Learning to walk before I run

beanielou

Nothing worse than being sleep deprived. 

edinburgher

£54.12 OPed, September was an expensive month! Month end review incoming

Edit: £3-4 made from Prolific so far today.

Month end finances were very heartening. Despite a lower than usual savings ratio (because of higher than average earnings), we managed a NW increase of nearly £9,000. Even more positive, £6,000 of this was strict NW (i.e. cash on hand/ISAs/money in DC pensions not tied to employment/SPA etc.)

As a wee public service announcement - check your Chase accounts if you have them - I've been offered a £100 voucher if I have my salary for November and December paid into it. Will require a wee bit of money shuffling to avoid account fees for my main current account, but easily worth it for a £100 bung

South_coast

Great work all round Ed (although obvs Prolific is the highlight 😅). I'm looking forward to doing my figures now, I took a peek at my S&S the other day and it had gone (good) wild!

edinburgher

A week of ups and downs. Been up since 05:56 with DD2 😅 DD1 also joined us for a hug at 03:27 as she'd had a nightmare 😴 

Also "up" as my colleague tells me new job possibility may well be advertised today 🤞🏻

So, this week we have switched our horrendous 6.15% mortgage to a far more reasonable 5-year fix at 4.22%. Decided that there was little point in using a broker this time as the 5-year market seems to be very "tight". We could have gone as low as 4.03% but the challenges of having a 2-part mortgage meant that B@rclays wanted nearly £2,000 in fees for this! 🤯

Yes, a broker could have moved us onto a single mortgage for both parts, just didn't feel worth the hassle at this stage in our lives. We're keeping the term the same, too.

Our payment will drop by £274/month from January, which is huge! Still, as I remember the trauma of the £500/mth jump from ultra low rates I feel odd, perhaps slightly bitter? I was pleased to see that we have nearly 9 months of the new payment in our overpayment account

Our other low was taking the car for MOT and Service yesterday. 2 new tyres and a broken coil spring later and we were £725 worse off 😱 Now I'm getting much better at budgeting and had set aside £300 for this garage visit, nowhere near enough! Am seriously considering leasing a car when we next face a £1,000+ car bill.

Life goes on, thank God for ☕ 

rtandon27

Ah coffee - best way to start the day! Sorry to hear your little beans have been up before it was sane.

What a relief to have that drop on your mortgage!  I'm already dreading mine when it comes time to renew as I'm still on that ultra-low interest rate secured at the end of pandemic.

Fingers crossed for your upcoming process!

beanielou

I think car leasing is great. Certainly not the same hassle. 

debtfreewannabe321

My friend swore by car leasing rather than owning one and having the cost of repairs. The mortgage rate sounds much better now. We stayed with the same mortgage company when we re-did ours as the fees outweighed the saving and T5B ended up pretty much matching what we could get elsewhere anyway.

QueenJess

Wow - 6.15%!  You must be relieved about that drop - the saving is awesome!  I'm expecting a tenner at best back a month when I remortgage soon.  I still can't get used to seeing the high interest being added after all those years at very low interest rates.

Boo for the car.  I am driving around fearful of my service and MoT this month as my car has developed a scary sounding steering/suspension creak that doesn't sound good.  DH assures me they always sounds worse than they are, but I'm terrified of the cost plus I need two new tyres..

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, excellent mortgage rate, well done you! We fixed at exactly the same rate last year, oddly enough, also for 5 years - which takes us to just past Mr C's state pension age (at which point we'll overpay as much as we can!)

KajiKita

That new mortgage rate will be a huge help 😊👏
How will you divvy up that spare £274 per month? 

Hope you all have a very, very quiet night tonight … 💤 

KK