Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

Suffolk_lass

I agree with OPs of the mortgage. When the interest rates fell back in the nineties we kept our payment the same (in fact we rounded it to the nearest £50) and when we moved, about 3-4 years later it made a far bigger difference than we had expected. As well as rounding up the payment, I used to use my Tilly Tidy account to round down the total in the account if I logged in to the mortgage account and there were straggly bits that needed tidying up there too. Very addictive though.

I can't comment on car finance. We share. I have the bigger car but DH has two motorbikes too!

KajiKita

Cheery_Daff said:

I suppose I'd be asking are car spends usually from joint funds? Will OH get any benefit from the car? Where does the dosh come from if he needs a new one? 

I suppose I'd try and think about the practical consequences. If you DIDN'T include it in the calculations, then you'd have to ring-fence the whole of the car payment outside individual/joint money, and only use it for the car. In which case - where is OH's car money coming from? 

If you DO include it, that means you're paying a higher amount to joint bills, but also getting a higher personal spending amount - in which case, where is the payment for YOUR new car going to come from?

Okay, so mortgage OPs it is then! Yaay!! 👏😊

Vehicle spends are supposed to be independent but the last time hubby’s van terminally ‘failed to proceed’ I ended buying a new van for him out of an inheritance I had from my grandma … 🤷‍♀️ He gets some benefit from it if we go out anywhere together at the weekend or away for holidays, but day to day he uses his van. 

OH’s money for a vehicle could come from selling one of the *multiple* historic vehicles he owns … but realistically that is unlikely to happen. 

If I do include it, I would have more savings and more mortgage OPs but I wouldn’t then have the funds for a newer car and would lose the allowance anyway.

KK

KajiKita

Suffolk_lass said:

I agree with OPs of the mortgage. When the interest rates fell back in the nineties we kept our payment the same (in fact we rounded it to the nearest £50) and when we moved, about 3-4 years later it made a far bigger difference than we had expected. As well as rounding up the payment, I used to use my Tilly Tidy account to round down the total in the account if I logged in to the mortgage account and there were straggly bits that needed tidying up there too. Very addictive though.

I can't comment on car finance. We share. I have the bigger car but DH has two motorbikes too!

Thanks 😊 
That reinforces for me that it is worth doing it and I should. 

Good news 😊

KK 

redofromstart

We overpaid in dribs and drabs for ages, which made a huge difference on the re-mortgage but had no fees. It cost more than it saved over the balance, so we went with fee free higher rate option.

We view our income as collective, although we don't have joint accounts as such, so the car thing never really impacted (although mr Redo at times makes mr @Suffolk_lass look restrained!) but the car allowance was there to fund a specific criteria vehicle and its associated costs, including punctures etc.  Share one cost, share all.  

KajiKita

Morning All,

Well I've got the end of the (pay) month with money to spare! 

Frustratingly, it has taken too long to get organised to get my car allowance paid, so I don't know if I have missed out on a month's worth of payment for that Quite fed up that this wasn't covered in my on-boarding / induction tbh - I would have thought it should have been, iyswim. Just need to check that my proof of insurance for my car has been accepted / uploaded / logged somewhere in the gargantuan, byzantine, labyrinth of administration systems I seem to be dealing with .... and hopefully that should appear (taxed at source!) in my next pay packet.

Paid back the £814.16 that my previous employer overpaid me. Annoying, but at least I know that all the money in my accounts is mine again!! 

Had to spend some money last week (Boo Hiss!) on a new Freeview box as the one we've had was becoming 'opinionated' and refusing to work for us. I was able to offset about half of that cost with £65 of JL C/Cd cash back vouchers which I have used for years when replacing electrical items. Sadly they've changed their offering recently so the value of the cash back is halved, but I haven't seen better elsewhere atm. 

Following discussions here and with Hubby I have 'found' a spare £56.43 that we could use for a mortgage overpayment this month .... But, when I tried to find out how to make the payment this morning I realised that I don't have the right details to make the payment from my account to the mortgage account and the FAQ link on the mortgage company website seems to be broken (tried it from both my new iPad and from my ancient laptop - bah!), so I have emailed myself in work to remind me to ring A****** in the week, in office hours, so they can tell me how I can do this. Hopefully, once I have been through this faff once, it will just 'flow' easily all the following times I want to do this!    

In nicer news, I spent the £15 of the rural economy local funding money that I applied for, on a Tayberry plant in the local garden centre, which I will put in near my greenhouse so it's in a good sunny location    I have also, tap-root-weeded, carboarded and mulched the last of my veggie beds, so I am ready for the growing season - whoop! 

I have also discovered that I am entitled to 5. 5 days holiday before the end of March (end of holiday year) - yaay!  So I have block booked out Fridays in my work calendar so no-one can book meetings with me and I can check the forecast on Mondays to see if it's worth booking the Friday off with my boss. The job is taking so much out of me that the house is a tip and I have masses to do in the garden, so it would be good to have at least a couple of days leave to catch up with myself a bit 

KK

KajiKita

Done my end of month signature update now too 

KajiKita

Another little thing: tried to send back the laptop charger but the barcode that Am***** sent me didn’t work, even when the UPS pick up point shopkeeper tried to manually type in the reference number …. Bah! I have sent a message into Amazon to say that the ‘returns’ process was ‘disappointing’ and why and I will see what happens next ….

Sorry for all the moaning btw, I hadn’t realised how frustrating a week it had been until I wrote all this down! However, my bathroom is now clean (including de-moulding - hate doing that job as I find the bleach smell lingers in my nose for ages afterwards ) so I can go play in my garden this afternoon with a clear conscience! Whoop!

Off out shortly to return a rucksack of gold jewellery to someone I was looking after it for whilst they were moving house. Breakfast first!  

KK

KajiKita

Had a lovely time in the garden this afternoon doing some finessing gardening ❤️

Pruned a ‘wedding cake’ hydrangea so it’s shape is cleaner and clearer. 

Pruned all my roses - bar one I missed! 🙄😂

Planted a gorgeous, evergreen, white variegated shrub next to the hydrangea, so now I will have a flow of height down from the maple, to the hydrangea and then down to the new shrub. The white in the new shrub will also echo the white flowers of the hydrangea 😊

Found some little irises flowering in the damp beds next to the pond, so spent the last hour there, in the last of the sun, removing buttercups and the overgrown grass 😊

Tired but happy and have *no idea* what’s important about work tomorrow …. It’s all gone ❤️😊

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, that sounds like a lovely day in the garden, and so cheerful that you've forgotten all about work too. Fingers crossed you can have Fridays off, what fun (and that they back pay your car allowance too!)

Suffolk_lass

That sounds blissful, well done. We are due a less windy, warmer day today so hoping to get out myself. It was perceived temperature 2c yesterday and I can't garden with my fingers going dead!