Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

joedenise

Baileys_Babe said:

Would it be worth investigating making your own spray to feed Red's habit without spending excessively? My general cleaning spray bottle contains just water and washing up liquid.

I agree with this but I'd also add some white vinegar which is a great antiviral and antiacterial product so good for cleaning surfaces.

Bluegreen143

I actually had made my own washing up liquid/vinegar spray in the past. Only stopped cos my spray bottle broke (it was a glass one from the zero waste shop so annoyingly if it hadn’t closed I could have got a new spray too cheaply from there). Just hadn’t got round to getting a new one yet. Red will still insist on using antibac more than I’d like (and sugar soap, he goes through that stuff so quickly!) but from past experience he does use the homemade spray a bit too so worth doing, thanks for the reminder. We only buy Lidl anti bac so it’s not expensive but he uses far too much.

LittleGem

Hi @Bluegreen143 hope all is well

Baileys_Babe

Hi 👋 @Bluegreen143 I hope you are all keeping well.

missymoo81

Hey @Bluegreen143 I didn’t realise I’d missed so much of your diary. Just on page 28! Loving your journey, will try and catch up soonest x

Four_Seasons

Hi blue-green missing your updates hope you and your little family are well x

Bluegreen143

Hello diary friends!!

Sorry I’ve been so silent. In August I’ve been trialling a digital detox to try to really reduce my use of my phone! I think I forgot to actually say that here. 

It’s been going well, and I’m still YNABing so don’t worry, I’m mainly on track with the budget. 

But I’ve popped on because tbh I need money advice and to REALLY focus on the budget right now due to yet more car trouble 😡

Basically our car (bought just four months ago) is a lemon, we are going to need to get rid. It’s still driveable just now, but the automatic gearbox won’t last long and it’s too expensive a repair to bother with versus the cost of the car and the fact we’ve had the car in the garage more than it’s been out (ironically this gearbox thing is exactly the issue that killed our last car, too). It’s probably just as well we need to replace it as I’ve discovered that as an older diesel it’s not compliant with the low emission zone coming into effect in Glasgow in 2024 - Red thought it was, but he was wrong. 

I can scrape together just over £3,200 from various savings pots (not including our Help to Save accounts, but I won’t touch that as we won’t get the bonus if we do. Oh and not including Christmas as that would be silly). And apparently the website which buys all cars will give us £1,100. But we’re talking it over and initial research is showing that due to the huge increase in the price of used cars and given we need a family size car not a tiny one, £4k will probably only buy us a similar ancient car which may turn out to be another lemon. If we can stretch the budget to £5-7k we will get something newer (but not flashy or anything) that has a low enough mileage it’s got half a chance of lasting us a few years.

The issue is we don’t have that extra money and I always swore I’d not finance a car but it does seem the lower risk option to get something more reliable as I couldn’t bear to throw so much away on a second lemon this year ☹️ And my mum keeps telling me I’m unrealistic as most people do have to finance their cars. 

So if I need to borrow £1-3k to get a car, what’s the best/cheapest way to do so? We do have about £20k of available credit on our cards, because we don’t hold a balance on any of them. So I dunno if it’s best to pay on a credit card, pay off as much as we can straight away and then apply for a 0% balance transfer for the rest (which we’d pay off as soon as possible)? I wouldn’t anticipate any issue getting accepted for this as we both have really good credit ratings, no consumer debt and a fairly low mortgage compared to our salaries. 

Or is it better to apply for a personal loan for the car? How would you all do it? 

Our third option - we have £21k in an account which is extra mortgage borrowing to pay for our conservatory. As we don’t pay the second half til the build is complete, and it’s not even booked in yet, we could potentially borrow the extra from this pot and pay back into there, but then there’s the worry in case they are able to start building soon and we’ve not finished paying it back. We could probably pay back £500 a month easily, more if we cut saving for next year’s holiday and other household jobs. 

