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

enthusiasticsaver

Congrats on the CC being gone and your partners student loan.  Exciting news on the house front.  Looking for something which has potential to extend  sounds sensible. 

You are probably sensible about the US holiday.  We are supposed to go to Canada in September but not  sure if we will postpone again, already postponed from September 2020. 

Sarahwithlove

greensalad said:

Sarahwithlove said:

Sounds like you might just have to take the hit then and withdraw from LISA whilst you can fee free and get the property you want. Do any of the lower end ones offer the possibility of expanding it to make it into the property you wanted? Lots of pros and cons for both really. 

Yes that's what we were looking at, opportunity to extend. There were quite a few that had really tiny bedrooms that we figured could be converted into stairs for a loft conversion to get a better sized room. I'm always looking at each property that comes up on the Zoopla alert and looking at its potential. I guess I just sometimes think what's the point in buying something cheaper than we can afford, going through the whole rigmarole of extension, the costs associated (saving up for that too), when we could just buy a property better suited from the start.

The conversion potential is sort if my future-proofing. So looking at something that's OK now but would benefit from an addition in, say, 5-10 years time.

I guess the question is do you want that room from the start or just somewhere with the potential for it?
The plus side to doing it yourself is you get it how you want it rather than how someone else has done it. 
Like I said balancing act as to what is best for you. I can understand wanting it already done though. 

greensalad

I've submitted off a form to an all-of-market mortgage broker based on their "springboard mortgage" specialist page, so let's see if we get a response. Hoping that even though we'd be using a broker for a specific product they might be able to help guide us a bit more.

Sarahwithlove

greensalad said:

I've submitted off a form to an all-of-market mortgage broker based on their "springboard mortgage" specialist page, so let's see if we get a response. Hoping that even though we'd be using a broker for a specific product they might be able to help guide us a bit more.

I think it's a good idea to use a broker when using a specialist mortgage tbh as they can tell you all the pros and cons of it. 

greensalad

Got car hire money refunded, upped our house savings pot. Very close to £12k now! Of course if we do pull out of LISAs we'll lose £2k but still nice to see it going up.

greensalad

Last hotel refund came through, £115 shuffled into house pot. We're now over £12k!

Meal plan done for the week, Ocado arriving on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday: Korean Spicy Ketchup Tofu
Thursday: Lemon sole goujons and chips
Friday: Halloumi and pepper bake
Saturday: Nachos with vivera mince
Sunday: Pie with roasties
Monday: Tortellini in tomato sauce
Tuesday: Mushroom, pak choi and egg rice bowl

Total weekly shop came to £91.33, quite high but we stocked up on some expensive bits that were on offer. 4 packs of Vivera mince as we had a problem getting hold of it for a while, and it's our favourite. Also 4 pies rather than just 2 because they were on offer. Plus a few cleaning bits and bobs. Overall within budget technically but would like to reduce so we have a little surplus for any extras that crop up. This has been a 5 Wednesday pay cycle (we get our food deliveries on Wednesdays) so we've stretched it quite a bit what with my birthday meal yesterday which was not cheap!

Kakiste

What did you have for your birthday meal? Also happy birthday!

greensalad

Kakiste said:

What did you have for your birthday meal? Also happy birthday!

Starter was stracciatella with a balsamic rocket salad. Main was pan-seared scallops with a lemon and caper sauce and potato rösti. Then a small cheese course with honey and blue cheese. Dessert was meant to be crème brûlée but it was out first attempt and they went quite wrong so luckily we had back-up birthday cake (lemon victoria sponge). It was soooo delicious! And in the morning my friends sent me a meal kit for "Breakfast in Bread" which was a filled sourdough with smoked salmon, crème fraîche and an egg yolk. We cooked it together over video and ate it together, it was amazing!

Kakiste

That sounds lush.

greensalad

It so was!

Currently waiting on m BF's student loan to update on the website. We believe he'll have overpaid this month and we should be able to get about £150 back from SLC (wonder how long that'll take! quick to take it off you but slow to return it!) so that'll be another mid-month boost. 

Other than that just trying to stick to budget at the mo. We had a takeaway last night, which was budgeted for so I don't feel as guilty. Still in lockdown and little chance of spending money on anything. Ordered a meal kit for another video brunch with friends in a few weeks but that came out of my own pocket money. 

Also we're doing a 'credit card detox'. I noticed our budget was getting stilted because we were both using a shared CC for all payments and then moving money across to a pot so we had money to pay it off. We did it for most things but there was always a little bit of slippage e.g when it got tight at the end of the month we'd just say "we can put this on CC and it'll come off next month's budget". It was equalling to about £100 - £200 per month. So I put us on detox and we're not spending on the CC at all. I also want to get the card down to £0 because we seem to be out of sync on YNAB with it so good to start afresh.

I think when we go back to using it (the points are good) I'll specify instead of pushing all spends through it we only use it for shared purchases e.g grocery bills, car repair, petrol, stuff for the house.