Time to Face The Music

Sun_Addict

It’s thawed here too. It was a lot warmer than yesterday thankfully. 

alt80

I would have thought you’d have more snow than that @RelievedSheff. We woke up to it too, probably about the same as in your photo. Throwing it down with rain now, tbf I’m pleased about that rather than it freezing over.

Take advantage of the mortgage overpayments whilst you’re still on a low rate, could be an idea to overpay the difference between your current mortgage and one at say 5% - for the moment you’ll be making a decent overpayment and you’ll get used to making a higher payment for when the time comes. 

RelievedSheff

alt80 said:

I would have thought you’d have more snow than that @RelievedSheff. We woke up to it too, probably about the same as in your photo. Throwing it down with rain now, tbf I’m pleased about that rather than it freezing over.

Take advantage of the mortgage overpayments whilst you’re still on a low rate, could be an idea to overpay the difference between your current mortgage and one at say 5% - for the moment you’ll be making a decent overpayment and you’ll get used to making a higher payment for when the time comes. 

We never really get much snow at home. They usually get more down the road in Sheffield.

The plan is to overpay as much as possible on the mortgage to bring the term right down. We are at 9.5 years now. Hope to bring that down much further come remortgage time in 2026. Going to see if we can possibly get the term down to 5 years when we remortgage. Should be possible even with higher interest rates given that the van and the credit card will be paid off by then.

5 years won't seem so bad then. It will be over before we know it.

RelievedSheff

The start of another working week. At least the car wasn't frozen this morning.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be from stores. Breakfast was toast, we have both taken our packed lunches to work and dinner tonight is ham and mushroom pie with chips and vegetables using up some of the leftovers from yesterday's roast dinner.

Tonight's jobs are:

• walking the dog
• weekly shop

We managed to get most of the christmas presents delivered yesterday. Just got a couple more to go but they are very local and we can do them one night after work if needs be. The bulk have now gone. Not got as many Christmas cakes left to feed now either.

beanielou

Can’t believe how organised you are ~~ delivering Christmas presents. 

RelievedSheff

beanielou said:

Can’t believe how organised you are ~~ delivering Christmas presents. 

We do try and get everything bought, wrapped and delivered for the beginning of December so that we can have a steady and relaxing run up to the big day. We spread the cost out over the year as well which helps greatly with December budgeting.

EssexHebridean

Allowing that you still have a good run of time before you need to get a new mortgage deal, you might do better to feed your OP money into a regular saver account at a higher interest rate, then shuffle that to a fix after it's year's term, having it ready to pay off as soon as your current rate ends along with the interest it's earned in the meantime. Depending on your current mortgage rate, it could well be worth doing the sums on. This is what we are currently doing with the bulk of our savings at the moment - in fact I'm probably paying more to the mortgage than is truly sensible, allowing it's still possible to get savings rates well above our mortgage rate! 

I'm with you on the christmas budgeting too - we always save monthly for christmas stuff, not just the presents, but the food side of things too. 

RelievedSheff

We spread the cost of the Christmas food shop out as well. We buy stuff well in advance and freeze it. Had the turkey for months now. Its much cheaper to buy in summer 🤣🤣🤣

In theory we would be better off putting the money into savings but we like to see the mortgage balance dropping down by a big chunk each month. Keeps us focused on the end goal. Also stops us spending it of course 🙄

milann

Look at you delivering presents already. 👏👏👏 Most of mine are still in the shop….in fact I haven’t a clue what on earth to get most people this year. 😳😳
Im with you on liking to see the mortgage coming down…..that’s exactly what we did -and  once it was paid there was no temptation to spend it on any unexpected occurrence. It was paid many years before it should have been and felt SO good 😁

ladyholly

milann said:

Look at you delivering presents already. 👏👏👏 Most of mine are still in the shop….in fact I haven’t a clue what on earth to get most people this year. 😳😳
Im with you on liking to see the mortgage coming down…..that’s exactly what we did -and  once it was paid there was no temptation to spend it on any unexpected occurrence. It was paid many years before it should have been and felt SO good 😁

I am glad I am not the only one. I did get presents for a friend dog today but thats it.