Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

KajiKita

Thank you all, Mr KK is bit nonplussed and unconvinced. 🤷‍♀️

KK 

skint_spice

Good luck, hope fabulous new opportunities beckon you soon.

kaycastle

It sounds like a fresh role may reinvigorate you especially if the despair around the mortgage is tied in to how you feel at work.

I feel the same way with my high mortgage a lot of the time. I was really inspired by @eat_that_frog diary as they had a similarly high mortgage but absolute drive to get it down. 

greenbee

I think it's worth staying open to other roles, even if it is early days for this one. No one will criticise you for moving on because it wasn't right for you - there's no longer an expectation that people should sit out several years in a role just to prove that they're not flaky. A shorter commute has a lot of value - I now only take remote roles, and read recently that WFH is considered to be worth the equivalent of 8% salary. Maybe you could work out from that what the value of the shorter commute/better working hours is?

As for the mortgage, at what point do you think you'd feel comfortable with it? Setting a goal of paying off the whole thing can be daunting - and cutting your living expenses to the bone to do so can become wearing after a time and result in spending sprees to rebel. But there may be a more realistic target (e.g. X times joint earnings) where you feel that it would be manageable. For example, mine is getting close to being 1 x gross earnings - still uncomfortable, but less so that it was previously. When it's 1 x net I'll be a bit more relaxed. And I know I can't throw everything at the mortgage at this stage as most of it is going on actually getting the house into a state where I want to live in it!

Watty1

I think paying off and/or rebuilding can be daunting but the achievement/despair rating of the task mentally is, I have found for me, linked to how I feel about everything else in my life.

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, fingers crossed that the new role proves to be interesting. Sounds like current role are not behaving well enough to keep you!

KajiKita

kaycastle said:

It sounds like a fresh role may reinvigorate you especially if the despair around the mortgage is tied in to how you feel at work.

I feel the same way with my high mortgage a lot of the time. I was really inspired by @eat_that_frog diary as they had a similarly high mortgage but absolute drive to get it down. 

Yes, eat_that_frog’s diary is impressive, but we can’t OP that hard as we are already on a short mortgage duration due to our ages - Mr KK hit 60 today and I will be 55 this year. 

I think if my work life balance was better e.g. not working 8am to 5pm every day I would have more energy for all the things you do to reduce spending or earn more monies to OP. I think I would have more metal energy too. 

Thanks @greenbee, I do feel a bit bad to even be looking by there are so many things I wasn’t expecting to be as they are - the pension and the annual leave allowance are both dreadful - then mix in the weird working relationships I am primarily working with as well as not feeling that welcome in the second site and it means I am more open to looking than I thought I would be ….
As for what level of mortgage I would feel comfortable with, that’s easy, less than £100K! I’ve no idea why that number, but it is instant and instinctive in my head! 😉😊 ATM, that is a touch less than two times my current gross salary.  

Watty1 said:

I think paying off and/or rebuilding can be daunting but the achievement/despair rating of the task mentally is, I have found for me, linked to how I feel about everything else in my life.

I’m now realising that my general mood and how I am feeling in general, completely lenses how I feel about the remaining mortgage debt …. Zooming out a bit and reminding myself how lucky we are helped really re-set how I perceived the mortgage debt and duration, even without any extra OPs - the pressure dropped out of it completely. I’ve been reading ‘How to fail’ in the last week and I think a lot of my angst is about me feeling like I am failing (I’m not, we are paying the mortgage every month, ever so slightly ahead of schedule) and I’m not hitting it as hard as some who post here (but we can’t - there are things we need to do here to future proof it and make it more liveable for us, just as @greenbee said). 

Thanks Cheery_Daff 😊

KK

KajiKita

It’s been a strange weekend - in a good way and a frustrating way 😉🤷‍♀️

Beautiful weather all weekend which has been lovely and perfect for Mr KK’s birthday today. He spent the day yesterday doing spraying of his bike mudguards so he can finally rebuild that bike which has been in bits all over the garage for six months ….

I did manage a few hours in the garden yesterday - pruned all my roses, tidied, weeded and fed the greenhouse - what’s left in there; a little lettuce, lots of curly kale, my sweet peas and parsley, is all looking pretty healthy 😊 Got two loads of washing pretty dry on the line. But I did find it flipping tiring. 

Today, got up early to defrost food for lunch, disassembled the contents of dining room table and got the tablecloth into the wash. Got the cloth back on the table by mid morning, laid out three places (mixed and matched the paper napkins for a bit of fun - MiL went home with all three plus a 4th variant as apparently she collects them, which I thought was rather sweet  😉😊😂). Helped Mr KK clear and clean the living room - biggest job for me was to clean down the frames and glass, inside and out, of the patio doors that look towards the garden - looks lovely now 😊). Paid off my CC quickly from my iPad - no time for full financial updates. Got Mr KK’s washing in the line, wrangled towels through machine and into tumble. Around this, prepped all the veg etc and started cooking whilst Mr KK collected MiL. Then an afternoon of MiL … which was lovely in many ways but also quite busy as I was actively hosting. I had a lovely quiet hour whilst Mr KK took MiL home again (brought his washing in perfectly dry! 👏😊🌞) and have done LOTS of tapestry this afternoon! 😊

MiL also went home with:
- 8 large boxes of cat food pouches
- 6 full boxes,of applause cat food
Chloe won’t eat either of these now, after she was eating them at the time George died … Seems pointless to let them go to waste and if MiL’s cat won’t eat them, the cat fosterers next door to her will be able to use them 😊
- spare first early seed potatoes I have no space for and the bottom half of an egg box I retrieved from the recycling bin that she can use for chitting 😊
- the washed out jar she gave us holding plum jam that she made in September from our few plums 😊

She brought me a sweet little ‘hessian’ bag full of flower seeds that I suspect was a present to her that she doesn’t want to use. 😊 Mr KK got a rather nice, HM, birthday cake from MiL 😊

Frustrating that I didn’t have the time to myself that I would have liked for gardening, but I think Mr KK has had a lovely weekend and in spite of being a bit ambivalent about turning 60, has had a good birthday 😊❤️

KK

f0xh0les

Sounds lovely. Well done you.

Happy Birthday Mr KK,

PennysIntoPounds

Some weekends you get to chill, some weekends you get to be the hostess with the mostest, sounds like you did a great job with the many things.
Happy birthday to Mr KK!

I'm a big fan of regifting as long as it's something one thinks the recipient will genuinely like, far too much product producing and money spending going on in the world, the right person should be matched with the right item even if it takes a few goes, in my opinion!