Ding! Ding! All change, please... (now replaced with new diary on MFW)

EssexHebridean

Ahh lovely that so many people had the good news from Nationwide - just need to keep an eye for it landing now and make sure it gets moved to the right place!  Also lovely to have so many cheerful visitors too! 

Another weekend which felt nicely constructive - our voluntary role stuff has now been passed across to our database guru to deal with the next stage - and it's once that happens that it all gets stupidly busy! The timing is carefully planned though as if it all goes as we hope we should be able to get the first bit of fire-fighting of the busy patch done before we go away, then with luck we can keep it to just answering emails and updating returns while we're away. As soon as we are back it will be a case of passing contact details to another volunteer who will star to deal with chasing any that we've not had responses from while w deal with further firefighting and entering up of responses, then fingers crossed we should be on schedule to go to final orders a fortnight later... In the meantime between "now" and "busy" we do have plenty of other jobs to be getting on with on it!

Not too much of a spendy weekend at the moment - we did shop on Friday evening as we'd planned - although at the moment the spend hasn't appeared on the card as pending so not sure what's going on there. it was about what I expected though so all fine there. We did have to have another quick dive to Al's yesterday as we discovered when MrEH put a loaf on for breakfast toast yesterday that we were squeakily close to being out of white bread flour - he thought there was another bag in the storecupboard which there wasn't! Anyway we've topped up there now. Only other spending over the weekend was a treaty tea & cake at the airshow for me on Saturday evening - from my personal spends - and one of the very nicest lemon cakes I've eaten in ages! The airshow was absolutely lovely all round in fact - great light for photos, and some beautiful aircraft flying. I was reminded how much I really do love the evening shows at Shuttleworth! 

A further personal spend this morning as I remembered I was running low on my Evening Primrose capsules and handily a 10% code arrived from Zipvit - I went through TCB as well but my suspicion is that on review it will go to zero payable as I used the code for the discount - that was a bigger discount than the cashback would have been though. Apparently it's already shipped too so the usual speed service from Zipvit! Just under £27 there but that is a year's supply so not too bad. 

In house news, just waiting for the confirmation that our buyer has sorted her ID stuff out to pull our place off the market - and, excitingly. we've had some hopeful news on the place we want to buy too (massive kitchen diner) so hopefully I may have something positive to share on that fairly soon...fingers are ever more tightly crossed! I'm still not quite willing to believe it might happen mind you in case it then all goes horribly wrong! It does feel as though our first impression that the sellers of that are nice people might well be correct though, and if they are, with luck it will make it less likely that we hit any problems so...  I've just run off a new mortgage decision in principle anyway as we will need that for the agents in due course - we may not yet go with the lender I've used for it but all the agents want to see is that we're good for the money so that'll do. 

lucielle

Oooooh how exciting!!
L

jwil

Very exciting, hope you hear soon x

Cheery_Daff

Oh, very exciting, all fingers and toes crossed for you! 

I've been away so not seen the nationwide discussion on here - but literally just opened the porch door to see a letter saying the same thing, how lovely!

starnac

Ooh exciting house news. Everything crossed for you here.

We had the NWide email too. I wasn't convinced it was real either but it will be nice when it lands. 

savingholmes

The bounty is very nice from Nwide. 

Great news on your sale and purchase getting closer to coming together. 

Blackcats

Joining in with the many MSE friends with their fingers crossed for you.

rtandon27

So exciting EH! 🤞🤞🤞

beanielou

EXciting times 

EssexHebridean

Well I can officially state that the positive vibes and finger crossing of the MSE community have magical powers - as the sellers of "Massive Kitchen Diner" came back and said that they couldn't go as low as our original offer, but would we be prepared to meet in the middle between our offer and their asking price - after some number crunching we replied that we were indeed, and the property is now off the market and marked up sold subject to contract on the agent's site! We are extremely pleased and excited - although still conscious that things *could* go wrong still... hopefully though we are well placed to minimise that risk! It's fantastic (if still feeling slightly "unreal"!) to finally feel we can start moving towards actually being in a new home that we loved immediately on walking in through the door! Thanks to all for all your finger-crossing! 

So now the "looking to save absolutely every spare penny we can towards moving costs" begins in earnest - although as you know we'd already pretty much been doing that! Annoyingly this is the week that MrEH will be having to travel into London more than he had hoped so of COURSE we'll have to feed his Oyster an additional time now before going away - sigh! I reckon I should be able to stash £550 away in to the New House Fund this month though - and we'll be aiming for a little more next month as being away means that travel costs will be reduced for the month - all costs while we are away for diesel come from the holiday budget. I've got a draft email started where I'm noting absolutely all the costs I can think of that we need to budget for, I also need to think about the things that we need to crack on with soonest - realistically that is probably instructing for ordering the leasehold pack on the flat, and lining up the surveyor for the house. the numbers are tight - both initially AND going forwards - but the going forwards bit is at least partly because initially we'll still have quite a lot in terms of savings going on - where we have regular savers that are paying more in interest than our mortgage rate will be we want to keep those going, although as the Pr1nc1pal1ty ones finish we probably won't renew those to free up a little bit of extra slack in the budget. 

We need to make a decision on where we are applying for a mortgage - we've settled on an initial 3 year fix for certainty, and know how much we need to borrow - but are currently veering between a 16, 17 or 18 year term. There are advantages to several possible lenders, N@ti0nwide have a very favourable overpayments policy (with the OP's being limited by the amount of the original loan, not the outstanding balance), but a higher rate, and it's likely that we won't manage to make full use of that inside those first three years anyway, so we're currently veering towards not going with them. Frankly I'm starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing, and naturally it's fallen at a time when we're both having quite busy/stressy times at work, and the voluntary role stuff has reached a bit of a peak too!  Oh well, it will all be worth it! 

Banks checked and all good there - interest landed on the joint M@rcus account this morning - just my personal account there to get interest on now and that's it until C0ventry hand theirs over at the end of the month. All quite boring at this stage in the month really!   

Spendiness: Popped into T's near work last night for oddments for holiday - snacks for the car, and also lady-supplies (I try to take my "usual" brand bits with me as I have confidence that they work for me, and they also tend to be a LOT cheaper here than up there!) - just over £6 spent there but that has come from my personal spends - and I swept the "change" from that across to the VSP as well.