Five Year Fix, Five Year Plan

Merlin's_Beard

Playing around with the mortgage calculator to see what I can do. The first picture shows my repayments with a £200 overpayment. The second is with a £250 overpayment every month. If I want to be under £200,000 by the time my 5 year fix is up then I ought to be aiming more for £250 a month than £200. It does kind of starkly show how much difference a small amount regularly can make though. So while I'll stick to the £200 to start with - especially in these first few months (perhaps first year) when I have some big furniture to buy and my bills aren't fully decided, I am going to set myself a goal of trying to up it to that £250 when I can.

savingholmes

Sounds like you are off on the right track.

Merlin's_Beard

Mortgage has appeared on my account!

It took me a while to figure out what I was doing, but I've set up a standing order for my monthly overpayments. I could have messaged them to increase the DD but I figure that this way I keep more control over it.

Test payment sent off to check it out - so £9 paid off already (£990 of the mortgage fee left to pay).

Spent a lot of yesterday fighting through RBS's system trying to close an account with about £1 in it. Turns out I'll have to write to them to do that, so once I've paid for the stamp and envelope I'm not convinced it's totally MSE... but now it's the principle of the thing. I want to tidy my accounts up and they're stopping me!

South_coast

I had an account with RBS a while back and just closed it via the app - it was suspiciously easy! That was a current account though, possibly not the same for other types of account?

Merlin's_Beard

It's a savings account @South_coast so I can't just current account switch. They're saying that as it's the last account I have with them I need to either visit a branch (my nearest is about 90 minutes away these days!) or write to them. It blocked me when I tried to close it online.

badmemory

Why bother actually closing it.  Just transfer the money out & leave it.  Give it a year & they will be writing to you to tell you they are going to close it.  If it has under £1 in it you may not be able to transfer it.  Just transfer £1 into it & then transfer it all out again.  I had to do that with a Halifax one.

killerpeaty

savingholmes said:

Sorry you're not getting the benefit of the BH. That is so irritating!

Glad you are getting your deposit back - that's fab news. 

You could look on FB for shelving they tend to have loads and I've generally found the stuff I've bought great quality and effectively someone else just assembled it for me.

Completely agree with FB marketplace, I've seen some great stuff (also some rubbish) on there. Only thing is with it is that you need to prepare yourself for people wanting to talk to you for extended periods. In my experience the best furniture comes from lost loved ones so it makes sense.

Glad to hear that you have your mortgage access and getting your deposit back! Sometimes you do need a rest though!

LadyWithAPlan

How exciting you are finally OPing mortgage
I can’t recommend this diy course enough 
I have always been v apprehensive about power tools but yesterdays drills and saw lesson was great as I got clear education and practice being watched over so I really feel its doable now and I feel
empowered, educated so I can see what’s possible, in control and able.

The course had also got me looking at my rental that I can do what I want to as eventually it will be gutted and seeing where I can improve it. So as you are a new house buyer I think such a course will be invaluable. 

Mine is a 10 week one where we do different things each week from electrics to bricklaying 

badmemory

That course sounds perfect, even if a bit too late for me.  My father taught me quite a lot whilst we were refurbing at this house (over 30 years ago).  But the thing he taught me about this house is that it has pipes & wires running in random directions & that I need to KNOW that I am not going to be drilling through one.  He almost drilled through one & we never figured out where it was going from to.  He was also going to fit me a new light fitting but when he took the old one down ALL the wires were the same colour.  Thankfully we had a tame electrician as every time we decorated more parts of the electrics cut out (but didn't blow a fuse).  The paste from the wallpaper was getting into the plugs & the wires were not screwed down.  The lovely man actually came out on a Sat night on his way out on a date with poor girlfriend in tow to fix one of them.  That was the third he had done.  During the next week he came out & did every plug in the house as it was getting beyond a joke.

The reason for this screed is just to warn you that things may not turn out to be quite as you expected, so take care.

Merlin's_Beard

badmemory said:

Why bother actually closing it.  Just transfer the money out & leave it.  Give it a year & they will be writing to you to tell you they are going to close it.  If it has under £1 in it you may not be able to transfer it.  Just transfer £1 into it & then transfer it all out again.  I had to do that with a Halifax one.

The card that's associated with the account (that I last saw in about 2015!) is locked for digital banking so it won't let me unfortunately. Basically I transferred all my savings into my current account, did a current account switch, and then forgot about RBS (silly I know but I was many years younger and assumed it would work!). They paid interest into the account and I've basically lost access to do anything except view the account.

LadyWithAPlan said:

How exciting you are finally OPing mortgage
I can’t recommend this diy course enough 
I have always been v apprehensive about power tools but yesterdays drills and saw lesson was great as I got clear education and practice being watched over so I really feel its doable now and I feel
empowered, educated so I can see what’s possible, in control and able.

The course had also got me looking at my rental that I can do what I want to as eventually it will be gutted and seeing where I can improve it. So as you are a new house buyer I think such a course will be invaluable. 

Mine is a 10 week one where we do different things each week from electrics to bricklaying 

I have been looking around at courses, inspired by you. I've found one 1 day course that might do, but still keeping my eye out for something a bit longer that includes a bit of plumbing and electrics.