The 'scenic route' to mortgage freedom...

PiggyBankShaker

ladysummerisle said:

You should be able to use the overpayment if needed to take payment holidays anyway

Not sure our mortgage T&Cs allow us to take payment holiday...? Will check! Thanks for the suggestion @ladysummerisle

PiggyBankShaker

@ladysummerisle - So I did check, and we can make 'underpayments' equal to the value of the overpayment, which is a equivalent of a payment holiday, right?! Anyway, its good news and it might change things for us going forward so I'll have to have another chat with OH and see what he thinks...

PiggyBankShaker

Morning! Accountability check in!

Was feeling really stressed yesterday. The slow, slow, progress (can it even be called progress?) on the extension is really starting to erode my mental wellbeing. I'm just feeling an elevated sense of 'should be doing something!' all the time and it is making it hard for me to switch off and relax. Patience had never been one of my skills and, even though I need to, I find it hard to cultivate it. So I have been going for some extra walks to try and rid myself of the excess energy and it has seemed to be working, but everyday there's still no progress and I have to start all over again. Also, I'm feeling the urge to 'shop' (plants for the garden and books mainly) and its taking emotional energy to stop myself from doing that, too. All in all, I'm just feeling a bit frustrated and overwhelmed at the moment.

Okay, moan over. On the positive side I have personally managed 3 NSDs so far this month, which is good. I have also walked more this month than I have for ages and that should pay off soon in terms of fitness and cardio. I cleaned the washing machine yesterday, which always makes me feel like a 'got-it-together' adult. OH has sold 2 of the items he listed on FB Marketplace but the buyers are yet to collect. Must go in the attic and see if we can find anymore more 'gold' (aka tat)

That's about all for now - just need to stay the path this month, keep logging our spends and resist the urge to 'shop'! Progress will happen in time. 

PiggyBankShaker

Afternoon! Accountability check in! I started this post earlier, got distracted and lost it, but the only thing that's happened since I wrote the original is I spent £6 on ice cream and transferred 47p to savings...! 

Other spends include £86 on medicine for our dog yesterday and £5 to a Big Issue seller.

I thought I'd maybe write a bit more about us for anyone who is reading and hasn't already fallen asleep...

There's me, OH, DD who's 13 this year and DS who is 10. We both work; DH full-time in a great job, me part-time in an okay paying job, which I mostly love.

We bought our current house in August 2019, for £201,000 with a mortgage of £152,000 over 25 years. Our monthly mortgage payments are £674. Ideally I want to pay the mortgage off in less than 10 years, basically before I turn 50. It's a perfect house for us at the moment, or at least it should be when we build the extension, the only thing that could make it better is a slightly bigger garden, and maybe a second bathroom, but you can't have everything! Oh, also, its a semi, and whilst I'd love a detached house (I'm really quite anti-social and our neighbours are a bit annoying) there's nothing we can do about that unless we move.

The plan is save, save, save, which is great obvs, but soooo boring!

PiggyBankShaker

Morning! Accountability check in!

We received a letter from Nationwide yesterday saying that they've reduced our monthly mortgage payment because we overpaid by more than £500. I was on the phone straightaway saying 'no thank you! Please keep the payments the same!' Then I logged onto the banking app and set up a standing order for an overpayment of £25 a month.

OH worked amazingly hard in the front garden yesterday and finished building the first raised bed. It's starting to take shape out there now instead of looking like a piece of waste ground. I took DD horseriding. So that was £20 for her lesson and £10 paid towards her summer camp.

OH is doing a top up shop in ASDA today but he's using some vouchers so its not coming out of our own money.

All in all I think the month is going okay so far. Oh, except I broke the glass in our oven door last night so we'll need to buy a new one asap. What a doofus.

killerpeaty

Hi piggy! Just read your thread. Impatience is hard, I think it's about getting to a balance that you're happy with but also that balance is ever changing!

How did you break the oven door?

PiggyBankShaker

killerpeaty said:

How did you break the oven door?

Thanks for dropping by @killerpeaty. I was being clumsy! The oven door was wide open because I was serving dinner and I knocked a knife off the counter straight onto the glass and it shattered! New door is ordered and it'll cost about £60 

A new week - the last one before the summer hols start and chaos descends! I've also made things slightly harder for myself by signing up to a six week intensive language course for four hours a day which I have to squeeze around work.

Nothing to report on the financial front, except a bit of spending/ OH spent £11 in ASDA on top of the vouchers, and I spent £30 in on plants, work gloves and sweets. There's been no more takers on FB marketplace for the stuff OH listed and only one person actually came to collect in the end and it was the cheapest item

Off to work now! See you later.

jimjames

PiggyBankShaker said:

Morning! Accountability check in!

We received a letter from Nationwide yesterday saying that they've reduced our monthly mortgage payment because we overpaid by more than £500. I was on the phone straightaway saying 'no thank you! Please keep the payments the same!' Then I logged onto the banking app and set up a standing order for an overpayment of £25 a month.

I had that a few times from Nationwide. I found that the settings showing on their online system don't always seem to match what they actually have stored so when we made overpayments it did the same as you and reduced future payments rather than the term. Eventually they updated the settings for all our mortgages (we had 5, now down to 4) and that seemed to do the trick, even though all were showing online previously as reducing term not payments.

PiggyBankShaker

Accountability check in!

Some 'big' bills have gone out today - Council Tax £162 and Energy £112. Still plodding along trying not to spend too much money. It's going okay, but I'm not being a ruthless as I could be. I bought some plants for the front garden, which came in at about £51, and we rented a film for the kids and had ice cream out. I guess we could save by really drilling down into our grocery shopping, there's a lot of crisps and sweet treats going into the cupboard! We'll see what we spend this month and make a target for August.

Upcoming spends include; new wheels for DS's roller skates; trainers for DS; gravel for a new garden path.

We also need to switch energy supplier because our fix comes to an end on Monday.

South_coast

August could be a challenging month to start slashing the grocery spending with the kids at home?