The 'scenic route' to mortgage freedom...

PiggyBankShaker

Pay day today. Had about £20 more than I was expecting but I don't know why because checking my payslip involves logging on to my work computer and I can't do that without seeing a fortnight's worth of emails at the same time. Anyway, it means that I've done the hokey-cokey and split £1,300 between two different savings accounts and the other £10.19 I used to make an OP on the mortgage.

DH spent a huge amount on food today and the last few remaining presents and we should all be done now until after Boxing Day at least.

We went to the house viewing on Monday. I was totally expecting to love it, but left feeling underwhelmed. It was okay, but it wasn't for us. The architect is on holiday until the 4th of Jan so there will be no movement there either. We just have to put it all out of our minds and relax as best we can. My Dad is coming over tomorrow and staying for a few days and I'm going to gently broach the subject of him moving in with us... We'll see how that goes down.

Merry Christmas one and all!

themadvix

Merry Christmas PBS! Hope you have a lovely one and the conversation with your dad goes well.

savingholmes

Good luck with that kind of decision and conversation - it sounds huge!

PiggyBankShaker

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

We had a lovely Christmas (the only downside I think is that I got a bit too drunk on Christmas night and had to be put to bed at about 9pm after Zooming loads of people and singing at them) 

The kids were happy with their presents, we ate loads of yummy food we played games on the Switch and some new board games too and everybody just generally chilled.

Yesterday DH and I did a look back at 2021 (achievements, disappointments etc) and we set some goals (not exactly resolutions) for 2022. My only real financial one is to keep the spending tracker going as it is really working well for us, and for me, just its existence makes me less likely to spend on frivolous things.

I FINALLY cashed out £50 on YouGov this morning, yay! although it will take a few days for the money to hit my account. As soon as it does I'm putting it straight onto the mortgage. 

DH got a lovely surprise over Christmas, his company sent him a £400 H0te1s.com voucher for being on call over the holidays, even though he only had to do a few hours work. It came just as we were daydreaming about booking another hol, so we took it as a sign and booked to go to Sofia in April. The flights came in at £125ish for 4 of us. That prompted me to have a think about DH's old BA Executive Club membership from when he had to fly a lot for work and he looked and it still active with something like 25000 Avios point just sitting there. I investigated getting a Air Miles reward credit card and did loads of maths on it but because of the fees and taxes and booking charges which you still have to pay none of the flights came in cheaper than simply booking with cheaper carriers, so instead he's applied for a Nectar card and has transferred the point to that and once you convert them to cash it will be about £222 to spend in either Sainsbury's or Argos, which will be a big help.

Whilst researching rewards Credit cards, we looked at cash back cards and DH is now thinking about getting the Lloyds card which with the intro offer would in theory pay about £110 in a year's time, for the equivalent same spending we did on our current CC. 

We're managing to eek out the store cupboards really well and haven't had to go food shopping since DH went on the 23rd. There's jacket potatoes for lunch today and pesto pasta with fresh veggies for tea and tomorrow were having a chilli. We'll clean and sort the food cupboards ahead of doing a food shop either tomorrow or Monday.

Final thing to report, I paid in the kids Christmas money yesterday as they'd received a cheque from their grandparents. 

Hope everyone is healthy and happy. xxx

savingholmes

Lots of positive achievements and things to look forward to there. Great start to the year.

PiggyBankShaker

Spent £47 on groceries today, first and only shopping we've done since 24th December, which I think makes a new record for NSD's of 8 in a row. We did quite a good stock up of essentials and we shouldn't need to buy anything else until Wednesday when we'll find out if DD and DS will need packed lunches for school or if they will be staying home and doing Zoom lessons instead. Personally I hope it's the second one as covid seems rife at the moment.

I made leek and potato soup for lunch and toasted some left over bread and then cooked double chilli sin carne for tea, the 2nd helping of which we'll have tomorrow night. We're going Go Karting with the kids in the morning (booked ages ago with a discount) If we're organised enough we'll take a packed lunch, if not we'll get some Greggs. I think DH is entitled to a free sausage roll with his work's perk scheme...

It's been so mild we haven't had the heating on for at least 48 hours, although we've lit the wood burner most evenings once the sun has gone down. I don't think we'll have just enough wood to see out the season but the question is do I buy in bulk for a good price and risk it not being dry enough or do I buy a few bags from H0me Barga1ns to see us through...?

