DH has epilepsy and I am signed up with Amazon's Smile program so a portion of all my purchases go to a nominated charity which I change every year (normally animal related ones).  That's all in addition to the charity shop purchases and donations, M&S Sparks card donations and I always buy something for the local food bank and animal shelter in each of my weekly shops.

BabyStepper

Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts about giving, you've all given me a confidence boost. Me and OH are building up a plan now. I've included his £10 payment to a local charity, I've started weekly donations to our local foodbank, and we're having a think about what else we can add in that feels important to us. At the moment we're keeping everything local and I'll keep an eye on the budget to make sure we can afford it.    

I started making overpayments of 10% to the mortgage. I've rounded it up from £67 to £70 and made that payment today. I've updated my signature that now stands at £120 overpayment. I'm just going to keep that steady for the next few months while saving up to (possibly) move house next year. 

I've also created some new sinking funds for some of my DDs. For the sake of simplifying my monthly budget, I'm trying to save for everything from the tv licence to the boiler breakdown cover. If I can pay outright for all of these things then I'll only have a handful of DDs to keep an eye on. 

It has not escaped my notice that if we move in the spring we will miss the stamp duty break. However, if we moved now, we would have a fee to pay for getting out of our mortgage (I think). Our mortgage broker has plans to look in to porting our mortgage but she's not doing anything until we know we're going. Unhelpful when I'm trying to plan but...whatever. There's a limit to how much planning you can do for something that might not even happen. 

I hope everyone is staying safe and well. 

BabyStepper

Some of my invoices have been paid early so I'm on to paying next month's bills. Another £70 to the mortgage and that's it now until 2021. £190 in total, at least it's a start.