Getting to MF one step at a time

PermacultureGirl

Hello everyone, 
I am ready to embrace Mortgage Freedom (when it finally arrives)!
I have been lurking on MSE and the MFW forum in particular for years. I love reading the diaries and they have been so helpful in making decisions about our financial future. I finally decided to go ahead and produce a diary of my own in the hope that it will make me stay on track. 

A bit about me: I'm in my late 40s, sharing a life, a house and a baby food forest (more later) with DH (also in late 40s) and DD (15) as well as a cat and an assortment of chickens. 

This is our forever home, bought six years ago (orginal Mortgage £160k) in a bit of a crumbly state. We bought it because of its location, the potential of the house and garden and because of needing to be a wee bit nearer to my new job. We decided to take out a second loan (mini-Mortgage original £50k) in 2021 to pay for house rennovation to include a funky extension. The builders finally arrived in May 2024  after various fiascos, builders going bust, builders getting injured etc etc! We had to scale down our rennovation, because the original quote for the extension had more that doubled. However, as of 21st June, the roof is fixed, the smaller extension has a frame and a roof too, so all good. 
Being MSE fans, we tried to be as MS as poss with the mini-mortgage draw-down as it has been sitting twiddling its thumbs for nearly three years. It has gone into the highest interest savings (inc ISAs) we could get. However, life also happens, eh? In this time, two cars have died and one woodburning stove was condemmed, meaning some of the £50k got used. However, with interest and more savings we were back up to £48k prior to the build starting -phew. 

So what is left to pay, I hear you ask (or maybe not, perhaps you are all asleep now

PermacultureGirl

Ooops, butter fingers! 
Main Mortgage: £115,150.00 (Officially 17 years left, currently 1.89% until March 25)
Mini-Mortgage: £32,800.00 (Officially 7 years left, currently 4.4% until June 26)
B0S loan (to pay for the new-to-us car £6975, 24 months left)
Bank of Mum (to pay for stop-gap car that did not even stop the gap £1750)

Total household income after tax: £4010 pm

Slight issue on the horizon: DH job is funded by govt, but they have not renewed the funding yet and are deciding whether or not to (he performs a vital service within a charity that provides free civil legal advice to people without money) -and they only have until end June (ie end of this week) to decide. Eeek!

Well thanks for reading everyone, I'll post again regarding the baby food forest and MF plans later. 
Permie

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary.

PermacultureGirl

Thanks @beanielou -I must remember not to start a diary then have two really hectic weeks at work and not get back to it
Anyway, the food forest! A few years ago I stumbled on 'permaculture' -which is a mix of ecology and gardening with a design process that focuses on minimising energy use and thought -that's for me! Since then, I have slowly but surely been changing a biologically dead patch of soil (the previous owners glyphosated it for 12 years in a row according to my neighbour), into a place that can provide us and many other living beings joy and food. The 'food forest' idea is to mimic an actual forest, by having many layers -although in fact, mine is more like a forest edge as I garden on a steep slope and in Scotland, so I don't use all 7 layers. Each patch has at least one tree (I use dwarfing rootstock) and then several companion plants to help feed the soil, the polinators and us. It is great fun, and feels right for us. I don't think it would suit everyone though, it certainly does not look ordered or neat. However, I love it -and the wildlife in the garden seems to agree (even with the chickens running rampage too). 
So far, I have 4 breeds of apple, 2 of pear, 2 of plum, 1 cherry (perhaps a mistake, I don't think it likes our cool summers) 2 dwarf damsons, 1 quince and 2 juneberries in our top layer. We then have a range of currants, gooseberries, raspberries, aronia berries, honey berries and japanese quince in the next layer down. Now I am focusing on the herbaceous layer and trying to get a few veg in there. This year was the first year we ate the newly emerging hostas -wow, they were delicious! Our harvest has done them no harm at all, a second flush of leaves came and they are looking fab (we don't have a huge slug problem thanks to the frogs and the chickens). 
I am trying to do this the MSE way, although I don't always succed. Am I the only one who is rubbish at seeds? I have a couple of perennial kale plants that I am hoping I can grow into mini kale trees -although the winds round here might have other ideas. 
I love all the gardening know-how and chit chat on these pages, I'd love to hear if anyone else is trying to be more permaculture-y too. Being in the garden is the perfect get-away from work-stress, builders and election campaigning. 
Permie x

PermacultureGirl

As I mentioned previously, we have got a bit of a major change coming towards us. DH has been told that the Scot Govt will no longer fund his work (or his colleages across Scotland), so he (and they) will be facing a job change in September  . It is really an outrageous decision and flies in the face of the SNP's claim to widen legal access, there will be some places in Scotland now where there will be zero free legal/debt/housing advice for anyone on a lower income. I wonder if a potential change of faces at Westminster will alter this decision....but probably not. 
Fortunately for DH, he is trusted and well liked in the organisation and with partner organisations (and the courts), so hopefully he can get a new job soon. Or the Scot Gov will find the £800k down the back of the sofa. 
Trying to look on the bright side, 
Permie x