Not at lot else to report on the money front, just got to keep on keeping on. Back to work on Tuesday and then its 11 days until pay day.

savingholmes

Glad things are going well for you. On the wood - I've no idea. I have a stack of wood down the side of my house - which we occasionally use in the fire pit but that's about it.

PiggyBankShaker

Loads have bills have gone out today (Energy, water rates, insurance x2, TV licence, phone bill, learning subscription) and the Joint Account is looking rather bare now.

However, the £50 from YouGov arrived and I transferred it straight to the mortgage.

I logged onto my work laptop and was delighted to see that I have NO MEETINGS TODAY!!!!!!! So that's a lovely new year's treat as I was experiencing a tiny bit of anxiety about going back to work today. I logged on to my payslip system to find out why my pay was higher than I was expecting in Dec and it just appears that I got a £33 a month Gross pay rise when I renewed my contract in October although I wasn't expecting it at all. After Tax, NI and Pension contributions, I get £21 Net. Still good, as every little helps, as the saying goes.

 I have a chiropractor appointment lunchtime and tonight DS is having since first in person drum lesson since the start of covid. Other than those two things, I'm aiming for a NSD.

Have a great one!

PiggyBankShaker

So, two small developments to report. The first is that NW has updated its estimated house valuation by £14,000 since I last checked 4 months ago. It now stands at £247,000 which gives us 54% LTV.

The second it that the builder who came to quote back in December has emailed and dropped his price by £10,000. Now on paper that should be great news, but it's actually given me pause, because why didn't he just quote us that in the first place? Was he trying to rip us off originally? It doesn't bode well for a trusting relationship going forward. Or maybe it's just me being paranoid. DH has emailed him and asked him to issue the new price as a full written estimate, so that it is more formal and we'll see what he says. Potentially we're edging closer to a feasible price but there's still a lot of bridges to cross because even with £10K knocked off it's still a huge amount of money and quite frankly it's been lovely over Christmas to imagine all the nice things we could do if we didn't have to repay a huge loan. Anyway...

I postponed the chiropractor appointment as I was basically too knackered to attend today. DD has cooked lovely dinner for us tonight, which smells delish and I'm really looking forward to eating it. I've booked the time off work for the two holidays we've organised and we've updated the spending tracker.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

PiggyBankShaker

Another day, another musing.

The builder has sent through his updated estimates as requested and to do everything we planned / dreamed about he's quoting a total of £121,000 all in, inc VAT. It's an insane amount of money and double what we were budgeting for. Even borrowing £25,000 at 0% (which we can do through our council) and then borrowing our kids savings also at 0% we're still short. Basically its a per square metre cost of £3,485 when we were thinking more like £2,500. The architect is adamant that this lower figure is realistic based on his designs but we have yet to find a builder that agrees with him.

So, the musings. We've decided that, realistically, there are three broad paths open to us right now.

Option 1
Overpay the current mortgage in earnest, which is currently limited to £15,000 OP per year and either squirrel the rest into savings, OR spend it on nice holidays once open-border travel is possible again. PROS of this option include; saving max interest on mortgage, making memories with the kids while they are still young, good work/life 'balance.' In theory if we pursued this we could be mortgage free in 8 years and still have really cool annual holidays (think African safari) CONS Lose money already spent on extension (£4000), things about the house still not optimised, for example the kitchen isn't great and the garden is a disaster zone.

Option 2 
Do the extension as planned. PROS of this option include, maximising current house value, giving the kids a awesome home (DD's bedroom will be completely transformed.) CONS include, limits ability to spend on other things, mainly holidays, ties us to the house because level of investment will be recouped only in the longer term, if ever.

Option 3
Sort of a bit of a option 1 but with the added element that we would be open to 'jumping ship' at any given time, getting a bigger mortgage and buying our 'dream' home (or as close to this as is possible) Our current house is great, but it is not the dream, and neither would it be the dream after the extension is built either. PROS; dream house, obviously CONS; Possibly doubling or tripling our current mortgage and severely limiting our ability to go on holiday, poor work/life balance, DH tied to his job.

At the moment, I'm sort of leaning towards option one, but I'm so conflicted.