Crunchy pays off the loan early, and other stories

crunchy_time

We shall go to the cinema to see a Christmas film.

I’m not a fan of crowds and loud music so tend to avoid that stuff. 

ohdearhowdidthathappen

I love a panto! But if you don't like crowds and loud music, I can see it's probably not ideal!

crunchy_time

Morning all

Day 8 of isolation and I've just been through our money situation to plan for next year.  I was going to do this closer to Christmas but thought now is a good time as ever since I have the time!!!!!

Basic SOA

Husbands salary -  £4466
Me - £1189
Total: £5655 a month
2 adults, 2 children, 1 dog and 2 cars - one 14 year old banger and 1 five year old with £10k left of finance to pay off.  Both loan payments of £269 and £182 will be going towards this from February with the aim of paying it off by end of 2023.

Mortgage is £266,845 and costs £1250 a month - we over pay a little - £114

Debts:
Sofa loan 0% and £40 a month until April 2023 - when paid off will shuffle that money towards over paying mortgage.
Loan 1 - Mine - £6883 - £182 a month - 3 years and 2 months left to go - 3% ish.
Loan 2 - Husbands - £12,905 - £269 a month - 3 years 11 months to go - 3% ish.
Husband 0% credit card - £2760 - until April 2023 - £69 a month - roughly.

£10k of the loans is for the car, £905 is interest we hope we don't pay all of, and therefore £8883 is of house debt which is the next target after the below Credit cards.

After the following is paid for:

Bills
Childcare and kids clubs
Spending money and clothes for us - £200 each
Emergency fund savings - £100 at the moment - 
Holiday savings - £500 a month

We have about £800 roughly a month - I say roughly as childcare varies as does some termly payments for the kids sport clubs.

Despite all this extra cash we have about £2,533 on an additional credit card each between us and this is purely because of being disorganised and not keeping an eye on the bigger picture.  

As the consumer debt hangover from 2018 chapter of our lives is about the close, the next stage is to really get to grips with what we are spending month to month and day to day and getting organised and methodical about it so our money serves us better than it is at the moment.

Here is what is on the credit cards

Mine -  Balance is £1430 - £1143 is at 0% Until November 2023 and £296 is not.

0%
£117 - Oil -  currently paying off at £50 a month and then we shall save £50 a month for next batch.
£205 - Interest from husbands credit card as a balance transferred to this one.
£240 - Dentist - will save up for next visit and then pay this off.
£447 - Food  - because husband couldn't use the joint food account for some reason and we lost track of what we were spending in the summer.
£125 - Garden stuff

Not 0%
£161 - Kids clothes and sports equipment
£45 stuff for house

Husbands

Balance - £1103 - not at 0%

£332 - Entertainment from Sept due to being disorganised.  Husband using the wrong card to pay for stuff and then us losing track of what we are spending.
£75 - Fuel - at the moment we are paying this in arrears but I want to change this.
£202 - Food - husband being disorganised.
£58 - Protein powder - I'll blame husband for this too.
£65 - leftover from one child's birthday present.
£120 - Earphones - will pay this off gradually with his spending money
£123 - Garden stuff.
£52 Interest
£78 - sports clothes for kids.

Clearly, there is a theme - husband, credit card, disorganisation and lack of communication between us.

Here are the immediate actions I am going to put in place to deal with this:

1) Confiscate husbands credit card - DONE
2) Set up house wishlist as a google doc so spends can be planned rather than reactive. DONE
3) Set up budget doc so husband can see the plan for the months ahead - DONE
4) Set up a buffer as a better emergency fund in future - £100 saved each month where possible. - DONE £100 saved already.
5) Stick to food budget!!!!!!!!!!!  Hopefully should be easier if husband doesn't have his credit card.


So, because of Christmas, when we get paid at the end of November, we won't be able to pay lots of the credit cards because of Christmas but When we get paid at the end of December, we will be able to.

I shall add this credit card debt to my signature for transparency.

