MFi3 & before I am 40 + my MB journey

TallGirl

Just a quick update to say I am still enjoying my holiday. Spending quite a bit of money so not sure it will be enough. Just started to rain but we have had lots of sunshine. Kids are really nice but hectic. Not sure I would be up to looking after them full time. It is great to be able to go back to mums and chill out.

twinklie

Glad you're having a good time. We had nice sunshine here too but it's turned to rain now....at least where I am anyway.

TallGirl

Hi All
That holiday really flew by but we managed lots of golf and family visit so all in all fab. Also had lovely weather and nice nice food. Back again and this post will be purely mortgage related for a change.

My DH has had to change the way he is being paid due to the downturn in the business. He went from £2000 a month to £1200 plus £800 directors pay he could draw if he needed it. Well he did not take it and result was that he went overdrawn last month and is already £330 overdrawn this month dispite not having to use his current account while on holiday. He is going to talk to his dad to see if he can get £2000 a month as that is what he needs. I have suggested we change the way we pay our bills as he used to pay the most being higher earner but that is no longer the case. If he gets back to £2000 I will only be £300 behind so it is only fair I pay for my share.

We each pay some bills and then pay the mortgage out of our joint account. I pay £250 he pays £750. I am going to have all the DD's transferred to the joint account, halve everything and then we each pay an amount in. Things like his car expenses and my gym will sit outside but I will still be left with over £950.

This is what it will look like:

Monthly Direct Debits Household
BT £ 13.00
Portsmouth Water £ 13.47
Southern Electric £ 65.00 (old dd did not cover so increased)
SSE Energy Gas £ 100.00 (old dd did not cover so increased)
Mortgage 01/04/10 £ 420.00
Sky £ 39.50
Council Tax £ 166.00
Legal & General Life Ins £ 40.55
TV License £ 11.95
Souther Water £ 27.89
Total £ 897.36

We also have annual bills which I have estimated that are paid in a lump sum.

Annual Bills Estimate
Golfclub Membership £ 1,500.00 Due April
Home Insurance £ 350.00 Due September
Travel Insurance £ 100.00 Due April
Total £ 1,950.00

So this is what our joint account will look like now
DH pays in £ 750.00
TN pays in £ 750.00
Bills -£ 897.36
Left for annual bills £ 602.64


That should cover all but as you can see we have dropped the mortgage down from £1000 to £420 that will still clear it by 01.04.10. I might be able to put it back up again before that but this makes more sense otherwise we will only be totally broke.

I have typed a letter to the bank from DH allowing me to change the dd's over hope it all goes acording to plan when I see the bank.

TallGirl

Been to the bank and all is now set up. DH's had to be done by post but that is no problem as the DD's don't go out until next month. I have also changed the mortgage payment to £420 which felt really strange but good in a way as it gives us a bit more breathing space. He has taken £1000 cash from the company and his dad is checking if his income can go back up.

I am still going to chuck what I can off the mortgage whenever possible but I have also been toying with the idea of taking out two ISA's this year and delay paying off the mortgage. We could use the offset loan account to borrow the money at 1.25% which would make a small profit as ISA rates are a bit higher than that. I will wait and see how DH gets on with his wages and do it later in the year.

I would like to use this years allowance as next year we should easily be able to fill two ISA's even with the higher allowances.

TallGirl

Another pure money related post coming up:

DH is now happy he has got money in the bank again and his salery is back up however it does mean 1 of his staff has to go. He is the one that refused to go part time or even drop his hours by 20%. It means DH and I will not be able to take any holidays until they take someone else on. I am not too sad about this chap loosing his job he is not a team player and while we were on holiday DH's dad had to ring several times because this chap refused to acknowledge he knew anything about anything. Pain in the bum. Once he is gone they will be back to breaking even which is all you can ask for in this climate.

His plan is to take on an apprentice from the local college in the new year apparently the government pay most of the wages so it will only cost him £50 a week and he can keep them on for 3 years with government support.

I got £5 birthday bonus from GameVillage. Played a bit of slots and BJ on it and got it up to £20. Could not withdraw until I had £25 so played very low hands poker and got £25 out. Free money nice.

DH has had a £60 bonus from Gamebookers but I shall have to wait until some money clear before I can claim it. Want to make sure I have enough to wager it all. PartyBets and also gave us £9 each which was nice. Taking it slowly with MB as not many offers on and I have no float really.

Need to list the golf club I bought by mistake on Ebay tomorrow. Cost me £56 but the replacement only cost me £41 so if I sell it back for that I shall not have lost out.

