Paying the car tax via EBay, and other shenanigans.

They've been struggling a bit because they get kept inside when it's really wet or snowy or windy - which is a lot! This is the downside of keeping them at someone else's place. They were pretty wild getting turned out today as they had been in for 3 days straight. Sigh. Spring needs to come sooooooon for everyone!

Current status of bank is £230 left with £140 absolutely certain to be spent. So I moved £50 into my card account towards next month's bill. It's a start.

This leaves me a very small amount to play with in my bank. I don't think I should need it (as the things I will definitely have to spend such as fuel and food shops go on the Amex) but watch this space. Plenty of time for it go awry as still nearly 2 weeks till payday.

The car is through its MOT and the work I needed (brake pads mostly) came within the amount I have in my car repairs fund. Phew.

mfmaybe wrote: »

OK so it finally cut off at £540, which was another fuel fill. The hotel is on the current month. So that's already at £340 (my share) as I put fuel in the truck too. (Although the hotel bill can come out of my holiday fund). But between food shopping and fuel I expect that to be much the same as last month.

Current Amex status - my share now £473. £90 can come out of the holiday fund for the hotel stay though. Will be definitely one more fuel fill and 2 more food shops at least. So that will be around £600 less the £90 in savings. Need to not spend anything else on that card.

Must meal plan well - there is plenty of stuff in the freezer.

PurpleFairy26 wrote: »

Yes please share your blog

I've PM'd you the link. Although it would be find-able on a search, I'm keeping it semi low profile until planning is approved. Happy to PM to anyone though.

Sainsbob card has been approved, though only with a £4k limit. Which is plenty of debt by any measure, but tiny in the grand scheme of building a house. :eek: Still, it will pay for all the bathroom kit; or upstairs carpets, which frees up cash for other stuff.

brizzlegirl wrote: »

Ooh yes, please PM me the link.

You sound a bit under the cosh MFM..sorry to hear that. Lots of organising and to do lists is never fun, even if like me, you like being a planner and organised. It sometimes feels like the walls are closing in. A good friend of mine has had the same situation with detailed quotes for a self build. Way higher than anything the design team etc indicated and now they are in a real bind as to what to do. Spend years getting planning and now are asking themselves... is it even doable? Lets hope you get some sensible quotes.

Vehicle problems..I sympathise. I have just taken a money transfer (0%) to pay a large bill. Not nice.

Heres to a good weekend for you. Hope DS is also good and enjoying nursery

Brizzle x

It's a massive leap of faith. Our architect knew our budget and hopefully has worked to that; but really you can't get quotes for the timber frame until you have plans; and by that point it's a little late. So far we've only spent money on fees, and they are over budget. We've had a quote for MVHR that wasn't even in our budget. And the timber frame quote we've seen is also massively over budget. So that's all going swimmingly Anyway I have sent you the link so you can read my housebuild woes in full detail!

Other things are mainly ok. Feeling a bit sluggish today, weather doesn't help.

Money news, I over egged the transfer out of the current account. There was a quarterly DD I had forgotten about and DS had a haircut. So I've moved money back to cover the last DD to come out. Payday not till Wednesday.

I've also got my flat advertised. Usually I'm pretty quickly flooded with enquiries. This time so far nothing, not even an ad view. So I may have overpriced it. Sigh.

PurpleFairy26 wrote: »

Thanks for the blog, a great read. What a beautiful setting.

What I find with our build (all be it not as big as yours) is that it's a bit chicken and egg, you don't know how much it's going to cost and although you brief an architect, they aren't actually pricing it and also seem to want to add some wow element and then you have to get it priced and it all just takes ages....

To be fair, our design process was quite straight forward, the thing now taking time is our architect has gone awol so we may have to do submissions ourselves. Looking forward to hearing about your other quotes.

Thanks PF. I only started it because I thought it would be fun and useful to record the process; if a few people read it and enjoy it that's great, but I'm not planning on being famous or anything :rotfl:. Hopefully it will get more interesting as it goes on, as there will be real stuff happening, and more photos and things. I am going to research time lapse for when the timber frame goes up. We have a go-pro but not sure if just the iphone is best.

How annoying about your architect going awol :mad:.

Ended up spending a bit of money this morning, buying a few more things from my friend's shop that is closing. Bargains were too good to miss, but she was selling them below what it cost her. Made me so sad (and I tried to persuade her to at least cover her costs). Retail is a pretty tricky business, no mistake.

I was reading jwil's diary and how she works out her mortgage PAD overpayments based on daily mortgage interest. Although we don't have a residential mortgage right now, and might not on the new build, I do still have the BtL. I've never focussed on overpaying as it was tax deductible at 40% for me; but now that's not the case, so there is reason to overpay. Once I stop work, it would be useful to have the flat income as profit. So I need to think that through. Money priorities right now, setting aside the funds for the newbuild, need to be:

Get ahead of Amex again, before I stop earning a salary.
Top up all the annual bills pots as much as possible.
Start paying down the BtL.

I should be able to do the first next pay month, because my livery bill will go down again. I'm off to tweak next month's budget now, to see how much I can do on the second one. The third one might have to wait a bit longer.