The 'scenic route' to mortgage freedom...

PiggyBankShaker

It's been a while so it feel like I have loads to catch up on. The biggest thing is holiday spending I suppose. We spent a total of £1,973 for 9 nights, that includes, flights, parking, hotels, food and activities. It breaks down as £493 per person. For this we ate out everyday lunch and dinner and dessert, played 10 escape rooms, went to the circus, the cinema, took the kids to a climbing/trampoline park, went to the swimming pool, visited an open air museum. Feels like really good value.

Came home, straight back into work. Caught up with friends, gave one of them £200 as a gift as they are really struggle with money and the cost of living crisis etc.

The builder emailed and said - in not so many words - that he's too busy to take on our job. It feels like to end of the road for the extension. I think its a sign from the universe that this isn't the right path for us.

DH and I have marriage counselling tomorrow. Car has its MOT on Wednesday. DH and DD have chiropractor on Thursday. DD has a sleepover on Friday and Car tax is due Sunday. Next week is looking a little quieter.

Hope everyone is staying well. 

themadvix

Can't remember where you said you were going for your holiday, but that sounds like excellent value for money! It sounds like you had a great time too

savingholmes

Glad you had a great time away. Hope the counselling goes well. 

Sorry your extension plans are scuppered but at least you know now and can plan accordingly.

PiggyBankShaker

Thanks for dropping by @themadvix and @savingholmes - Holiday was to Bulgaria, Sofia, not a resort. Counselling session went well but it raked up quite a bit of old stuff, which we thought we had processed but clearly not. I might post about it in more detail but not today as I'm still emotionally drained from it.

On the money front - DH had a CC refund of £320ish from flights that were cancelled 2 years ago due to covid.

I've had my payslip from job 1 and my pay will be £6 less because of NI increase - no idea if we will get a payrise at some point, the negations with the unions usually take a couple of months. We did have a pay freeze last year and hopefully that won't be the case again. It's quite demoralising to see your take home pay go down at the same time everything else is going up.

Pay day is Friday and we have quite a large CC bill from the holiday, so not sure how much we will be able to save or OP the mortgage.

And in very non-MSE news, I have bought a new (refurbed) mobile. I have a 7 year-old handset and the battery was appalling on holiday ( a charge wasn't lasting 3 hours) I take loads of photos so I bought a decent one for £629 and got £16 cashback. I will take it out of the £1500 book money I have received.

savingholmes

How lovely to have an advance on your book or was that royalties.

On counselling - it's better to have it out in the open rather than festering inside. Things have built up usually over years and they won't go away immediately. 

PiggyBankShaker

So far so nice as far as our BH weekend is concerned. We've done some gardening - DH finished building a raised bed and transferred topsoil into it from different part of the garden. We bought two olive trees and a few more perennials and a couple of bedding plants and planted those out and the front garden really looks like its taking shape as a result. We still need to do something about a path and our driveway but the garden is already 100% better compared to what we inherited when we moved in almost three years ago.

I got paid on Friday, but there was a delay with DH's pay and he won't receive it until Tuesday for some reason. We have enough to cover bills etc, but it is annoying for cash flow. We also had the £150 cost of living money from out council, so that help ease things along. We might also be getting another £50 cost of living payment as we have school age children (I think its a local thing) but I'm not sure I read the info on the council website correctly so we'll see.

I will be getting a a payrise in job 1 (yay!) something like 6.5% if the unions agree, but I don't know what that does to my take home pay so I'll have to wait and see on that front as well. Still, any increase will be very welcome.

This week is looking slightly quieter. Child benefit is due on Tuesday. I have a work thing in a neighbouring town on Thursday and a small social event on Sunday. Other than those, I'll be trying to take it a bit easy and recharge my batteries as I've been overdoing it a bit lately and I can feel my general stress levels increasing.

Hope everyone is staying safe.

savingholmes

Great news on the cost of living rise. Glad you are taking it easier too 

PiggyBankShaker

Been a fairly quiet week for us by recent standards. We've gone to work, ferried kids to their clubs and generally pottered in the house. Despite that we seem to have raced through our cash and are down to just £35 in the joint account. DH has £1270 and I get paid again (2nd job) at the end of the week, so its not all that bad.

