Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

badmemory

I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that you aren't starving at the end of the month.

KajiKita

Hello! 👋😊

KK

Four_Seasons

Hi, hope all is well with you, missing your posts x

Baileys_Babe

It would be lovely to hear how you are getting on. I hope life is being kind to you and your family.

KajiKita

Sending good wishes 🌞

KK

angela110660

Yes hope all well in your world - long time no posts

Bluegreen143

Hello all! It was lovely to come back to so many posts!

Sorry I was away so long. Partly as I took a couple of months off doing the finances, I felt I didn’t have much to post. And partly because I was aiming to significantly reduce my phone use over the summer so cutting out this forum seemed a good way to do it.

BUT new season and a good time to get a bit more focused on our finances I think!

So what have we been up to?

- We had a great time over most of the summer, despite the not-great weather. Including a lovely week away in the Highlands in July with another family. I’ve been out wild swimming a few times (including this evening) and been really enjoying it! I took Monkey to a taster kayaking session last weekend, just us two, and it was fabulous. He’s very outdoorsy and was absolutely loving it! 

- Sadly we had a loss in Red’s family (his brother, who wasn’t yet 50). It’s been very sad but Red is doing well and doing a lot to support his sister in law, his mum and his (young adult) nephew. We did consequently have a few related reasons to dip into the emergency fund e.g. funeral outfits, putting a notice in the newspaper etc.

- Red trialled out sole control of the finances for a couple of months. He did a decent job, but then it got all muddled, especially when his brother passed away. I restarted YNAB but it lead to a argument that turned into a good discussion. Red feels YNAB is over-complicated, expensive and that it disempowers him to have a seat at the table with money because he doesn’t use it so doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. He feels that it causes me to focus on controlling every little expense and so disrupts marital harmony. 

So we are trying out a more simple, automated system just using pots in Monzo. I have a few automated transfers set up to coincide with each of our paydays - X amount to the Bills pot, Y amount to emergency savings, set amounts too to Holidays, Gifts and I’ve also made a (currently unfunded) pot for Big House Projects. We also have an amount kept in our personal accounts for our own spending. 

We are down to around £3k in the emergency pot, partly due to a few expenses and partly as we hadn’t adequately funded Christmas and holidays etc, so I brought those up to date. 

I’ve recently read Ramit Sethi’s book I Will Teach You to be Rich. I don’t necessarily agree totally with his approach but I love his concept of fleshing out in detail what your “rich life” looks like. I came up with the following four pillars:

1. Financial stability - an adequate emergency fund and investing towards our future 

2. Family togetherness - continuing to work part time in the primary school years, taking time together as a family in the holidays, having meals and projects and play and park visits together. Also important to prioritise marital togetherness, not just our relationship with the kids.

3. Adventure and experiences - increasing our holidays, including the occasional weekend away as a couple. Putting money aside for new experiences (like our kayaking session last week). Having monthly dates outside of the house. 

4. Good food - continuing to budget a bit more for groceries so we can eat lots of fresh, tasty, healthy, unprocessed food. 

The challenge is that really you need to cut costs everywhere else and that’s the trickier bit! But the reality is that everything can’t be a priority.

Will pop back on tomorrow with more of an update. My payday is coming up this week so I’ll share how we budget it out. 

Bluegreen143

Oh I meant to add too. With everything that’s happened in Red’s family, we’ve seen first hand the issues it can cause not having a will or proper insurance set up if you aren’t married. So please, everyone, do sort this out if this applies to you!

We are married, however we still did get a solicitor to update our wills in August, mainly as we wanted to change the suggested guardian for our kids and our back up executor (if we both die), and increased our life insurance. 

We previously only had insurance equal to our mortgage (but hadn’t updated it when we borrowed more for our conservatory!). I get really great death in service benefits, 7x salary, but Red doesn’t as much. So basically if I died, he’d be fine, but if he died I wouldn’t… and that’s silly, as he’s the main breadwinner. So we increased our policy to the new mortgage amount and took out an extra policy covering Red to the amount my death in service offers. Not a pleasant subject but it’s such peace of mind now that we have everything sorted out. 

KajiKita

Welcome back 😊 Glad to hear you had such a lovely summer. 

Sorry to hear about Red’s brother - that must have been quite a shock for the whole family. 

Interesting about Red’s response to YNAB. Good response to it - I will be interested to see what other adaptations you make over the coming months as Mr KK rather ‘abdicates responsibility’ onto me about monies, budgeting etc and it does get a bit tiresome for me,to always being the one to constantly say ‘no, we can’t afford ….’ 

I totally hear you about budget priorities. I would much rather eat well, good quality food than go out a lot. I hadn’t realised but that is what we prioritise. 

We need to update our wills - they relate to our previous house and there is a bequest in there to someone i no longer speak to. The blocker has been Mr KK not knowing how to sort out his bequests but I think I have finally found a form of words that will work for him - just need him to actually nominate the specific charities now! Thanks for the nudge 😊

KK

Cheery_Daff

Welcome back 😊 So sorry to hear about Red's brother, how very sad 😕 Thanks for the reminder about wills etc though. I've just done my POA which has given me good peace of mind, and, like you, have decent death in service benefits, and I also have insurance to pay off the mortgage (I'm the main breadwinner). Mr Cheery doesn't have any of those things... although we've got quite an age difference so it's likely I'd keep working if he went anyway & pay off the mortgage myself anyway (or move, and not have one). 

We don't have wills though. Less important as we also don't have kids, but still on the list to sort out, so thank you for the nudge.

Glad you've had some good talks about finances, and some good trips out over the summer x