360 Months to go?

FtbDreaming

I don’t even have a window cleaner 🤦🏼‍♀️ I kept asking him but when we had the caravan on the front he couldn’t get access and now I’ve forgot about it lol! 

A cleaner is my dream. I think if you can afford it then just go for a regular weekly or fortnightly clean of the areas you don’t do yourself e.g tiles, floors and hard to reach places. There’s no point paying off your mortgage and not keeping the house nice! X

Grabs39

We've finally just found a decent window cleaner - he's going to come every 4 weeks.  And he takes bank transfer so you don't get that awkward moment when they knock on the door for cash and you don't have any because... well it's 2021.  Has all the proper kit in his van, rather than a dirty bucket of water with some fairy liquid like the old one!

Anyhoo, the cleaner came and did three hours on the bathroom, kitchen and loo and they're much better.  She's scrubbed all the tiles, kickboards, doors etc so things that probably don't get done often (ever!).  Unfortunately she was good but she's not taking regular clients on!

So I've found another cleaner who's coming in a couple of weeks to do a quicker clean of the bathroom/kitchen/loo and then any dusting for two hours.  Hopefully she's good too.

Grabs39

Not really much to add.  We've had some more work done on the house - new banister/railing and handrail on the landing as the old one was loose and the spindles were 8 inches apart which isn't up to modern regs so it was easier just to replace the lot with a new oak one.  However as the last one was there for over 50 years hopefully it's something that shouldn't need replacing again. 

Also eventually had the stairs and landing re-decorated after a very long wait and some cancelations - it's so hard to get tradesmen in now, often a wait of months.

All that added cost, but it does mean that we have now re-done every room upstairs in just over a year.

We're now at £675/£9000 with 43 months to go, though we have another few hundred to go off that that's sitting in the bank until next year, just in case anything unexpected happens so not as far behind target as that seems.  Everything is rocketing in cost this year so we're trying to stay flexible, though I know inflation means I really shouldn't sit on cash at the moment - it's a tough balance.

savingholmes

You have got a lot done in a year. It's good to keep some money in an emergency fund. It is difficult sometimes working out what to repay versus keep as easy access savings.

I have a cleaner and plan to keep her as long as possible. It frees me up to do higher paid work... and besides it would never get done if it was just down to me. 

Grabs39

Thanks, yes we have a seperate emergency fund which would just about keep us afloat with no income for six months, but I try not to take that into account when looking at anything else.

I've paid off another £325 so we're up to £1000 since I started this thread just over a year ago.  We have a bit more that I think we'll just sit on until the new year so that Christmas is out of the way.  That said we've both done all our Christmas shopping, and paid for most of the Christmas food (we only spent £60 but the deposit was £45) so hopefully not much more to fork out now!

powerspowers

Well done on your progress Grabs! You’ve achieved a lot in the house this year

savingholmes

Great that you have a healthy EF. It makes such a difference to peace of mind.

Grabs39

Nice little bit of Amazon voucher earning today.  Got £20 for updating my preferred card, then £40 for applying for the amazon Mastercard.  Spent it on AmazonFresh to get another £10 as it was my first order.  Got £65 of groceries for free!  Admittedly it's all overpriced branded stuff so it's probably only saved me £40 over what I'd spend on the same stuff in Aldi, but seemed better than using it on junk I don't need.

savingholmes

Gotta love free money

Grabs39

Morning all,

Been a frustrating couple of months as Arwen gave us some leaky windows (£1900 bill) and a couple of roof tiles off (thankfully only £60 to repair but stressful getting someone to do the job due to everyone in the region needing a roofer at the same time!)

Then at Christmas a car tyre went (£170 for a pair) and then the heater matrix went last week (£550).  

Despite that I’ve managed to send £400 to the building society this morning, so at least that’s something.

Ive just changed jobs too.  Roughly the same net pay, but much shorter hours so a better life balance, and it’s public sector so the pension is amazingly generous.  My pension contributions have dropped considerably too so I’ve started to put £25 a month in a LISA - it’s only a little bit but I plan to increase that by £5 every year, so next year I’ll put in £30 a month and so on.  Hopefully that will give us a bit of holiday/car/hobby money when we eventually retire (fingers crossed when we’re 60 so just over 30 years time).

I also have a loan which is now under £1000 so just a few months left there and we’ll be debt free (except the mortgage).

So not all bad news!


Happy new year!

£1400/9000