Sorry for rambling and long post but it is good to get all this down on paper.

Crunchy xx

crunchy_time

Morning all

Day 9 of isolation.

A couple of things to bore you all with:

 - I've just gone through all our direct debits and made a list of when each insurance or payment is due and put them on a calendar.  For a minute I thought we weren't paying for car insurance for the bigger car but then I remembered that this year we paid for it annually.  OMG!  I scared myself.  This is due in April and costs £260 so I shall need to make a plan to save for this in the new year.  Forgetting this and many other things is one of the reasons amongst many, that I think I may have ADHD.  A private screening will cost around £200 so I shall plan to save up for this.

 - I could hear a mouse in our walls last night!  We had a mouse issue not last winter but the one before.  We sorted it and now they are back!  AHHH!  So husband and I spent about £60 last night ordering things to sort this problem.  This will come out of the emergency fund of £100 that I had saved for this month and which is why we need an easy access emergency fund.  We also need to finish concreting in and graveling a side of our house that we think they may be coming in from which we haven't done yet and we going to save up to do it for next year.  Husband is going to go out this Saturday for the supplies so once we know what the total cost is we shall decide how we are going to pay for it.  Probably emergency fund.  We plugged in the device that deters them with high-frequency sound last night then we remembered we had hamsters so they were quickly dispatched to the home office at the bottom of the garden for a few weeks.

 - I have already withdrawn £300 from our emergency fund to pay for mice issue equipment and emergency vets fees for dog which is why that has gone down.  I have also withdrawn £100 for husband to buy me a present for my birthday in a few weeks time.

- I was wrong about husband's interest on his loan - it is actually £803, not £905.  The plan is to reduce that massively by overpaying.  The total money we owe now for house renovations on our loans is £7163 not including the privacy project.  This is what we are going to be tackling next after the consumer debt is paid off and the additional credit card debt so we can beat the date the loans are due to end and therefore reduce the amount of interest we need to pay.  I don't think we will able to do this drastically in 2022 but hopefully in 2023 we can see a big difference.  We may change our mind with this and just let them run or instead of overpaying the loans we may save up to pay them off early.  I like the kick of making extra payments but we also have lots left to do on the house which we would like to save for.

Right off to do some costings up for house and garden projects and then I am going to work out before lunch.

Crunchy xx

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Our income and spending habits are really similar.  I find it really hard to get a handle on, I know what we should be doing, but actually doing it is hard.
Well done on your lists and plans, sounds very organised!

crunchy_time

Morning all

At home and not at work awaiting another PCR test for another poorly child.  Grrr.  It is what it is though.  I'm supposed to be doing some paperwork......

Our second car is on the brink.  It is about 14.5 years old and has done 140k ish miles and we have been waiting for this moment.  The engine is smoking and making a high-pitched ringing noise.  Eek.  I'm not an expert but I know that is not good.  Friend of husbands thinks it's the oil.  Husband hasn't had a chance to check as out of the country for work for the first time since the pandemic started.  I have looked at replacements and made a plan just in case.  Will have to increase my loan but will cost less than an extra £100 and can pay off in 3 years.  Will not affect our plans.

I've made a little dent on my credit card - £50 off the oil and the other stuff bit is nearly done too.

I have also made a few Christmas purchases.  DS's list was ridiculous.  He is nine and still a believer so reckons Father Christmas will be able to buy him a gaming laptop for £2k and all the things to go with it.  Husband and I think we might give him some money towards a second-hand laptop instead or a camera to get him interested in tech but less about the gaming side of it.
I guess this might be the first nail in the coffin for him when he wakes up on Christmas day and this gaming laptop is not under the tree.  DD wants a make-up kit which is a bit easier.  We shall get them other bits as well but not plastic tat.  

I also don't want an extravagant Christmas with lots of drinks and parties.  Last year was lovely in the sense that that part was taken away from us and it became more meaningful for us.  It will be over in 6 weeks!  Who do I want to see by then and what do I want to achieve?

