Money.  It makes the world go round as people say and we often have a love-hate relationship with it.  It comes and goes.  One minute we may feel flush, the next an unexpected bill pops up and it’s all gone again.  It’s a hot topic of conversation in our home, especially at the moment as we ourselves are trying to decide the best course of action with regards to staying and improving our current home, or whether moving house altogether is best. 

Needless to say, both options will require borrowing more money from the bank either by re-mortgaging where we are currently or borrowing more to upsize to a new property.  We just don’t have enough space (or toilets) and the layout is not ideal for us.  I don’t feel settled here and I didn’t feel 100% sure when we moved here, so I’m not sure I ever will.  I think Ben is keen to make this property right for me, but it’s possible we’ll never make back the money we invest.  That only seems a wise move to me if it is our dream home and we both feel settled.  If not, then we may still dislike it (or I may) and we’ll have wasted a small fortune.  Or rather have borrowed and continue to owe a small fortune.

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A wise investment to move?

At least if we move it will definitely be an investment, providing the house prices continue to rise.  Plus we have a much better idea of what we want from a property now we have already experienced buying one, so we should hopefully get the layout right next time!  It just scares me to increase our mortgage.  There’s a part of me that wants to just downsize and pay our mortgage back really quickly, but I know that won’t really work as I already feel like I don’t have enough space or privacy in my home and it will only feel more cramped as the children get older and bigger.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have enough cash to not have to worry about borrowing money?  Our mortgage is our biggest debt, but I like to think of it as sensible debt.  After all, though a huge chunk of our repayments is interest, we are still paying towards something.  We’ve also made around £55000 in four years as we got our house for a steal and prices have risen considerably in the past four years.  If we were renting we’d have nothing to show at all for all the money spent.  I rented for over ten years before owning a home and I feel like it was wasted money.

See also The best ways to increase the value of your home

Not our only debt…

As well as a mortgage we have two loans.  One was for home improvements as our entire home needed doing up.  In fact we’re still doing it four years on!  Getting a loan terrifies me slightly, but I work our finances out to the penny each month and I made absolutely sure we could afford to repay them and still have plenty of disposable cash left afterwards.  There’s still the fear that one of our incomes could stop, or even worse, both!  Though I hope that wouldn’t happen and we would quickly find work again.   I’ve never been out of work and I don’t think Ben has either.  Whilst building my business up I cleaned outside toilets in the evenings, really not nice, but I will do anything if I have to!

Whilst I know our loans weren’t the most ideal solution, after all they are debt, they did seem right for us at the time.  We are able to comfortably pay them back with our current earning situations and they enabled us to crack on with stuff that would have otherwise taken us ten years to save for! 

Should I stay or should I go?

So I’m no further ahead on my dilemma of whether to stay put or move home.  We  have started putting the feelers out there.  We have had someone measure up our property last week for an extension and they’ll email me a quote this week.  I’ve also got an agreement in principle from the bank so we can look at properties for moving to see if that makes more sense.  I really hate this whole house situation thing and just want to feel settled somewhere and at home.  Maybe as I haven’t ever felt 100% here that’s a sign to move?

 

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