Buying a little piece of Middle England; Manifesting my way to mortgage free.

debtfreewannabe321

Thanks FP ♥️ it's a beautiful day here today. 
I decided to do some jobs indoors first and also do our big meal at lunch time. Our garden is north easterly so we get a lot of sun from lunchtime to around 6 at the mo. So I've decided to split my holiday in doing indoor jobs in the morning and outdoor ones in the afternoon.

So I gave my kitchen a clean this morning and also topped up all my jars for cooking and relabeled them all. I tried to group them into things that I cook each other with too so in a hurry I can distinguish the caster sugar from the corn flour 🤪. I don't have many places in the kitchen to store things so DP put a shelf up from found wood in the garage and most fit on there now. 

All clean.... and I've put the empty ones for washing and I will write down what I need to replace on the next shop. 

I made a chickpea and spinach curry after doing that and then washed up and then friend popped over so I spent an hour in the garden with her chatting in the sun. 
Dropped DP to the station and he won't be home until Thursday now. This is when I should have been having quiet time for just me but I have DD here instead with me... nevermind she's quiet and she's locked herself in the front room watching TV all day basking in the heat (front room is south facing and gets all the sun!)

The job this afternoon was to finish the de-turfing the new flower bed I made. It was hard work but it's done. I'm now wondering if I should try and move a tree so that I can make a path to get to the back of the bed and around the other trees ...I have found and moved a few bricks and I know I have plenty more coming from the bay window at the back of the house that will be removed for the extension....so I might add that to the jobs list. 


This is an old bed/ new bed merged together for all the new trees. I've dug over half from grass to bed (other end of picture). Tiring work ..lots of new ferns and trees in there though it should be nice when it gets growing. 

I'm rewarding myself with a G&T and a fruit salad in the sun ☀️ 
This is my view...(Five of the six new raised beds) 

Right off to enjoy the sun, watch the birds land to see what's been done today. The first of them are here already (pigeons and magpies) then the rest will be allowed in 🤣

~FlowerPot~

Looking absolutely beautiful, you must be pleased how it's coming together x

debtfreewannabe321

~FlowerPot~ said:

Looking absolutely beautiful, you must be pleased how it's coming together x

I am 😁 it has taken a lot of clearing back of dead trees and hedges to get this far and building and shifting things around and let's forget the wood piles please 😁😆. We've tried to not spend much money but I'd guess we're probably running at around £500 now including all the compost and plants. I'd spend a fortune if I had more disposable income... probably good I don't really 😆🤣

It's been another NSD as I couldn't be bothered going back out. I was desperate for some sugar in the form of choc or sweets but I will be good and not bother. I have popcorn so will make that instead and maybe some jam on toast for my dinner lunch. I'm definitely doing better on the NSD this month although bank accounts are still looking remarkably low for this time of the month 🙈. I do have some 'holiday' funds though and because we can't afford to go abroad any more I said to DP each time we have a break I will just take out what I've been saving for the school holidays as they come. So we've around £200 if we need it towards days out etc. 

KajiKita

That looks lovely ☺️ and is that couple of ranunculus you have coming up to flower in the round bed? Well done 👏 I have always failed.

KK

greenbee

I haven't even planted my ranunculus! They are still sitting in their packets, next to the anemones and freesias. I had plans to put them in pots. 

Watty1

lovely garden pics

debtfreewannabe321

They are ranculas and I hope I don't kill them off with the frosts ...it was my naivety with flowers that had me buying/ planting out so early 🙈. I only searched up whether I should have planted them out after I saw frost a couple of days after they went out. I had conflicting sites tell me different. A few said it was okay if in raised beds others no no no don't do it 😆🙈 so....we shall see. I left them in. I've never grown them before and tbh I didn't grow these I bought them as they are. Although they are starting to open so I hope that's a good sign not a bad one...
It was price and where they scored on the pretty factor that I always look at 🤣.

