SLLM (Single Lady Large Mortgage)

Sistergold

Good morning SLLMs
I hope you are all having a wonderful week? As for me and my household we have all been fine. At present only my oldest son is at home all others are at their dads for the week! Have taken time to spend a night at a friend's house on Monday and will spend night away tonight as son is old enough to do his own thing! Sleeping away was a nice break, different environment etc! 

Finally got fed up with waiting for refund and decided to start a dispute with PayPal. I paid using my credit card but though PayPal. I first of all called my bank about refund issue and they said they can not do anything unless I have gone through PayPal first as payment was via them. PayPal has now contacted the seller and given them ultimatum to give answers and resolve refund but either way I am going to have issue resolved at most within 11days. Sportstech have until 14th August to respond. 

PayPal has said I don’t need to contact the treadmill company any more as they will do the resolution for me through payment protection. I am relieved as the seller was really taking a meek. Giving me casual responses to my enquiries. 

Have a lovely week
xx

slm6002

Glad you are hopefully near to getting your refund.  Some companies do like to string things out just to hold onto our money for longer in the hope we may just give up and put it down to a bad experience.  Sometimes all it takes is a larger company to fight on our behalf and they back down.

Your night away sounds good - sometimes that's all it takes to relax.   I know when we go to my sisters it feels like a holiday.

I have decided to do up my house and stay put for now.  All i now need to decided is if i do the work within my savings and bit by bit, or take out a loan / mortgage for bigger projects such as a loft extension (if possible).  I have some savings ready for projects but now trying to decide if I should split big room into 2 small rooms for the girls (although not as small as some rooms i have seen in new builds) or hope the loft conversion is possible and enough to fit my bedroom up there.  Builders and architects don't seem to want to answer my messages for a call back so far.  I realise they are busy but a call back if I've left a voice message is polite.

gozaimasu

Right there with you on the tradesperson pain. Been trying to get my driveway sorted, given out all sorts of personal details and nobody getting back to me. So now that's got me worried about Data Protection and wanting to get in touch and tell them to delete all my details and then complaining to the ICO etc etc...

My brain doesn't half get carried away sometimes with all these worries.

Emailed 4 plumbers about a job that needs doing, so the person who doesn't force me to communicate by telephone will be the one getting the money. Can't wait until all the jobs are over and done with and I never need to deal with another tradesperson ever again.

Sistergold

@slm6002, it’s always good when you take your time to decide which way forward. You can now go ahead and make the house work better for you and the children knowing that you are staying?. You already know the house and area so staying is not a bad thing. You will probably find this was for the best in the long run. Buying now seems to be extra stressful to say the least and house buying has always been stressful without the frenzy which seems to be going on at present. In my area not as many houses are coming onto the market at present and I don’t think if one wanted to buy there is a good/best variety coming up? 

@gozaimasu , oh tradesman most are just cowboys hey? Four so far and none getting back? At present apparently they are very busy as most work stopped due to covid? I know my not so good builder asked if he could come and finish the bits I complained about pre-covid and I just told him that as long as covid was there I don’t want anyone coming for any works to the house. I still had his balance. I have since paid him off despite the fact that the bits are not corrected as I just could not be bothered as he needed to do the staff to get his balance. I the since decided the money was not worth the hustles. 

Good luck @gozaimasu with getting the tradesmen and your approach to commission the ones with a paper trail the better as they can just vanish! Is there a local plumbing shop with their own plumbers maybe? Xxx

gozaimasu

 I ended up emailing 7 plumbers and 4 of them said "nope can't quote for this job" 2 of them said "not for 3 months" and the others didn't reply. Any tradesperson saying "nah can't quote for 3 months" clearly doesn't want the job but are too cowardly to state that directly. None of those tradespeople will ever get any money from me for future jobs. I suspect that suits them just fine because they'll have labelled me as a "problem customer" or whatever.

LadyWithAPlan

Hi I have finally delurked and also set up my own diary. Great to read everyone's adventures. So hello all us single ladies.

Just on the process of looking to finally get into a large mortgage and I am single.

I travelled a lot for work but covid meant I decided I needed to buy my bolthole finally so been saving and budgeting..
I am a Londoner and always lived centrally but i can see I will be needing to move a bit further out to see if I can get a second bedroom and outdoor space.

Thinking my solo mortgage will be £300 to £350k depends on my savings rate. Ouch. So set up my diary for accountability on my final push on house deposit. 

I have never had to do DIY so I think I may need to do some courses as well as the tradesmen thing worries me and power tools scare me. 

One good thing is my close friend  is an amazing carpenter, builder of cupboard and does beautiful work so at least I know who is fitting my wood floors at least. 

Sister gold where did you do your DIY courses please? 

Sistergold

Hello @LadyWithAPlan, it’s is wonderful news when another single lady manages to secure the roof over their head! Wonderful to hear from you! Tell us how you get on with finding a house and buying process! 

For DIY training I use The Good Life Centre and The Builder training Center, all in London. 

LadyWithAPlan

Sistergold said:

Hello @LadyWithAPlan, it’s is wonderful news when another single lady manages to secure the roof over their head! Wonderful to hear from you! Tell us how you get on with finding a house and buying process! 

For DIY training I use The Good Life Centre and The Builder training Center, all in London. 

Tx for the recommendations - I am now excitedly looking at the upholstery  and make a lamp courses rather than the drilling and electrics ... I am such a girl sometimes. However a day of basic DIY or drilling may have to be the first start.

I am looking cautiously on rightmove and even shared ownership . I have booked a ticket for the London Home Show in September to inspire me. Not actually gone looking at flats as yet as I may wait til after 21/22 tax year finishes but I do need to start getting ideas of the areas which are not too far out. I have always lived in central London (Soho, Camden, Covent Garden) and I will need years more saving to get into those. I am looking at Limehouse as I like to be near water either the Thames or the Canal.


I spent lots of time  looking at the pensions thread on here  - as a HR tax payer the temptation  is to keep investing in my SIPP (self employed so I need to..)  with the 40% incentive vs saving hard for the mortgage deposit. 
I was going to pause my SIPP completely this year but I may go for 10% of my gross at least in the SIPP as I like watching my pension go up and my tax at the end of the year go down. 

Queen_of_the_Hive

Hi @LadyWithAPlan, good luck on house hunting. I used to live Isle of Dogs and really liked it so Limehouse is a good shout. The Thames Path very close and the canal path great for cycle rides  and close to central too Would you consider south of the river? There are some great places to live and may make your budget stretch further. Sadly property has got very expensive in the 20 years I've lived in London. 

I'm a bit of a spreadsheets geek and have started to track my own pensions on the famous spreadsheet, good to know I'm not the only one who enjoys seeing the numbers go northwards

LadyWithAPlan

@Queen_of_the_Hive I have always lived super central so wanted to go further out on the river.
Pre covid I worked a lot of evenings in Central London so I like it being easy and cheap for me to get home. However is there somewhere more south you recommend?
I don't really know it. 

I will look at isle of dogs as well. I nearly bought in my mid twenties in Notting hill a 3 bed roof terrace flat but changed my mind... .. It is pointless looking at what I should have done though all I can do is work forward. 


Yes I love watching my pension and savings go up 😊