TMWM

Another week done. Which means another week closer to moving into the new pad! 🙂 EKK!!!

It’s amazing how quick life goes isn’t it!

I have a potential date of completion on the house as the 30th June, which is only 7 weeks away!. It still doesn’t feel real that I am FINALLY buying a new house. It’s exciting to think I will be back on the housing ladder after coming off it 6 years ago – A decision I should have never made by the way. Hindsight is just wonderful. I always remember someone telling me years ago, that it’s really hard to get back on the housing ladder if you come off it and they were totally right. I have clearly ignored that advice, not just once but twice!

I swear I will never come off it again.

The first house I bought in 1998 was a 2 bedroomed semi detached house for £36,000. I sold it after a relationship breakdown a couple of years later for £39,000.

In 2004 I bought a similar house again, but on my own :). It was a two bedroomed semi detached for £96,000, I sold it in 2016 for £98,000. If I wanted to buy this house again (as this is the one I’m living in now), I would have to pay over £125,000! Holy cow – if there is one thing I can take from this, it’s property is like shares, do not sell when they don’t make you a profit and most definitely buy with the intention of keeping long term (unless you’re flipping off course :))! I know property is different to shares as it’s where you live and you may in the future need to change where you live. But if I’d have kept hold of that property from 1998, I reckon it would be worth about £145,000 now (according to Zoopla) and I would have been mortgage free in a few years – Now that would be sweet!

Ah well, everything happens for a reason I guess.

So I heard back from the promotion I applied for and guess what, I didn’t get it 😦 Maybe I was really pushing my luck going for two promotions in four months especially when I only started permanently with the company in January this year lol – God loves a trier though right?!

Never mind, at least I tried. I have asked HR for some feedback so I can work on any areas of development ready for when another role is available. I’m still loving my job and team so it’s not like I’m desperate to run away from them!

Nothing much has happened on the financial front this week. I guess that’s the problem with being paid monthly, you have to wait a whole month for anything to happen! I really can’t wait to get into the house though and redo my budget. I feel like my budget is all over the place at the moment as I have frozen all payments into the sinking funds until I have enough to pay the solicitor, stamp duty and the essentials like beds and lawn in cash. Once I have this sorted, I will redo my budget so I give myself the available funds not just over pay on debt but to buy other bits for the property. I also need to factor in paying the deposit back that I have borrowed.

I was thinking, as the deposit is £11500, to try and pay £1500 as a lump sum before I move in. As when I move in my bills will be tighter. Not sure though, they are all just thoughts at the moment.

What I Have Spent This Week

• £21.06 Macdonalds (twice)
• £4.19 Pets at Home – Fish food
• £4.50 Next T Shirt
• £7.00 Co-op snacks
• £6.85 Newsagent – snacks
• £35.00 Hair
• £91.01 Petrol
• £39.83 Morrisons Food
• £31.10 Marks and Spencer
• £6.05 Costa
• £6.85 Post Office
• £11.00 Wilko
• £9.35 Pharmacy
• Total £273.79

I feel like it’s been an expensive week this week and this is not helped by the two Macdonalds we had and the extra snacks we bought. Fish food, hair, food and petrol are general expenses I pay for every month apart from the fish food which is every few months.

The T-shirt I bought from Next was a huge saving as my daughter wanted me to spend £20 on a T- shirt that had a sunflower and Ukraine flag on for Ukraine day at school. Using any excuse to make something I obviously said no lol I’ll make one instead 🙂 It turned out pretty good aswell! All I did was buy a plain white T-shirt from Next and used my printer to print a copy of picture with the sunflower and flag off. I placed it underneath the front of the T-shirt and using fabric pens, I traced the picture and coloured it in. My daughter was so pleased with the result and it saved me £16.00 so I was super chuffed with that.

The Marks and Spencer cost was a couple of Summer school dresses I bought for my daughter. I don’t usually shop in there, but they were out of stock in Asda and I didn’t want to wait for the order as it had been super hot this week and she’d been too hot at school bless her.

The Post Office costs were me sending more ‘signed for’ documents to the solicitor for the house 🙂 and the pharmacy costs were from me no longer being eligible for free prescriptions 😦 apparently I earn too much now (I wish!).

I’ve had some rubbish financial news this week though. First I had a letter saying that I had unlawfully obtained free dental treatment when I wasn’t eligible and have to now pay a £100 fine and £23.80 for the cost of my treatment. I could have sworn that the tax credit exemption certificate covered the year and as mine was sent out last April 2021 I thought I was good till April 2022 – apparently not. When I double checked the certificate they sent me, I saw that the expiry was October 2021. I have emailed them to explain what’s happened and asked that they show some compassion and reconsider the £100 penalty fee but haven’t heard back yet. Fingers and toes crossed that they accept it. I have no problem in paying for my treatment or prescriptions but generally thought I was exempt :(.

I have also lost £134 on some sofa covers I ordered from the internet from https://www.lovesweetstyle.com/. I wouldn’t usually slate a company on social media but need to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else. DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY!

So I ordered some sofa covers and although they were lovely, they didn’t fit quite right and didn’t feel that great on the sofa as my sofa is leather and they kept slipping and moving when you sat on them so I decided to send them back. I went to their website and it says if you want a refund you need to email them, which I did. When they emailed back I noticed the email address was Chinese. There were no indications from their website that this product came from China. In the email, they were a bit apprehensive about agreeing to a refund but finally agreed saying I would need to send the parcel back tracked and send them the tracking number. I packaged the parcel up and took it to the Post Office who told me it would be £94 BLOODY POUNDS to send it back.

I was shocked! Why would I pay that?! The Post Office lady advised me to check with other courier companies to see if I can get it any cheaper, which I did but at 4200kg in weight, no other parcel company would quote me. So I’m stuck with it.

When I went back on line to investigate the company, I came across the reviews and they were awful. I just wished I read them before I bought. I’m so annoyed with myself but there’s not alot I can do about it now other than try and sell them on. This will have to be taken as a steep learning curve and I will never be buying anything outside of the UK for any value again.

Has anyone else experienced like this before? Let me know in the comments below.

Anyway, not wanting to end on a low – I have sold a few more things on Vinted this week and my balance is up to £25.50 so far. It’s not huge, but I like that it is making a difference to the declutter and making us tiny savings at the same time 🙂

Have a great week, thanks for reading, Heidi x