Hope you are all well it has been a bit quiet in here guess it is all the bad news.

TallGirl

Too boring with all the mortgage related stuff so back to my old usuall chatty self.

Got two questions on Ebay about the golf club I have listed after I bought the wrong one. 1 guy wants to buy it now for £55 in cash and collect it so I have said yes. It is what I paid for it and there are several clubs listed exactly the same at the moment. The other question is to ask if it has a headcover and that the picture looks like I ran it over.

Gamevillage says I need to wager £32 on Bingo which I am not going to get able to do that is sooo boring. Played a bit more and got it up to £42 asked to take out £25 so we shall see what will happen.

Got rid of some crokery my neighbour had given my friend but she did not want all of it so put it on Freecyckle. I put it behind the gate as the garage is so full of empty bottles so they could collect it while I was at the gym and DH was home. DH did not listen (or I forgot to tell him) where it was so they had to come back. They did get our nearly new toaster too, nice young couple bought their first home and had nothing. Was doing toast under the grill.

Bodypump was hard but good can't do Pilates today.

So glad it is Friday and I am off to a little town in Dorset right on the Jurassic Coast should be a lovely drive. Quite looking forward to it even if it is all work.

No real plans for the weekend would like to play some golf but that is about it. Got a mystery shop next weekend from another company, pub visit locally no pay but £15 refund so should be a meal out. A bit scummy the pub though.

PS only had 3 glasses of wine all week and been twice to the gym so feeling smug. Only put on 1/2 kilo over the holiday.

llamahead

Hope you have a lovely weekend - good news about the golf club. Most impressive with the wine intake - I really must try harder to reduce mine!

TallGirl

Off to meet a Danish girl who spotted my name on Freecycle it is going to be a kind of blind date at Starbucks but she has just sent me her description:

typical Danish, tall blond curly long hair and blue eyes. Guess what that could be me - should be fun. Better leave now or I shall be late.

Will let you know how it goes later on.

Update on MB: Free £10 from Ladbrokes and Bet24 plus 10 free spins that I cannot claim right now.

StuartGMC

TG all sounds to be going well and your rebudget to account for your OH's financial position seems perfectly sound in putting back the MFD a tiny bit. It is interesting to see people retaining their own current a/c with a joint a/c; we did so a bit (made both joint a/c as I was caught in the tricky situation that OH couldn't do things like pay my credit card in those days if I was away a few weeks on business.... all pre-internet banking).

Then when we had DD and OH went part-time she felt low as her income dropped so much; not a prob as I paid bills and her income covers the nice things like holidays. The real challenge came when we moved to offset with Natwest and could only have one current a/c... We're managing these days and I do all the financial items anyway, but maybe once MF we may look to have own a/cs again.

Of course the S&S ISAs are identical for each of us as you would expect and OH is more than happy that I do the research and recommendations on the funds we use etc.

Hope the chat with your ex-pat contact went well?

TallGirl

Thank you very much Stuart our situation was almost identical to yours with regards to the current accounts. We have always had our own but when I was earning very little money DH paid all the bills and I paid nothing. I think I was on £4000 a year when we moved in together.

Then as I got full time work I started paying some of the bills but still he did most of them. It kind of stayed that way and he also paid for all the good as he was then earning about £1000 more than me. For the last 3 1/2 years I have paid 1/4 of the mortage and about 1/2 the bills but I do tend to cover all big expenses and holidays. I think this way is much fairer for him and today I paid for the weekly shop for the first time in years and years.

We still pay our own stuff and he owes me £200 for his Ebay golf clubs and he paid 1/2 the cat sitter. Silly really but we like to keep things seperately. Works for us. I could not live with 1 current account but that is just us.

Meeting with Dane went well. She was really nice and had a lovely 6 year old daughter. When she said she had small children I was thinking like really small 2 or 3 but they are 9 and 6 so at least you can talk to them. She asked loads of questions and also about why we don't have kids. I did not mind & I did tell her the full story. Up to that point you guys are the only other people that know we are trying for a child.

The Dane and I are going to meet up and I think she really would like some friends so it would be nice to meet up as a couple. I like the kid too really sweet she was and she played on her nintendo DS just like me.

Picked just over a kilo blackberries for the freezer and are currently making elderberry drink. It is going to be for hot toddy and I am hoping to get just over 1.5 litre. My hands are blood red as I type really messy. Better get back to it it needs to boil with sugar now.

Spent £40 on getting my golf clubs regripped they are lovely red and black ready to play tomorrow.