I have started a sober app because I am getting tired of drinking mostly by myself out of habit and it has no effect on me other than making me dehydrated, fat and with a fuzzy head.

Today it is day two!  

Trying to relax into this mess rather than feel awfully stressed about it.

Crunchy xx

crunchy_time

ohdearhowdidthathappen said:

Our income and spending habits are really similar.  I find it really hard to get a handle on, I know what we should be doing, but actually doing it is hard.
Well done on your lists and plans, sounds very organised!

Something does always get in the way doesn't it?  I'm realising that I can't do everything so I just have to choose what I can do to do my best.

crunchy_time

Morning all

Husband's pay day yesterday so did a money shuffle.  Not much to report other than husbands credit card has gone up slightly as the emergency stuff we had to do for the mice situation cost a little more than I thought.

I have completed 5 days of sobriety!!  I managed to go the whole week without 'treating myself to a few beers or gin and tonics to take the edge off it being a bit stressful.'  I have woken up feeling very good on a Saturday morning instead of the usual murky headedness and dehydration.  I would have spent about £7 on a bottle of wine last night so I have chucked that money at the food debt line on the credit card debt.  Not much but every little helps.

In other news, I have bought a new car to replace the old one and booked its place on the scrap heap.  It's going to cost us an extra £81 a month but we have run our budget and can afford this.

Just got to organise Christmas now.  I'm really not feeling it at the moment but I know I will once we put the tree up next week. 

I have bought some stocking fillers that are nice and bulky.  I can't believe it is only 4 weeks away!  I'm wondering if I can sneak off into town this afternoon and see if I can pick up some things.  I always feel better when it is done.

Still not sure what we are actually going to be doing for Christmas this year.  Is anyone else finding it hard to make plans?  Still don't know if there will be restrictions.

Roll on Wednesday when the loan direct debits come out!

Crunchy xx 

ohdearhowdidthathappen

5 days of sobriety is good!  I do 2 days a week (mainly to prove I can), but don't really like it  
Is your new car a  lease?  Cars are a necessary evil, but they're such a pain!
We always host everyone every Christmas, open invite for my mum, siblings and in laws who want to come.  They never host others (lazy f£ckers), so we haven't been elsewhere for 15+ years Only for Xmas day mind, no sleepovers.  And rest of Christmas I do minimal!

crunchy_time

ohdearhowdidthathappen said:

5 days of sobriety is good!  I do 2 days a week (mainly to prove I can), but don't really like it  
Is your new car a  lease?  Cars are a necessary evil, but they're such a pain!
We always host everyone every Christmas, open invite for my mum, siblings and in laws who want to come.  They never host others (lazy f£ckers), so we haven't been elsewhere for 15+ years Only for Xmas day mind, no sleepovers.  And rest of Christmas I do minimal!

I had some wine yesterday and currently finishing off the bottle - ha! But it’s my birthday week so it’s ok!

New car is a 6 year old diesel that has done about 60k miles so a nice little run around. I extended my loan to pay for it. It cost £7800 so I extended my loan to £8000 as I’ll need to pay insurance and car tax. It’s made my loan go from £181 a month to £262 so not masses extra and over 5 years with interest rate of 3.3%. My loan is now about £15,700 including interest. In my head I’m paying the car off first and  overpayments will go towards the doing up the house part of the loan. 

But we need to pay off the credit cards first. 

I think we hosted last my in laws last year  which was impromptu due to the state of the world at that time. We we’re away the year before but husband cooked for everyone. And we have hosted here once before. 

My friend and in laws have inspired us to have Christmas meal on Christmas Eve and then Christmas day is all about spending time as a family rather than one of us stressing about cooking. It worked well last year. I’ve told my parents that they are welcome to come over on Christmas Day but there won’t be a Christmas meal! Wink wink.

It is my dream one year to !!!!!! off abroad and not have to deal with all the political BS!!