Five Year Fix, Five Year Plan

South_coast

I think if you can OP the loan so that it's gone in time for your mortgage renewal that's a great idea. I overpaid mine as I was just so sick and tired of the SLC taking a chunk of my salary every month, and cashing in on every pay raise and bonus I received! That money was meant for me! Having the money back in your pay packet every month is a great feeling, even if it then gets taken up with other costs 👍

Merlin's_Beard

KajiKita said:

Congratulations on the washing line (that’s a real quality of life thing for me, even so such a simple thing on the face of it 😊) and the pension pot value 👍👏

Re the student loan - if you start increasing your payment to it now would it be cleared by the time you get to the end of your current mortgage deal?
I think the advice is always to pay off your highest interest debts first, so atm that would be the student loan, but @s you say, you also need funds for the house and living too …. Fwiw, I would prioritise the loan over the mortgage, but leave some for the house, living etc. so it might look like:
- essentials covered (doing whatever possible to minimise those)
- remainder split:
— savings / house funds 
— living / treats 
— student loan

If you did the numbers on a split like that, how do they stack up?

KK
 

I was expecting the student loan to be cleared, or close enough, by August 2027 (when the mortgage is up) on the older interest rates. I think that it'll drag out onto another six months or so with the higher interest rates. On the understanding that that's a very washy guess - the repayment threshold changes every year (I pay £12 less a month 23/24 than I did 22/23 on the same wage) and obviously I have no idea whether I'll get any payrises (I'm running the calculators with no pay rise ie worst case scenario), and who knows what the base rate will do in the next four years.

At the minute, disposable income (combination of "savings" and "want" categories in YNAB) is about £1600 a month and split:
£400 to SIPP (only get minimum workplace via work into a terribly priced NEST so this is entirely separate)
£250 to mortgage OPs - but actually it's going into a 7% First Direct regular saver
£0 to student loan OPs
£50-350 on wants (anything from electrolysis to cafe trips/days out/holidays to kindle books to Disney+ to YNAB itself)
£the rest has mainly gone to the garden so far this year, because the landscaping was £4300.

It was a lot easier to decide the split when I had the big garden thing booked and needing paying for - I'm brilliant at hyperfocusing on one thing and terrible at keeping multiple plates spinning. Which is probably why I'd not thought about diverting the mortgage OP money (once the regular saver matures), but it probably is the more sensible move. I'm not sure I'd want to do an equal split between those three things but they are pretty reasonable categories (£400 to the student loan means everything in the house/garden gets sorted a lot slower, and I've barely started).

Merlin's_Beard

South_coast said:

I think if you can OP the loan so that it's gone in time for your mortgage renewal that's a great idea. I overpaid mine as I was just so sick and tired of the SLC taking a chunk of my salary every month, and cashing in on every pay raise and bonus I received! That money was meant for me! Having the money back in your pay packet every month is a great feeling, even if it then gets taken up with other costs 👍

Now that a full quarter of what they're taking is just going straight to interest I'm starting to feel that too!

killerpeaty

I haven't even thought about my student loan where is the eek emoji when you need it?

Having multiple plates is hard because you feel like you're not progressing with anything.but actually you really are. You are improving your life measurably even if it feels slow.

savingholmes

Merlin - I think the one thing I'd say is that you come across as a very disciplined person. I'd definitely find a way to 'reward' yourself with a mini holiday - even if that's a cottage somewhere or find other low cost ways to enjoy yourself. I wouldn't necessarily defer the holiday abroad alone - if that's what you want either as if you look there are still some good deals around. Life can't all be about paying the bills - and I'm only saying that as you are at the other end of the pendulum swing to many of the people that join this forum. Give yourself permission to have some fun and maybe work won't feel such a drag / life suck... 

Sorry if that's too blunt... 

Merlin's_Beard

savingholmes said:

Merlin - I think the one thing I'd say is that you come across as a very disciplined person. I'd definitely find a way to 'reward' yourself with a mini holiday - even if that's a cottage somewhere or find other low cost ways to enjoy yourself. I wouldn't necessarily defer the holiday abroad alone - if that's what you want either as if you look there are still some good deals around. Life can't all be about paying the bills - and I'm only saying that as you are at the other end of the pendulum swing to many of the people that join this forum. Give yourself permission to have some fun and maybe work won't feel such a drag / life suck... 

Sorry if that's too blunt... 

