PinknSparkly's Mortgage Wannabe savings dairy

Thanks SW. I checked with the university this week and they confirmed that the system has been updated to show that I've submitted and that it could take up to 90 days from submission to hear back from my examiners. I always said I'd never ever do a PhD either (I did a four year degree followed by a 4 year graduate training programme which involved another masters degree) but somehow this one came up that was EXACTLY what I was interested in. If you're not super enthusiastic about the subject at the start then I can't even begin to imagine how tough it would be to complete, after that many years of getting sick to the back teeth of the topic It still doesn't feel real and as I'm involved in a big project at work that is winding up in the next month or so I'm still super busy. Hopefully once I hear the outcome, it'll feel a little more real. I am, however, finally starting to feel slightly less anxious all the time which is a start!!

I'm really really really looking forward to the new garden. We've just found out that we can't have the skip where the gardener wanted it (it's too close to a junction) so my husband is going to have to go back and discuss with the gardener the two alternative options. We're thinking along the same lines as you SW, and are planning on getting a plumber in on the same day the gardener starts (we're not around between now and then to get it done in advance) to make sure we've got a downstairs loo for them to use. It's tiled floors all the way from the garden to the downstairs loo so shouldn't be too much of a cleanup whereas using the upstairs bathroom means mud ground into the carpets on the stairs and hallway!

We got back from our hols on Saturday, and picked up a new loo on the drive back from the airport (as you do!). I had no idea there were so many choices when it came to loos, and THEY ALL LOOK PRACTICALLY IDENTICAL. We opted for the cheapest one - we were tossing between that and the second cheapest that has a slightly smaller cistern but the cheaper one had a 10 year warranty whereas the more expensive one only had 1 year. Exactly what they think I might be doing to my loo to require using the warranty I'm not sure, but there we go

We had a mostly lovely time, though I spent quite a lot of it in a lot of pain. I did previously think that stress exacerbated the pain, but this holiday proved once and for all that low stress situations can also trigger it!! I've not cried in pain in a long time, but I was bawling at one point I've got a follow up appointment with the hospital consultant on 17th May and a new patient appointment with my new GP on 22nd May (my previous GP were completely useless, when I was in complete agony and needed painkillers, the earliest emergency appointment they could give me was in three weeks time and they have on numerous occasions lost my repeat prescriptions and refused to write replacement ones as they've "already written them"). So I'm hoping that between the two of them, we can finally come up with a plan of action. I first/last saw the hospital consultant on 1st Feb who wanted me to try something that I knew from experience wouldn't work, and indeed has actually made the pain even worse but hopefully, having tried his plan, we can try something else that may actually work (I'm pushing for laparoscopic surgery as I had it 5 years ago and really helped but he was reluctant to refer me for it at the time which I understand as the surgery is never going to be curative, it is simply a means of reducing the problem until it grows back and so in a sense it could be regarded as sub-optimal use of NHS funds).

Tomorrow, our garden revamp gets started :D:D:D My husband has the rest of this week booked as either annual leave or working from home days. We got the skip issue sorted in the end - we've ended up going for a man with a flatbed truck who will drive up and away on the day and so he can park where the gardener wanted the skip to go. It was the gardener's suggestion, and works out around £100 cheaper than the skip option so is a double win really! The plumber is also booked to install the loo first thing tomorrow morning, hopefully that will be done before the gardeners first need a wee! It does rather mean that our savings have taken a bit of a beating - no money will be saved this payday and some will have to come out of savings, but it was all planned for so isn't a problem as such. I just feel weird about not putting anything into savings/mortgage OPs this month!!

Thanks SW. I really, really, really can't wait to have a usable garden again! I've been mentally planning my evenings sat out there with a gin and soda and a good book in the sunshine! The gardeners started at 7.30 and the plumber was due at 9am so my husband has been sending me photographic updates for the past two hours. It's quite incredible how much they can get done with the proper power tools (as opposed to cutting down a tree with a handsaw as I did the summer before last!!). The cat looks fairly forlorn at losing his tree though (that's how he gets in and out of the garden) but he also runs vertically up and down the fences too so he'll figure it out! And you're right, it's absolutely worth the money for the rewards it will bring. The money we're using is part of an inheritance from my grandparents and I wanted to use the money on "something" as opposed to it being spent here and there on random little things. We still have more work to do to the house that we will use the inheritance for.

I'm doing a little better pain-wise the past few days, but unfortunately it's not something that will go away without some sort of medical intervention

Thanks Skinty!

This morning I made a teeny tiny mortgage OP of £13-odd from interest, tilly tidying and TopCashBack and it's knocked another month off our mortgage length, taking a total of 15 months off our mortgage. It's still got 33.5 years to run though which is longer than most people start with :rotfl: More excitingly, I calculated our LTV for when the fixed rate is up (Feb 2024), and if we make no further mortgage overpayments than the £12-odd we do through making a round £750 DD payment each month AND our house value stays exactly the same as Halifax valued it at when we took out the mortgage (so hopefully a worst case scenario), then we'll have just crossed the border into sub-60% LTV territory for the cheapest mortgages we can get our mitts on. I'm stupidly proud of us for managing to achieve this so soon! It's amazing how much difference small OPs make in terms of reducing the outstanding mortgage, but nevertheless whilst mortgage rates are so low I am still determined to invest the majority of our savings into S&Ss rather than mortgage OPs.

Well this month has flown by since I last posted! I was abroad for the best part of a week for a meeting, and managed to badly sprain my ankle on the second to last day so have been limping around feeling sorry for myself ever since! Our garden has been done and looks lovely, if still a little bare (We've covered the flowerbeds with plastic sheeting for a few weeks while we persuade the cat to use his new plant pot toilet rather than the flowerbed, time will tell how successful that turns out to be but we figured it's worth a try!!). The artificial grass is way better than I was expecting and is so lovely and soft that we seem to end up sitting on that more often than the new garden chairs! We bought the chairs from tesco at the weekend and my husband was sat in one, trying it out for size, in the middle of the aisle while shoppers were wandering round buying their milk and bread :rotfl: I think we'll pop back for a couple more though as, with hindsight, we'd rather have six new ones and use dining chairs if we have LOADS of people round rather than four new ones and four rather grim looking white plastic ones.....

I've opened us both our first S&S ISA (though we both have a S&S LISA already) this week and have put a grand total of £2 in each of them (they wouldn't let me only add £1!). My plan is to pay into one of them each month, alternating the one I pay into as I've opened a fixed fee account rather than % fee so this way we only pay one £5 fee each month.

I had an appointment at the hospital last week and am being referred for surgery which is amazing news and exactly what I wanted - as my sister said "I don't think I've ever heard anyone be so excited to be cut open before". I can't wait to be pain-free again, or at least reduce the pain levels to a manageable one! I've got my new patient appointment with my new GP practice tomorrow too. I just know I'm going to forget to take a wee sample with me :rotfl:

Hope everyone is good and enjoying the GORGEOUS weather we've got going on at the moment