The Last Leg; 6 years later, debt free in 2021

Kakiste

Im liking eat out to help out as well. I was taken out for dinner for my birthday by my mum this week. 4 of us eating starters and mains came to £38 which I was hugely impressed with. 

greensalad

I really hate Moneybox for my LISA savings, though I love seeing the number go up. It has such a weird way of working. It'll only "collect" money I've saved once a week, and then it takes 5 days to actually leave my account, which means every payment I make doesn't show up in the account for almost 2 weeks after being put in. Just had the payment I made after payday get taken from my account and it'll take a few days to clear on Moneybox.

But I'm so excited about that bonus coming in. And the Moneybox bonus screen is really good, showing you how much to deposit before you hit the maximum (we'll save £4k in each of our Moneyboxes then move elsewhere, probably NS&I as that's highest rate savings at the moment).

greensalad

Put another £39.44 in the house savings, sold some shoes on Depop!

Now at £2,672.34 of house savings fund.

greensalad

And another £20 in the pot. Sold two bookcases from IKEA we used to have in the bedroom (granted, because we purchased an expensive solid oak unit after our chest of drawers collapsed into pieces and we wanted to get two at the same time so they match) but that spend was long accounted for when we purchased the unit back in May, so £20 goes in the house pot. 

greensalad

Another £106.43 in the house pot as I got paid for my cat sitting I've been doing for the last 2 weeks.

greensalad

Aaaaand undoing so much money saving with a bloody parking ticket that is entirely my fault. Argh.

Luckily my car maintenance pot on YNAB is looking very healthy. I'd set aside money for our service on 1st September already, but there's technically another payday between then and now so I will use the car pot money to pay the stupid parking fine and replenish it on payday at the end of the month.

Kakiste

Sucks about the parking ticket. I'm holding my breath at the moment as I overstayed at a carpark where you number plate is recorded by cameras last week. I'd paid for 3 hours and let after 3hrs 15m. Fingers crossed!

greensalad

Good old Resolver, helped me get to the bottom of an issue with EE!
We signed up for BT Sport for 3 months free as EE were offering it. But unfortunately I noticed I was charged. Contacted customer service who promised that the charge would be deducted from my following month's bill. Well it wasn't, and I was charged again for BT Sport. So far paid for 2 months of BT Sport that should've been free! I was concerned it was going to happen a third time so I put in a complain with Resolver.
Just got a response that they 'assure' me it won't be on my bill again and they've passed my bill to their accounts team to calculate the discount I'm owed, and they've also stuck an extra £30 credit on my account which is almost my whole contract fee for a month so that's good! Presuming one day I will actually get my money back haha.

greensalad

Team got back to me, refunding £25.98 that I've paid out, so up £55.98 after this whole debacle! Will make the next two months of bills nicely reduced.

greensalad

Making a few decisions about our forward planning for house buying recently, considering lot more news and announcements of recession.

Initially our plan was to save up £25k and use it to buy a house with the Barclays Springboard Mortgage, putting down 5%. The £25k included required stamp duty and fees associated with buying and moving. It now seems likely that product won't exist and it also means we have to involve my Dad a lot with house purchasing as he'd be doing the Springboard part. I don't have a great relationship with him but it seemed like a sensible way to do it.

Anyway, I have found out that my grandparents intend to gift my Mum £10k, which she wants to gift to us to help with getting a mortgage, which is amazing! My grandparents paid off the final part of my Mum and Auntie's mortgages a few years ago, so I think my Mum wants to help me out now which is fab. (I have no brothers or sisters and she's unmarried so family is really just me and her). 

We crunched the numbers on how much we're saving and realised that though we'd have enough for a 5% next Spring, we'd have enough for a 10% next Autumn. The main reason is that our saving will probably ramp up in the latter part of next year because we'll be done saving for a holiday we've booked (yes, we're idiots, we booked a holiday then decided to start savign for a house and then the holiday was moved to next year because of coronavirus, we can't get refunds on the parts that we'd booked because the USA wasn't due to be on travel ban when we were going to go, which is now is... but we'd already moved everything! It's a big drama but essentially we're still saving and going on it next summer fingers crossed). 

So we have decided to try and aim to have £42,500 saved, a full 10% deposit on a house that will be big enough we can grow into it, and my Mum will provide the additional fees for moving and gift us the stamp duty. We believe this will also skirt around some of the lenders no longer accepting gifts from family for deposits. As the gift will not be being used for a deposit but for associated costs. I don't even know if possibly my Mum can pay solicitors fees etc herself and not even need to give us the money? Maybe not but who knows. I think we will speak to a mortgage broker in the new year and find out once the buzz of current buying has died down. 

So this means upping my £25k signature target to £42,500. Quite scary but for the sake of 6 months we'd have enough to bypass my Dad and hopefully there will be some 90% mortgages around. It also gives me more time for my credit rating to repair as I have some missed payments from 2018. 

Phew, that was long!