The gas board are currently digging holes and trenches in five different locations in our front and back garden, as part of replacing the gas mains. Its a mess, but its fine really. They're not touching anything we've done since we've been here, its all places we still need to do, so that a small mercy in itself.

We are now 100% sure that the extension is dead. We had a big heart to heart and compared housing costs and all manner of things and decided in the end its just not right for us. To that end, we're now trying to find someone to come and fit the new kitchen in situ and God why can't it be easier? I'm trying not to be daunted or overwhelmed but it does feel like pushing water uphill. Between us DH and I have contacted at least 10 fitters, and in almost a fortnight of enquiries haven't been able to get a single one to come out to the house and quote us.

Forgot to report some good news! The car passed the MOT with no work or advisories!  

Right that's all for now I think.

PiggyBankShaker

Last night before bed I reread my diary from the start. Two things jumped out at me;

1. We've invested a tremendous amount of energy into the extension over the past 11 months (and before the diary too) We got to the 'it's dead' stage in January and gave the architect one last chance and he still let us down. If nothing else the exercise has really reinforced for me that the extension dream is well and truly over and we are right to move on now.

2. It's a reoccurring theme that I come payday I say "We can't put as much into savings this month as we have a big credit card bill to pay." This has to stop. We've been tracking every single spend for 11 months so we have an excellent idea where our money goes each month. We have massively cut back in some areas, for example, I'm not buying hundreds of pounds worth of book every year, I'm using the library more. I'm not buying hundreds of pounds worth of board games every year, we're playing the ones we already own. I don't go to the hairdresser, I hardly ever buy clothes, I think we've been to the cinema once over the last year, we don't have expensive streaming packages, we don't eat red meat, we buy value brands, and yet something is going amiss with our budgeting. We needs to dig in and have an honest conversation about what is holding us back.

There are also some positives over the last 11 months.

1. We've reduced our mortgage balance by £20,000 - that's huge! Admittedly £7,000 is money we borrowed from DS (he is 11 he won't need it for a few years) and have a plan to pay back, but the reduction in daily interest means every payment is more off the capital.

2. With house price rises our LTV is now 49% according to our lender, and my target was to get it below 40% by the end of our fix in Feb 2024. This feels totally doable now.

3. Between DH's payrise and my new 2nd job our income has gone up by approx £900 a month - we should be able to save this, or pay it onto the mortgage, again, we should work out why this isn't happening.

That's all for now. I'm going to make en effort to get back to using 'to do' lists on the diary for better accountability and DH and I are going to review our spreadsheets. 

• Review spending spreadsheet with DH to see where the 'slip' is happening

PiggyBankShaker

Morning Moneysavers,

Just popping in to keep my head in a frugal space. In bed currently with chest infection (I've been ill for a full 8 days now) but need to get up and moving soon, as I'm still working and doing life stuff.

Last night I cooked a nice homemade dinner; frittata, aubergine couscous with fresh lime and coriander dressing, and a glazed pear, walnut, Greek cheese and balsamic vinegar salad. Dessert was avocado chocolate mousse, chocolate brownie and the juice from the glazed pear drizzled over the top. DD made the brownies in cooking class in school and they were lush. Everything was vegan. The best thing about this meal is that a lot of the ingredients (potatoes, limes, coriander, aubergine, pears, avocado) were from a £1.50 Lidl box, the rest was store cupboard. The only things we needed to buy was the walnuts, Greek cheese, garlic and bag of salad leaves. The garlic and walnuts will last us a while.

There is enough couscous and salad for me and DH for lunch and we're having YS vegan sausages for tea, not sure what with yet but DH Is probably cooking so I don't need to worry.

We had parents evening for DS last night and he is doing absolutely fab.

DS had his drum lesson and then we watched Eurovision. Great fun, although only four of our favourites got through to the final, and there was some proper dross in there.

It's raining here today so the garden is happy. Hopefully we don't have too much washing to do, we've been really good at line drying instead of tumbling since the weather turned better. 

Oh one last thing, put a mileage claim into work yesterday so that £27 due as some point.

Stay safe money savers.