Cheery's country living adventure

Evening MSE chums :hello:

Well, our nice Restaurant at Home experience was augmented by a couple of friends who were unexpectedly driving through our nearest town on the way home from visiting family and asked if they could pop in :j :j I LOVE impromptu visitors :j Well, mostly :rotfl:

As it happens, I've been following Flylady pretty consistently all year :rotfl: so far, so the bits of the house that aren't a building site look pretty reasonable, and because we were having Restaurant at Home, we had the table all set nicely and nice music on, and we always have candles lit in the evening, and (sshhhhh) the Christmas tree is still up so everything felt lovely and cosy and I felt like a Proper Homemaker or something :rotfl: :rotfl:

(Of course these particular friends have seen us in every state so they didn't for a second believe that we always spend evenings like that :rotfl: but the illusion was nice for a while :rotfl: )

Anyway, Monday night is finances night! :j :j I have an appointment with Mr Cheery and a film on the sofa at 7pm :rotfl: and I want a shower before then, and to sort out clothes for tomorrow etc (got to keep up with those before bed routines!) so best get cracking.

First up - YNAB :money: Only did it a week ago so shouldn't take too long...

Then I want to investigate savings accounts, and ring the mortgage people for a budget (actually I should check what time they shut first in case it's 6pm)

Ready, steady, GO! :j

Right - new Post Office account opened - and it was actually pretty easy, they recognised me as soon as I clicked 'submit' and let me close the old account and transfer the dosh to the new one straight away - and have paid the annual interest of £13.83 too :money: I stupidly clicked the monthly interest button on the new one, so have got 1.29% rather than 1.3% which might lose me about 20p over the year - I can live with that :rotfl:

Will leave the Coventry one til the two regular savers come to an end which isn't til 8th Feb. Feels good to have sorted it though! :j :j

On a roll now, and Mr Cheery has delayed the start of our sofa appointment by 30 mins so I'm going to ring up for a mortgage balance

And the question is - do I add another £10 onto the monthly payments so it feels like I'm paying *something* extra, or is £919.99 enough already :eek:

Thanks folks :j :j

Good point about different milestones - won't be too long before we've paid off 10% :money: that will be [Cheery counts on fingers] £21,500 and if we're currently at £198,300 that means [Cheery counts on toes] we've already paid off

[CHEERY ADMITS DEFEAT AND RESORTS TO CALCULATOR WHILE INSISTING IF SHE HAD PEN AND PAPER SHE'D MANAGE]

:rotfl:

£4,800 to go til we've paid off 10% (we'll be down to £193,500 - I think ]

So if we stick to £930 a month, we'll be down to £193,650 after June's payment...

... which makes me think we can cobble together an extra £150 by June so we can get to 10% off :money: :money:

Next milestone though is to get down to £195,000 - we'll have paid off £20,000 in total then, and that should happen in, er... May :j

Of course I'm ignoring the fact that the real mortgage amount was something entirely ludicrous like £214,983.40 :rotfl:

This is entirely my fault :rotfl: building society would only cover 10 acres of land, our house has slightly more so I had to calculate the value of the extra to split the title deed and buy that field separately (apologies if you were round back then and remember the whole sorry saga )

I just went on average prices for this type of land, divided it by the exact number of acres, and didn't round up. Nobody said anything until the final days when the mortgage had been issued as a round number and the solicitor had to demand a letter from building society saying they wouldn't quibble over the 40p difference :rotfl:

I count it as £215,000 which means I'm always a couple of quid ahead of myself :rotfl: