Five Year Fix, Five Year Plan

WelshmansDaughter

Another vote for the diy book here. House maintenance is a whole other language to learn!

savingholmes

When I had a new build - I rotavated / or got someone in to - the amount of bricks that come out is amazing. I then got extra top soil and sowed seed at one house and laid lawn at another. I dug trenches around my lawn at the first house due to drainage issues - and had borders on three sides. A garden is as expensive as you make it. 

Patios are a huge cost if you get pretty looking stone. If you are happy to reuse old flags - you could get them cheap on FB... you'd need sand as a minimum and potentially some cement... 

killerpeaty

Gardens sound like a lot of work. A friend of mine has IKEA lockers in the garden to hold their gardening things and a BBQ dedicated area.

Merlin's_Beard

savingholmes said:

When I had a new build - I rotavated / or got someone in to - the amount of bricks that come out is amazing. I then got extra top soil and sowed seed at one house and laid lawn at another. I dug trenches around my lawn at the first house due to drainage issues - and had borders on three sides. A garden is as expensive as you make it. 

Patios are a huge cost if you get pretty looking stone. If you are happy to reuse old flags - you could get them cheap on FB... you'd need sand as a minimum and potentially some cement... 

Definitely not too pretty a stone unless I win the lottery.. I'll be keeping an eye out as often people on the estate give away their old stones when they upgrade. Hopefully I can pay someone to do patio and path and do the rest myself, including digging up all the brick (I literally could have had another bedroom).

Probably plan to do the raised beds and the outside, then decide if I can face more plants in the middle or whether I just seed it with grass and have done because I've bitten off more than I can chew.

Merlin's_Beard

First mortgage payment has come out today, and first overpayment, but also the first interest added. Shocked to realise only about £400 comes off the principal with my normal payments so my £200 overpayment actually does increase repayment by a significant % (if not by a really significant number). Total amount is still more than my actual mortgage - highlights the need to pay down the product fee asap.

Student loan has dropped below £19k this month. Whether I can pay this off in 5 years can withstand the base rate rises that will be coming in April is a question that there's no point worrying about, so I'll keep monitoring this.

Pension went down by £600 in September, which is to be expected.

YNAB tells me that my net worth (excluding house value) is £-207,495. Hopefully this will track towards zero as I go.

savingholmes

On the student loan now the rates are rocketing - would it be cheaper to transfer it out to a different kind of loan or CC?

Garden plans sound good.

killerpeaty

I assume it's a plan 1 loan rather than debt debt, I'm on this one and it's to be honest pretty low interest. I think the plan 2s are quite a lot higher. 

A £200 overpayment is incredible! Well done!

Merlin's_Beard

savingholmes said:

On the student loan now the rates are rocketing - would it be cheaper to transfer it out to a different kind of loan or CC?

Garden plans sound good.

Thankfully as it's a plan 1 govt student loan, my rate has 'rocketed' from 1.5% to 2.75% - so I'm unlikely to get a cheaper deal elsewhere. Plan 1 is based on the Retail Price Index or the Bank of England base rate plus 1%, whichever is lower - and is fixed until next September now.

So not worth worrying about, except I can see an end in sight when my take home jumps by £300 a month!

savingholmes

That's not too bad then - my DS's one is a horrific rate.

Merlin's_Beard

savingholmes said:

That's not too bad then - my DS's one is a horrific rate.

Yes, if he has a plan 2 they're really designed to be a tax so there's very little point in worrying about the outstanding balance or the interest rate, as it'll just get written off at the 25 year mark unless he's planning to be a City banker or a Harley Street plastic surgeon. It's a tax that's just called a loan.

There was a point where I thought plan 2 would have worked out better for me ( £80k starting balance with lower payments with most of the loan wiped out after 25 years worked out a lot better than higher payments on a £35k balance that I finished paying off after 21-23 years). Thankfully recent pay rises have meant I'm more likely to pay it off in 15-16 years instead.