Living it up and saving up

curly_moose

*I'm not currently 'living it up'. it's cold and I'm tired. 

Hello fellow mortgage-free wannabes! 

I started a thread a few years ago where I'd aimed to be mortgage neutral by 2024. I did this and then some and managed to be mortgage free (briefly) before I was 40.

I'm not currently mortgage free. My mum passed way at the end of 2023 from dementia and this brought home how short life is. She was very brave and adventurous and I hope to be like her.

London is my happy place and I've always wanted to live here, so I spent most of last year selling my owned-outright place in the Midlands and buying a 'fixer-upper' in zone 3 with a big scary mortgage. I was also completing a masters and doing my full-time job.  

Against my instincts, I'm not massively overpaying my mortgage. My house - I bought a house - has 'potential', in estate agent speak, so my short to medium term goals involve piling up cash to do it up (my vision is an extension at the back to make an open-plan kitchen-diner situation).

The challenge will be doing that in one of the most expensive places to live in the country while also living my best life!  

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary. 

curly_moose

Thanks @beanielou!

Having started a diary, I didn't mean to disappear, but my phone doesn't want to remember my MSE password for some reason. Reasonably cheap long weekend back home for my dad's birthday which is coming up. I'm usually a nightmare for Pret snacks when I'm travelling but the thought of 'reporting back' the small fortune that it costs now put me off. I'm trying not to waste my money as I've got some fairly chunky goals and a decent, but not fabulous, salary with which to achieve them. 

The good is that I'm reasonably good at telling my money where to go. Like my eleven year old nephew has just worked out, I know that I can only spend it once, so I am fairly intentional about this. I do a zero-based budget every month and track my spends. (I'll do a proper SOA at some point, but with a load of bills changing in April that seems like the time.) 

The bad is the big, scary mortgage. I owe the bank £248,883.01, which feels like an awful lot of money. I also have a habit of frittering money away. Especially on junk food. I could probably fund a short holiday with what I've spend on a certain chocolate-y, mallow-y, biscuity treat. In theory, it's budgeted for but it's no good for my wallet or my waistline.

The ugly is the 'fixer upper' nature of the house. It was empty for a time - longer than I was aware of - and so far I've needed to spend £4.5K replacing a broken boiler and an ancient fuse board (and a couple of other bits). I came home yesterday to puddles in the lean-to conservatory, and water dripping off the light. Electricity and water being an excellent combination. I've fixed this with some Gorilla Tape to the roof, so I expect it will be fine now. (In the masterplan, the conservatory is getting replaced with an extension, so I just need to keep it ticking over for another couple of years.)

I aspire to be a person who does actual DIY and doesn't solve their house-problems with Gorilla Tape and command strips. Some DIY courses are on the list for this year once I've recovered from my masters trauma.