The other thing to consider is that emptying all the savings pots means they will all need paid back. We will need some money to finish the garden makeover we’ve been doing - it’s on a budget (we painted our paving slabs rather than replace and they look great!) but we do need some plants and stones etc to finish it off at some point. And we’ll need to buy furniture (as well as paint etc) for the conservatory when it is eventually built - we’re happy for this to be from a charity shop or IKEA, but it’ll cost SOMETHING. We also want to put in a wood burning stove but have accepted that this needs put off til next year now due to 2022 being The Year of Buying Cars. 

So sorry for the long ramble but anything thoughts are welcome. And could 2022 please stop sabotaging our savings efforts please?! Feels disheartening that we’d probably have our £5k emergency fund by now if the original car hadn’t died 😭

Four_Seasons

Hi, I am not the best on financial decisions but I think I would possibly borrow the money from your conservatory fund and pay back as quickly as possible, if by any chance you suddenly needed that money you could perhaps look at other options then i.e. loan or credit card, hope that makes some sort of sense.
Great to have you back posting have missed your updates x

Bluegreen143

Oh some extra thoughts I meant to add.

In an ideal world I’d have chosen to go car free for say 3-6 months to save up enough to buy a car in cash. I really do feel disappointed and disheartened as I swore I’d never get into consumer debt again.

However I can’t get to the office without a car - it takes about an hour and 15 minutes on public transport (versus 20 minutes to drive). Or is £25-30 EACH WAY in a taxi 😮 As I’m part time and have no alternative childcare for the school run, this means arriving around 10am and leaving before 2pm which isn’t acceptable to my managers (when I drive, I arrive before 9 and leave at 2.30 and make the hour of work I miss up in the early morning or early evening. Neither will they let us work from home every day. We also aren’t walkable to the school when I need to go there - in fact even walking to or from the school bus stop (almost an hour’s round trip on foot) eats into my scheduled work hours, so I usually try to walk most mornings but I drive in the afternoon so I can stay til the end of my working day. So much as my heart sees a car as a luxury that I shouldn’t consider financing, the reality is our life isn’t set up to allow us to go car-free. (in fairness to me, the work have moved the office out to an industrial park- it used to be an easy 30 min public transport journey!!). I feel like it sounds really entitled to say I “need” a car, but I can’t really see how I could get my working hours done without it. I have previously asked to drop a few hours at work so that everything isn’t such a squeeze, but they weren’t amenable. 

Friends have suggested sorting out my bike and getting a seat for Bambi for the school run but that doesn’t solve my commuting problem as it’s 10 miles each way and I’m not a confident enough cyclist, plus still think cycling would take far too long. 

QueenJess

It’s very annoying, but you do need a car and it isn’t a luxury purchase. I hate borrowing for anything and would rather save up like you, but I think you need to be realistic here. Plus this is hardly out of control debt. I know debt is misused all the time and we see on this forum the mess you can get into, but this is not the same situation at all. In some circumstances and used correctly, debt is a sensible option.

Now, you could take what you need from your conservatory fund, but how would you feel about that? For me, I start to get very nervous if I have nothing in reserve. If something were to happen as an emergency you have no buffer and that would keep me awake at night more than borrowing. I personally would borrow so I had enough in reserve to make sure I was comfortable, making sure I have budgeted so I can afford repayments and hope to pay it off earlier.

As for the vehicle of debt, I guess it depends on how long you expect to need to borrow for realistically and how much. If you are talking 1 year or less then you could apply for a 0% credit card (assuming they exist and you’d be accepted - I have not looked recently), as this could be the cheapest way to do it.  

Not sure who you are buying from (a company or individual), but if a company then they might have a finance deal that could work? When I bought a car a long time ago they had a 0% deal for a year and payments after that. Is that a possible other option to explore?

Don't beat yourself up about this. S&it happens and at least you aren’t in horrible debt and know how to budget. This is not your fault and using debt sensibly with your eyes open is not a failure, but is using it how it was originally meant to be used. With the price of cars at the moment, I doubt many people would be able to get one without debt. That would be a position of luxury indeed. Give yourself a break.