Lolu's Mortgage Free odyssey

savingholmes

Lots of exciting news there Lolu. Will watch with interest... 

powerspowers

Oooh exciting times Lolu x

killerpeaty

Hi Lolu, I have caught up and it sounds like you've had a bit of a whirlwind! Finances can be hard, but you're getting there and you should be pleased with yourself.

misslolu

Thanks guys, I have even more exciting news for you...i'm engaged! I said earlier that OH and I were talking about our future and how i'd like to start having kids in 2025. Well, he's listened and he proposed to me at home last week. It was such a lovely emotional evening. With this, it means finances and saving are going to go into overdrive.

We're looking at early to mid next year which gives us under a year to save. I obviously have all of my savings but i'd rather not use all of it just for the wedding and I know OH has just minimal savings after making major payments off his debt as well as buying the ring. He's done really well and has paid off almost £2k since the debt restructuring. Part of me though feels like he should switch focus to saving for the wedding and pay smaller payments to the debt. I know financially, it's not the best way, but obviously you can't necessarily pay for wedding things on a CC which would be the other alternative. Does it make sense to do it that way?

I've also spoken to OH about finances & moving in and what that means for us. It could mean that as a consequence of sharing finances, we naturally pay less to the debt, I adopt it as a joint debt and we treat it as something to pay off gradually rather than the huge rush at the moment. We'll talk about it more in the coming weeks.

Finance wise, mortgage has gone up due to interest & fees, which is annoying but I guess necessary. I'm obviously very wary of these rate rises but i've priced them in and am hoping rate will drop sometime towards the end of this year/beginning of next. With OH's finances, we won't struggle thankfully, it'll just be a bit annoying. Focus will go right back to mortgage once the wedding has been paid for.

Mortgage - 186,776.07 (annoyingly this has gone up a lot due to fees & interest)
Loan - 2,290
Student Loan - 8,912

Total Debt - 197,978
Non - Mortgage debt - 11,202

S&S LISA - 7,081
Premium Bonds - 7,450

Again, i'm now focussing more on the student loan since the interest rate is the same as the mortgage (base rate + 1%) but it's a much quicker win and will mean a salary increase (technically) once it's paid off. This will give much more flexibility in future I hope, though I definitely want to put the extra towards overpayments.

savingholmes

Congratulations on your engagement. You sound thrilled!

Well done too on targeting the student loan. It will be good to get that gone.

Jessy103

Congratulations on your engagement 🎉🍾

powerspowers

Congratulations Lolu!! 

LeighofMar

Congratulations. Looks like a lot of positive things are happening for you right now. 

misslolu

Thank you so much all! It's been a bit of a whirlwind these past few months so i'll update you on what's happened in the meantime.

Relationship
Fiancé has now moved in fully and we've started living together which is strangely kind of different from how it was before, even though he wasn't here so much. We decided to do a family introduction as my parents were in the UK for a bit so parents & extended families have met twice now and gotten acquainted with themselves. Everyone seems to get along nicely which is great. Both families have decided to have the wedding next year October and have agreed on a rough number of guests, so i'm currently looking for venues so we can set our date in stone and start planning properly.

Wedding
My mum has been super annoying with venues, initially I found a lovely scenic venue that was 20 mins outside London and she complained that it was too far out, and their terms too restrictive etc etc Now she's found a hall-type venue SHE likes that coincidentally also is outside London (and a lot harder to get to) and she's been hassling me to go see it. Meanwhile, I'm NOT going to compromise for her. If the venue is outside London, it has to be both cheap/reasonably priced AND scenic to balance out the inconvenience of getting there, bonus points if there's accommodation attached. If it's inside London i'll accept a less scenic venue & higher price but restrictions have to be minimal to balance out the higher price. It's still an ongoing discussion but I really hope it's sorted out by the end of the month.

Also, weddings are EXPENSIVE, I thought we could get away with £15k if we were frugal, but the parents want a larger wedding which is bringing the cost up to £30k. I'm going to have to put my foot down on the costs though. If they are not going to contribute, then they can't dictate or inflate the guests.

Housing
We've decided that we won't be moving until our first kid is born hopefully in 2025. In the meantime, we'll be getting the few final bits done here, with a view to keeping the house pretty and making it look good for a sale in the next 18 months or so. We'll need to keep deposit savings in mind & potentially start overpaying properly again.

Finances
So we've definitely had to spend on some things over the past few months, we've been on holiday together and separately and have started paying for things we will need for the wedding (as well as some hefty visa fees).  My parents also owe me some money back as they said they'd reimburse me for the second family outing we had. We're sharing finances totally now and so i'll be adding his educational debt to my balance. As a result, total debt has gone way up but i'm not super worried.

CC1 (Mine) - 1462.19
CC2 (Ours) - 4007.62
CC3 (His) - 4471
Medical Loan (Mine) - 1948.56
Student Loan - 8464.33
Mortgage - 186093.76

Total Non - Mortgage Debt - 20,354
Total Debt - 206,446

S&S LISA - 7423
Premium Bonds - 7450
Joint Savings - 2696.42

Assets - 17569

Ok so this is very crazy now it's all been totted up, i've never had this much debt before, so it's very eye opening to see. Though my parents do owe me about £2500 of that for various costs it's still quite a huge amount! Let me get some plans together for the last bit of the year and next year!

misslolu

Financial Plans for October - December 2023

Okay so these are my plans for the rest of the year and how i'm planning to chip away at the debt.

Future Plans

Car
Unfortunately my first plan is to get us a bit further into debt. OH & I can't drive (legally) and so we have no car. I'm doing lessons and have booked a test that will hopefully see me driving by the end of November. As soon as I pass, we're looking to buy a car. We're still contemplating the budget of the car because we have a differing ideas on manual v auto & small v medium sized car but our absolute ceiling is £5k.

Wedding
Like I said in my last post, weddings are super expensive. The joint CC is a 0% card mostly to help us fund wedding & visa costs. Hopefully savings + family help will mean we don't overspend, i've put a hard limit of £25k for us.

Honeymoon
Honestly who knows at this point, we've not booked anything but it's looking at least like £6-7k.

General House/Personal Spending
We will be doing some small improvements to the house, nothing too exciting and nothing too strenous either. I'm envisaging just about £1k for that. However, when it comes to personal spending, I definitely feel it's time to revamp our wardrobes and become a lot more put together in general. Purchasing new quality items will help with that, all to be bought in the sales of course. I've already bookmarked a few items that would be nice to buy. I'm going to be realistic and give us £1.5k for both.

So that's £38.5k extra debt i'm expecting to get into in the next year. *gasp* What are we doing????

And now the plans to pay it all off.

First off i'm expecting my parents to pay back the £2500. Next off, we will also be saving a minimum of £500 a month each, and will put any extra cash like bonuses in there too. I'm paying £200 a month for my student loan & OH is paying £300 to his. I'm also paying £200+ a month to my CC & medical loan. So altogether we're putting £1700 a month towards debt (plus the money into the mortgage)/our future which I think is a decent amount. Over the course of a year that's at least £30k+.

I'll be trying to monitor the situation on a monthly basis but hopefully we'll be headed in the right direction before long.