What's made your day today?

[Slim]

Liverpool defeated at home by Crystal Palace after one of the BBC pundits stated, matter-of-factly before the game, that Palace would be "battered".

[Fishy]

Trying to find an impartial jury for the Trump trial.. an impossible task..

[dom]

Suns up the shit Trump is and America's in

[dom]

Spotify now providing 15 hours of audiobooks a month as part of its premium service. Fantastic! Although the sceptic in me wonders how long til they use this as an excuse to up the fee again

[Slim]

Just had a call from Vision Express. They've broken my Oakley cycling frames.

Cross-posted that from the "grumpy" thread with happier news. They refused to replace them, but offered a new pair of frames up to £80 in value (ie inferior). After an argument in the store - their manager lied to my face, claiming I'd been told they were likely to break and this would be at my own risk - I gave up and accepted, but I put a powerfully negative review on Trust Pilot.

Their complaints department contacted me to apologise, offered to replace the Oakleys with the original Oakley frames and told me I could keep the ones I'd already accepted as replacements - which actually I quite like. So I've ended up with a free pair of specs.

[Slim]

Our mortgage deal is due to expire in May, so I phoned Santander to arrange a new one. But the best deal they could offer me was going to cost me an extra £200 a month, because it's a very short term (due to end in December). The only other option was to pay the whole thing off now.

So they sent me a redemption statement, I did the sums taking into account interest I'd lose and I've just paid off our mortgage. I made a payment of nearly £49,000 using a smartphone app (we were due to pay them £43,600 in December).

[David L]

Our mortgage deal is due to expire in May, so I phoned Santander to arrange a new one. But the best deal they could offer me was going to cost me an extra £200 a month, because it's a very short term (due to end in December). The only other option was to pay the whole thing off now.

So they sent me a redemption statement, I did the sums taking into account interest I'd lose and I've just paid off our mortgage. I made a payment of nearly £49,000 using a smartphone app (we were due to pay them £43,600 in December).

Paid mine off in 2010. Promptly re-mortgaged to finance a buy to let. Took out a second mortgage five years later for a second rental property. Our current borrowing totals £246k.
We will have to remortgage to cover £120k next year. It's likely to be considerably more expensive so will possibly pay it off.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Our mortgage deal is due to expire in May, so I phoned Santander to arrange a new one. But the best deal they could offer me was going to cost me an extra £200 a month, because it's a very short term (due to end in December). The only other option was to pay the whole thing off now.

So they sent me a redemption statement, I did the sums taking into account interest I'd lose and I've just paid off our mortgage. I made a payment of nearly £49,000 using a smartphone app (we were due to pay them £43,600 in December).

I'll never forget that sense of relief and satisfaction on the day I paid off the mortgage. I paid it in person at my local RBS branch. I visited a couple of local hostelries afterwards and as I turned the corner of my road seeing the house that I then owned for the first time, I took a photo with tears in my eyes. The decision to pay it off early came at the cost of losing quite a bit of my social life and driving a pretty ordinary (but great) little car for years longer than intended. This was due to it being an endowment type mortgage with the associated shortfall, so some serious saving was necessary. I was petrified at the time of cashing in the endowment as memories of the banking crisis were fresh in my mind and my fear was something similar might have happened just as I was about to do the deed. I hope you enjoy a glass or two of something expensive tonight, James.

[Slim]

I hope you enjoy a glass or two of something expensive tonight, James.

Thanks! I wasn't expecting to do that today. But I do have a half-decent bottle of red.

I first took out a mortgage in 1991, on my old house in Derby. It cost me £38,000. I took out a 95% mortgage with a 5 year bank loan for the 5%. But it was a 27 year mortgage so if I'd never got married, I'd have been mortgage free in the first half of 2018.

But this is a much nicer house, I must admit.

[Nickslikk2112]

Paid my (our) mortgage off after the first time I got made redundant, got a decent pay off so it made sense once I found gainful employment again. Saved me jumping through hoops to claim on the Mortgage repayment insurance second time I got made redundant. Also made it easier when the next lot of gainful employment I found wasn't as well paid.

[captainkurtz]

I paid off my mortgage is 2011 and then moved to a much bigger house in 2015 where I needed a large mortgage again.  I think it'll probably take me another decade to pay this one off - but the value of the house is about 7 times the outstanding loan amount, so there is that.

I've spent an absolute fortune on the house since 2015...I could easily have paid the mortgage off by now with that..

[Thenop]

Happy to see all the succes stories in buying houses. I have been a bit less fortunate, I am renting a place after selling the house some 12 years ago with a huge loss. Mostly to do with health and self preservation: the health of our neighbours was in jeopardy because I would have killed them (both sides), and self presentation to keep me out of prison doing so.
No more buying for me for the forseeable future, the prices are ridiculous over here.

Anyway, it's Friday, which makes it a good day always.

[David L]

Happy to see all the succes stories in buying houses. I have been a bit less fortunate, I am renting a place after selling the house some 12 years ago with a huge loss. Mostly to do with health and self preservation: the health of our neighbours was in jeopardy because I would have killed them (both sides), and self presentation to keep me out of prison doing so.
No more buying for me for the forseeable future, the prices are ridiculous over here.

Anyway, it's Friday, which makes it a good day always.

Sorry to hear of your bad luck. To have bad neighbours must make for a miserable existence.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Happy to see all the succes stories in buying houses. I have been a bit less fortunate, I am renting a place after selling the house some 12 years ago with a huge loss. Mostly to do with health and self preservation: the health of our neighbours was in jeopardy because I would have killed them (both sides), and self presentation to keep me out of prison doing so.
No more buying for me for the forseeable future, the prices are ridiculous over here.

Anyway, it's Friday, which makes it a good day always.

I feel your pain with the less happy side of your story. I've lived in the same house for a very long time. It's in a lovely area and it would be a real wrench to leave. However, about twelve years ago new neighbours moved in. Things were ok to begin with, not my kind of people but live and let live and all that. He's in a fairly ordinary white collar job, works at home now since lockdown, and after a few harebrained attempts at running a business she now does the same. Things escalated for a variety of reasons and I took some really low drunken insults from them and some co-revellers late one summer's night last year. It's been a quiet war of attrition ever since and is taking its toll on my health. Time to up sticks I think but really unsettling. Sorry about the crossover nature of this post but it seemed to fit.

[Thenop]

Mayeb we should do a vent about the neighbours thread