Over the Rainbow and Quest for a Unicorn

castlelough

Time for a shiny new diary!

It's been so long since my last post in my old diary that it appears to have been closed! 

Link to old diary here! 
  https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4590301/over-the-rainbow-and-happy-ever-after

I haven't posted in 4.5 years! It is so inspiring to come back on MSE and see that people and diaries I had been following then are now debt-free and mortgage-free! 

Setting out on the journey again now with new courage!

Hope you will pop in to help keep me on the straight and narrow!

castlelough

Looking at my signature, my level of personal debt is currently very similar to what it was 4.5 years ago. I am ashamed to say that my overall attitude to debt has not changed much.

We also reduced our mortgage overpayments so I have no idea where we were at with that. I do know that we have overpaid our original mortgage by €10,000 which is one eight. It's about the only thing we have done right financially.

In our personal circumstances, I am currently taking parental leave after having spent the last year jobsharing - so finances are quite limited for me, but this is set to change again in November. 

While I have buried my head in the sand a little bit financially, I am pleased to say that my husband has improved so much and it is he who has inspired me to get back on track.

While I am currently unpaid it is he who is making all of my/our loan repayments, paying all of our combined bills and living expenses and completely as I have absolutely no savings of my own. I am proud of him for coming so far, but I also wonder how I became so complacent in my own finances or lack thereof? 

Time for change! And there will be plenty of them ahead!
Our fourth baby will be due in February, so we have a busy little household to manage here.

I'm looking forward to having my own income again from November and tackling my debt. My credit card is the debt I truly want to eliminate and when I have done this I intend to never have another one. 

Between now and November I intend to be more economical and work to a careful budget in our household management and living expenses. I also hope to look at our mortgage and at making some positive adjustments to overpay a little more and to investigate our options for when we emerge from our fixed rate in six months time 🤞.

castlelough

My mobile phone has been out of contract for months and I finally picked up the phone to enquire about changing plan. I've waived my "upgrade" and have moved onto a plan that gives me as much, if not more, than my old plan.

The best bit is a reduction in plan from €40 per month to €20. That's a great saving! So I am on this new contract for the next 12 months and I can consider my options again then. I'm really pleased! 

Now, to look at my other bills to see if anything else could be improved upon! 

castlelough

Just thinking through my current debts. 

While my credit card is the one that I most want to tackle, the car loan is more urgent.

With our family due to expand to six in February we need to replace the current car with a 7-seater. That can't be done until the current car loan has been cleared. 

In honesty, we'll be fine if we don't have a 7-seater before the baby arrives. I don't imagine we will be going too far in the first few months and if we all need to go somewhere we can take two vehicles. I have seen lots of people put a rear facing newborn seat in the front passenger seat with the airbag turned off, so I could fit all four children in my current car if we need to go somewhere without my husband. I have three seats across the back at the moment!

It's possible we could clear the car loan by February, but if not, it won't take much longer.

I'm a bit sad to have to get another car loan but I made no provision for replacing the current car, no plan, no savings pot.... and that is an insight into the way I have been managing my money. Always borrowing and paying back, rarely ever saving for things. A car loan has always just been fairly standard for me for me for the last 21 years!!!! 

Definitely a pattern I need to change for the future.
For now I will focus on making an overpayment plan for the car loan. 

I suppose the only silver lining is that my car is only seven years old and will be worth something in terms of resale. So hopefully I can yield there to put off the new car loan or the credit card...

castlelough

Another good day in my renewed debt free journey. 

I'm embarassed to say that we haven't shopped around for best quotes on our home insurance in at least five years. They usually send out the renewal quote and we accept it and keep on rolling.

It is up for renewal in a fortnight so today I rang our provider to see if they could better that quote and the new quote came in at €315 less than they had offered us. I'm astonished and delighted and cross with myself for not doing it sooner. It's a lesson to me!
We usually pay this monthly (interest free) and combine it with our monthly mortgage payment, both lodging enough to cover mortgage and insurance each month. The reduction is €26pm but we are going to keep our lodgement the same and overpay the mortgage by €26 per month - so financially, nothing will change as a result of our lower premium but we will be knocking around 2 years off our mortgage term and every little helps! 🙌🙌🙌

castlelough

We have been on a fixed rate mortgage for almost five years now and we are due to come out of that in March, which is exciting as we are currently paying 3.3% and lower rates seem to be available. We had been paying 4.3% interest before fixing, so it was a good deal at the time. When we fixed we kept our repayments the same to overpay our mortgage and we will do the same again in March. 

Even though I know I need to tackle my personal debt first and my attitude to it, I can't help but also want to become mortgage free.

We have a very low mortgage (loan to value) taken out over 30 years (because, at the time, the bank insisted on us taking the mortgage out over 30 years) and I know that overpaying in the early years makes a big difference, moreso than overpaying towards the end. If we really tried we could pay our mortgage off in five or six years, instead of the 19 years that remain on the term! 

I'm trying to keep this in mind as I move forward to working through my personal debt. 

castlelough

Good morning! Wet and wild here.  As I won't have any income of my own until next month I am going to try to be more careful with grocery budgetting and meal planning.

Baked cheese scones this morning so sent the dcs off to school and preschool with those in their lunchboxes along with some of the blackberries we picked earlier in the week.

The hens and ducks are producing six or seven eggs per day at the moment so I'm considering best ways to preserve some for winter when there are usually less. I'd like to try waterglassing. It looks interesting, just need to figure out where to source waterglass or lime affordably. Scrambled eight eggs for breakfast this morning but we usually have porridge with honey.

Did roast lamb for dinner yesterday and am going to use the leftover meat for dinner for myself and the dcs later on. I would usually give it to the cat or dog as Dh prefers a fresh dinner the next day. I'll pick up something else for him but it will be less expensive than buying for five so that's me being economical today 🤞. 

castlelough

So, I've made the changes to the home insurance policy and I've contacted the bank to increase our mortgage repayment to incorporate the savings. I also asked how our new overpayment would affect our end date for mortgage. I was told it would be reduced to Apr 2041. This was a bit disappointing as I thought we were doing better than that with the overpayments we made a few years back.

We overpaid by almost 50% for 24mo so I thought that would have knocked something more off the term. I thought we should have been at about Dec 2040 before making this new op. But maybe I just miscalculated. I think I will ring them back again next week just to be sure. 

leftatthetrafficlights

Hi @castlelough - thought I'd pop in 😉 

We'll done on the house insurance savings - that's quite a chunk of money! 😮 

Congratulations on expecting your 4th baby too!! 😍 I've read your last diary so know you must be thrilled- is baby 3 a boy or girl?

Must admit that the thought of 4 little ones so close in age would be more than I could cope with!!😂 I just don't have the energy- my grandbaby exhausts me! 😉😂 

Good luck on your journey and keep up the good work! 😊 

Honeysucklelou2

Have you tried freezing eggs? If you crack them into a container and pierce the yolk you can freeze successfully. I used to freeze gluts of chicken eggs in groups of 4 so that it was good to go straight into a cake.

castlelough

*Leftatthetrafficlights* thank you so much for popping in. I can't believe you read my old diary. I can't even bring myself to do that 🙈🙈🙈. Dc3 was a boy! Dc4 is another surprise!