PermacultureGirl

Post-payday update:
Was able to overpay both mortgages this month. Now standing at:
£114,400.00
£32,100.00
Nice round numbers. I had been trying to add extra payments monthly, and recently have been able to add around £200 to each. I keep umming and ahhing about whether I should focus my over-payments on one or the other -I still cannot decide! The mini-mortgage has the higher interest rate, so perhaps that is the best to overpay. However, the big mortgage will be moving to a much higher interest rate in March, so perhaps I should concentrate on getting that one paid down as much as possible to reduce the amount I will still owe. I've fudged it and out of my £400 total overpay budget, I just split it equally. What do you think I should do?
I do have an ISA and a couple of savings accounts, all at around 5%...so I maybe should be putting the £400pm in those instead? I do quite like the feeling of the mortgages coming down each month and the number of years slowly decreasing, it gives me a bit of a mental boost each month. 
The mini-mortgage has 6 years left, but I am hoping to pay it off by the end of 2028 at the latest.
The big mortgage has 17 years left (2041!)  which is someway longer than when I want to retire. My aim is to have it gone by 2036, or before if I can. Our recent job news may scupper that, or maybe make it more likely -who knows. 

Anyway, I need to go and brave the rain to walk all of 100metres and go to vote. 

Happy voting day everyone, 
Permie x

catclaires

I think the food forest sounds absolutely amazing! What a brilliant idea. All the fruit sounds lovely - I hope your veg goes well too.

We have blackcurrant bushes and rhubarb in our garden from the previous owners, plus a new blueberry plant from last year that seems to be doing ok (touch wood) - I'm a rubbish gardener but get very excited by all the fruit growing and definitely want to grow more food.

Well done on the overpayments

Idreamofplants

Wow the forest sounds amazing and rather beautiful. I had never heard of this type of forest. I also love anything gardening related though I’m a bit of a novice anything that connects me to the earth calms me. 

PermacultureGirl

Aw thanks @catclaires and @Idreamofplants -I think it looks beautiful, especially in the spring when the trees and shrubs are in flower and in late summer when all the berries start to shine. I can really recommend Pippa Chapman's book: The plant lover's Backyard Forest Garden. Its easy to follow, full of lovely illustrations -and the amazing Kale Trees!
Today I found that voles had eaten our cultivated strawberries -oh well, I hope they enjoyed them . The voles don't seem to have found the wild strawberries that pop up hither and thither in the shady side of the garden -shhh, don't tell them. 
Feeling hopeful after the previous 24hours. I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend.

PermacultureGirl

Hi all, 
Fruit update. The apple trees are doing well. The Discovery has loads of apples -so I spent some time taking a few off. Where there were three or more growing together I took it down to two. Arrghh, it feels so bad to remove them, but I have learnt my lesson from a couple of years ago where I left them all on, exhausted the tree and then virtually no apples last year. The Scotch Bridget has apples for the very first time  I told it in the spring that I wanted it to get its act together and it has! It is a herritage variety, first bred nearby, apples are cookers early in the season and then sweeten later. We havent tasted them yet though, I hope they will be nice. Just the two apples on the Egremont Russet, it flowered later than the other two (although it is supposed to be in the adjacent group and therefore cross pollinate), it is also the other end of the garden. I think this means I might have to buy another apple to help it out  .
Poor on Bloody Ploughman (bought entirely for the name) is struggling a bit, but in my enthusiasm I planted it in a not-very-sheltered area. It may do better as the 'shelter-belt' alder, elder and rowan grow thicker. 
Juneberries (aka Saskatoons) look great, maybe a week away from picking -or being demolished by birds, one or the other. 
Blackcurrants, a bumper crop.
Raspberries, loads (but autumn fruiting so need to wait for them)
Redcurrant: some, but I had to dig up the bush to allow the builders to put in a new drainage system, so it is sitting, a bit upset with me, in a pot. 
Gordon castle plums; three! Yay, one each.
Damsons: zero....After I planted the plants, I found out they can take up to 25 years to crop -haha, I may reassess if that space could be used better and they could go in the shelter belt instead. 
Aronia berries a nice crop this year. They are very tart, but I think taste quite like Pommegranates (which I love, but I think might be wishful thinking in our Scottish garden).
Honneyberries: zero, but I only planted them in late spring. They have put on lots of new growth, so happy with that. 
Blueberries (in pots to give them maximum acid soil), looking good. 
Gooseberries, not a great year, but the two bigger bushes have been half burried by builders' waste, so I am not surprised. Also, one of my chickens found that she could stand on the discard pile and it was only a small hop up to eat the wee berries -so half of the poor crop got made into eggs instead
Black elder -for the birds- looking good. 

All in all I am very happy with this. Considering when we moved the garden was completely bare, the change has been remarkable and very uplifting. 
Not a very spendy weekend with us a trip to the cinema, early in the day so we could get the cheaper tickets. We did have a bit of a leaky roof (we had some torrential rain on Saturday evening and I think the membrane covering the new roof breached its capabilities). No sign of any slaters -SIGH.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend.
Permie x

PermacultureGirl

Had my 'home finances' spreadsheet open earlier and just realised that I can feasibly get to under £110,000 on the main mortgage by the end of the year if I add an extra £40 pm to the OPs. As the budget is already a bit tight, you all have inspired me to do this in an MSE way. Lets see if I can make enough in cashback, selling and other MS savings here and there to reach £109,999. 
Permie x