Our plan :)

I've been missing writing on this blog, and the connection with people who know my 'journey' I often think about making time for it and sharing my journey again - we have come so far and there IS so much to share. I am just out of the habit of actually writing... Instagram is good (and bad) like that!

He literally takes me by the hand, pulls me down and pushes my face at the flowers! So cute!

So I'm sorry if this post is a bit all over the place but I feel like i just have to go with it and my flow will come back :)

Back to the beginning - our journey to a dream, I feel that Al and I have been really good at keeping our main goals in our head as this last year has progressed. Our marriage first, happiness of all three of us, family time, work time to be sure we are travelling in the direction of our dreams. We are becoming less focused on the 'dream' and more on the 'journey' lately. Maybe having your own family does that? I saw this clearly when a house round the corner from us came up for sale at a very reasonable price, it has only a small garden and so would have been dismissed by us in the past but we ended up chatting for a long time about it, and deciding buying a house like that would be great for us right now. We talked about how it'd be a good investment - its a great time to buy, maybe sell in 3 years or so, how we love the area where we live, how we plan to concentrate on growing our business over the next few years and how if we have another baby in that time we'd need the time we want away from our business to nurture our growing family :) Buying land to build a home this year and start our dream farm is just not the right focus of energy and time for us... Plus how would it even be possible, at this stage of being self employed? We want to keep working hard on Itty Bitty Book Co, it is bringing us so much joy and fulfilment :) We hope to be in a position to step out of the day to day running of the business and have the time to invest in our smallholding when we find it :)

We're happy with that plan, it feels right :) and its nice to write it down too, to share it with you guys :) I know theres a lot of smiley faces in this post but I really am smiling so :)

A rare shot of the 3 of us (all facing the camera!), at a lovely family wedding last Saturday :)

Ché Phoenix and I went on an adventure to find the sheep - I still love the closeness you get using a baby carrier, when he gets tired on our walks i put him in and he cuddles up to me and 'talks' and points at what he wants me to notice, birds, planes, cars... And I kiss his face every 2 seconds until he looses patience with me and then he starts telling me 'no nu' and shaking his head lol I love him so much... More on him in the next post :) 

Starting the house hunt!

We recently got mortgage approved (YAY) so now we are at the exciting stage of actually looking with a view to buy - not just window shopping! It's got us talking about all the options and how much we'd be willing to compromise on different aspects of our home and land. I think it's really important to know all your boundaries before viewing so your not pulled out of your comfort zone by the excitement of 'BUT THIS COULD BE OURS!!!!!' like we might if we viewed something like this!

Photo credit

These are the main points we want to keep in mind while house hunting;

1. Money - the most important thing is that our new home does not force us into a set lifestyle for the next 10 years (i.e both have to work full time to cover bills), we must have the financial flexibility to live the lifestyle we choose. THAT MEANS BUY CHEAP!
2. Space - enough space to have everything for our dream
3. Location - close to where we live now (County Antrim, Ireland) not too close to main roads or roads likely to be developed in the future

There is also another option we have been considering the last few weeks and its starting to make more sense. That is, if the houses we are looking at don't fit our first point then we will consider an in between house, a house we can call home for the next 5 years where we can live the lifestyle we crave but maybe not have enough land for pigs, orchard, fire wood growing and goats etc Like this one we saw down the road (price too high and not quite rural enough though...)

Front garden is right on a road - not too busy though...

Really big back garden, could have hens poly tunnels and grow
everything we want, maybe even keep a dairy goat?

There is always options around if you don't have the land yourself but want these things. For example we could rent agricultural land - thats very cheap and could be really handy if it was your neighbour!

An added bonus of buying smaller/cheaper is that as the market starts to pick up again over the next few years and you do lots of work to your little cheap home you'll find it's worth going up and up! Leaving you with a house worth a lot more than what you paid come time to sell up and move on. Of course you might well fall in love with your house and never want to leave! Then you've saved yourself a huge amount of money, got your mortgage payed off quicker and everyones happy! 

What do you think? Would any of you recommend and 'in between' house? The idea is really growing on us and it would mean we could buy sooner... 

We got mortgage approved!!!

We had an appointment with our bank yesterday and we were so excited even though we thought it'd just be good to find out what we're working towards and get an idea of how long it'll take us but she said that they'd be happy to offer us a mortgage now (if the credit checks turned out ok). We couldn't believe it! Not that we'd take the one she was offering us (25 years, 10% deposit and not great rate...)