Blunt is always better!

I don't even necessarily disagree with you, but the mindset that I've needed to have to save enough deposit to buy on my own is very, very hard to break out of and I still struggle with the idea that I don't have to make every single penny work as efficiently as possible, as well as the idea that multiple goals might be equally important. I will try! 

Reasonably productive day off today - bought a birthday present for a friend's child, who is now getting to the age where I can buy him books with actually interesting plotlines. Fingers crossed he likes (fingers crossed it arrives as well). £5 off a £15 spend at Amazon used for this.

Garden centre visited, some quite expensive pots bought, now filled with compost, parsley, and thyme. Need to source some basil. Need to source a watering can as well now I actually have some plants. Builder's rubble still lying around the place makes excellent drainage for the bottom of the pots. Kale and spinach bought for the raised bed and planted. Blackcurrant plant that coworker got me last year that I forgot about optimistically planted, although I think it is a decorative stick now. Organic soil improver (fancy manure!) added in as well. Bonus, I have figured out how to connect both wireless ear buds to the phone at once, so it ended up being a nice afternoon pottering about with my podcasts in my ears, cup of tea on the windowsill, and the phone sat inside the kitchen. Also pulled some weeds out of the rest of the garden and stared at it for a bit, but no ideas yet. £117.

And given it's the end of the month and there is money left, I've booked some more theatre trips! One musical in September, the other a comedy gig next February. There was another one I was interested in, but it's showing in a week surrounded by two busy weekends, and I don't want to overload myself, so maybe next time. £60 for both, and that also includes the park and ride tickets so should be total cost.

savingholmes

Love the future fun things you booked yourself. I need to take my own medicine and do similar.

Post divorce and first mortgage as a singleton I was scared to spend too. Still feel like I am wobbling standing on a seasaw and trying to find my balance but it's getting better 

KajiKita

Yaay for the earbuds and the happy garden pottering 😊
Tbh, for this year, I would just go and grab something flowering and plonk it in somewhere you can see it from everywhere (or as many places as possible). Having that visual incentive will pull you out into the garden and keep you going. Stocking a garden can get expensive, so now is the time to:
- scour FB MP for cheap plants / giveaways
- start looking at seeds you want to sow next year (you know the difference between HP, TA and HAs?) and scouting around for left over pots / trays etc to sow in - old margarine cartons with holes in the bottom work perfectly well for some things 
- casually start saying, shamelessly, everywhere you go “new garden, trying to fill it, looking for inspiration” and people will start giving you things. Check what they are before planting just to make sure they aren’t too invasive! 😂 
- focus on getting the soil in good condition this summer / autumn so anything you plant next spring will fly 
- worth mulching now, thickly, with any organic matter - it will keep the weeds down that are already coming in as you’ve seen and allow the soil to start recovering from all the upheaval of the building works. 

I know the above isn’t instant gardening, and apologies if you know all this stuff already, but it’s the kind of sensible, steady as you go, advice I wish I’d been given when I started with my first garden 😊

KK

Merlin's_Beard

@savingholmes it's a lot easier to give other people advice than take it yourself! All we can try and do is get a better balance this week than we had last week, I guess. I'm still wildly off but maybe better than I was in January.

@KajiKita I am a complete gardening novice - I have literally never lived in a house where I could do anything to the garden. I am very much at the ELI5 (Explain Like I'm 5) level. All advice welcome. 

HP and HAs were easily googleable, TAs I'm stuck on though?

Very good tip with the mulching, will get on that. I'm happy for this to be a long term project and to take time - after so many years of renting it's still a novelty to be able to make a plan for months in advance.

Bought coriander from A$da for the third pot, will plant at some point  when it's not tipping it down.

And boss has announced a 6% pay increase from next month! That will help with everything.

KajiKita

Whoop for the 6% payrise - proper chuffed for you!! 😊👏

TAs are tender annuals - they are the ones that you see in garden centres in the spring, get planted out too early and succumb to late frosts 😉 In all seriousness, they are the bright and cheerful fillers for beds, pots, hanging baskets etc that only last the season unless you over winter them somewhere. There is huge range of them if you grow from seed … but that can be a bit of a rabbit hole … 😂 DAMHIK …. 😉

I have started doing a yearly review of my ‘net worth’ - it is surprisingly encouraging as it smooths out all the random blips and gives you a real sense of where you are heading. 

KK