The sun is trying to burn through here today. It's not meant to be very warm though so I'm tempted to see if dd wants to walk into town and either see a movie or shop (we both love a good trawl round CS...I taught her one thing at least that's mse haha) and I still have my pizza Express vouchers! So could do a late lunch/ early dinner in there. She's talking to a boy atm though so she may be too 'distracted/busy'

debtfreewannabe321

Okay so I'm in debit with my energy supplier. I had some very useful advice from a fellow mse'r on here (thank you!) and I've just carried on with payments as they stood because I knew I was going to reduce the bill not only because we changed ALL the spotlights in the house for a few cheap dangly ones whatever they're called 😆😆 that sounds so wrong..anyway...but it's warming up now. So less heating. I tried to up my DD to £175 but it wouldn't let me it told me it had to be £184 or above 🙄 so I left it at £154 which seems silly to me. I was offering £21 more 🤷🏻‍♀️.
I've just gone and checked the usage though as by next winter I'd like to be in the green again. 
If anyone reading remembers the usage at Christmas in an empty house 😠 was £10 a day almost. 
So we've had improvements and also more improvement as the heating goes off.... although a few days we've put it on a couple of hours to warm the house up. 

If I can get the daily average down to around £3 that would be better because I'll have some chance of paying off the debit then....but it's fallen really well. I'm unsure what's causing those big spikes but I have a feeling it's when I'm running the WM 2/3 times a day and then sometimes the TD as well. Can't think what else would cause the spikes unless it's DS computer+ DP computer..I should have some low days now then as DP is not here and DS is at Dad's house! 

debtfreewannabe321

I'm also looking at my mortgage. My low 2.4% rate ends in June 2027. So two years from now. I've just been on to a chat ai thing and got it to do my sums for me because I got in a confuddle with what I was doing 😵‍💫. I wanted to know what the best LTV % is for remortgage and it came up with 60% ... anyone know if this is right? Anyway I've gone with it. 
I also follow RM and have notifications and a saved section set up for houses on my street and one next to it that I know go for the same sort of price. Prices are dropping (I am grateful we knocked some money off the asking price here with that!) and a three bed is currently selling for between 10k more- 60k more than we bought ours for. Ours is a 4 bed and there isn't anything comparable yet that's come on (only detached which I know won't be comparable- the semis are the exact same without the fourth bed). Anyway so I have figured out to reach the 60% LTV on the lowest end of the sales figures I need to pay this much off the mortgage in two years...

And according to the mse OP calculator this is how long it will take to pay that off. 

Even without OP I should be able to do that £4,699 in a year.  With the £100 I'm OP'ing every month it will get there quicker but this is great news 😁.
This is not taking into account the extension either which I'm hoping will add value? So again would bring rate down because the valuation should be higher?
Anyway this is all assuming the house prices don't plummet and continue to go up slightly or even stay the same....but it's good to have a goal in mind and my goal is to reach that 60% equity which I'm so close to atm. 

debtfreewannabe321

Afternoon all, DD and I did go into town. I spent £36 which I thought was okay for a day out... We decided to go to the cinema which is expensive here so I used my taste card to get some tickets. First time doing it and I didn't have a clue what I was doing and the film was due to start in five minutes so DD was panicking. I did try to say the ads are like half hour long but anyway, we bought the tickets through the app, and asked the man at the till in the end in the cinema. Turns out I was having trouble because the tickets I'd bought cheap are for 2D and the film I was trying to book was 3D 🫣 oops. Dumdum moment 😆. He was very patient and helpful though and put it through the till and we just had to top it up by £7 (this included 3D glasses). Still saved myself £8 so I was happy with that 😊. We also got snacks in the £ shop to save a few quid (tbf I have always done this and refuse to pay extortionate prices in there especially when I used to have three kids to feed 🙈). So anyway all in that trip was less than £30 with snacks. I haven't seen a 3D movie at the cinema in years so it was fun just for novelty of that.. DD chose the movie I really wasn't bothered and it was actually quite fun (mine craft). 

On the way there I'd popped Into some charity shops and found a nice little vintage shelving unit the perfect size for my spice jar collection. £5! Bargain. It means we can take down the cupboard closest to the hob now. We are always hitting our head on it or knocking pans into it. It sticks out a lot and is very low to the worktop meaning it's a useless space. DP has wanted to get rid of it for ages but I didn't have anything to put the spices on. The ones that don't fit on the shelf (not part of the little ceramic collection) fit perfectly into the drawer just below the hob so it's all worked out nicely. I'll get DP to sort that out this weekend. Thankfully I asked the CS to hold the shelves for me as I'm not sure where we'd have put them in the cinema.
After the film we rushed back to collect them before they closed the warehouse. We both decided against pizza as we were stuffed from sweets 🙈. So I'll do us a burger and wedges later on if hungry. Nice day and I'm glad I went out as it's been cold and grey here all day so I wouldn't have done anything but clean the house which I can always do another day 😉.