She went through with us all the different types of mortgages and what difference it makes to have a 15% deposit instead of a 10% - a HUGE difference btw! Also we saw the difference of 20 years VS 25 years, that makes an even bigger difference. We want to have our mortgage paid of in under 10 years and seeing the repayment amounts showed us that we could definitely do it :)

The next challenge is getting them to agree to a shorter term, even 15 years maybe, that should bring our total repayment down a lot and give us a better interest rate while still giving us breathing room of 5 years minimum payments if we need it for some reason. We don't want to be 'strangled' by our mortgage!

The problem there is that the bank doesn't really take into account how good we are with money and how little we live on, everyone is tarred with the same brush with regards to what they think you need to have available for living expenses. The main thing they look at is the money coming in and for us it's about average atm.

So right now we'll keep building up more of a deposit and we'll be focusing on keeping our expenses down so that when we go back they can clearly see on our bank statements what we live on each month. We are so happy just doing what we're doing atm that in a way we're glad to be staying here in this house for a little longer preparing for our dream where we'll have this lifestyle again but it will be ours :)

I know lots of you have mortgages, some nearly paid off (well done Mr + Mrs SFT!), most of you trying to pay it of quickly, is there any advice you'd give to a young couple just getting into the whole mortgage thing? Any lessons you learnt the hard way that we could maybe avoid?

Some of the ways we save for our dream.

Our mission is to save a lot each month so that when we buy a home/land we will have a substantial deposit, get a low interest rate mortgage, be able to pay it off in 10 years then live debt free after that. Ambitious I know, but we are ambitious people and we'll make it happen :)

Shopping...
We worked out when the reduced items come out at our local supermarket (friday 7pm) and it saves us a fortune! We buy meat and just freeze it straight away, other items are usually fine for a few days. We also bulk buy, when something we use a lot of or buy regularly is on a really good deal we stock up, no point paying full price next month. The 800g mayo you see below was £1.62 usually £3.15! It's one of the few expensive brand names we do shell out for so when I saw this deal I was so excited. The meat is an amazing deal - each packet was £4 now 40p (only use by tomorrow) and lamb is my favorite too!

The big bills...

Rent - always the same but we love our home, so don't mind paying for it each month. Electricity - we are just sensible with it. Internet and phone deal - we regularly check we are getting the best deal, they change so often its really worth it (mobiles are just PAYG). Car Insurance - same as Internet we change up nearly every year and haggle down the phone! Car Tax and running - we own a small clio so tax is really cheap. It's a diesel and we share it, only having one car can be an inconvenience but its so worth it for the money we save.

The wee bills...

We write it all down, on a notepad in the kitchen, one page for each week and it really helps us. From that we can see if we are on track for our monthly targets or if we've spent a lot and need to cut back next week etc.

So those are some of the things that help us reach our savings target each month, nothing ground breaking lol but they work for us :) I will say that we are not in high wage brackets by any means and we are not scrimpers, we are savers. We do treat ourselves, we go out, we put the heat on when its cold enough and we use lights at night. We don't believe in sacrificing or struggling now for something in the future, we believe in happiness today while doing what we can to ensure a secure, comfortable future :)

If your on the same page/journey and have any tips to share I'd love to hear them 

Astra xx

Date in the park

On sunday we went for a wee date in the park :) The weather last weekend was amazing (on Monday too actually) so we wanted to take advantage. We took a picnic and went to explore Lady Dixon park, we have been to it before ages ago but not in Autumn, the Japanese garden looked stunning.

This is my favorite tree in the world, one day I'll have one in my dream garden :)

I brought a leaf home to press.

Japanese garden.

This tree has smaller leaves than my favorite and they're bright yellow
 but they are both the same shape and look lovely together
so I should probably have one of these in my dream garden too :)

Collecting pine cones for winter decorations.

I thought the colours on this tree were amazing.

We took some time to hang out in a really cool tree, I have a small fascination
with trees if you haven't noticed by now lol!

I also did some very ungraceful climbing which resulted in even more ungraceful pictures but I'll spare you those!

We sat in the sun and people watched while we ate our picnic, it was lovely. We looked at old couples and wondered what we'll be like at their age, it's hard to imagine how much history we'll have, how much we will have experienced together and how much more we'll love each other because of it. I look forward to it all :)

Honesty

I've just published a page that explains what it is that we are working towards, what our dream is. It feels strange to share such a personal thing but nice at the same time, like its all out in the open, this is who I am, this is my dream for my future :)