Feb

23

a proper introduction

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I’ve been thinking about blogging for ages. Well not really, as I’ve only discovered some good blogs recently. I’ve been particularly inspired by JD’s blog at www.getrichslowly.org/blog. One problem in trying to emulate JD is that he is a very competent writer and I am less so. I guess that just means I’ll need to do more editing.

Personal finance blogs are mostly US based. I’m going to write from an English perspective, purely because I am English and I live in England. So I’m not going to talk about 401(K)s and Roth IRAs like everyone else does. Instead I’m going to talk about pensions and ISAs. But most other similar rules apply.

Feb

23

buying a house - part 1

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I am at the moment in the process of buying a house and its going really well at the moment

I took two days off work to go house hunting and trekked round the various estate agents in my locality. After a viewing a few places, I found my house. By this I mean that when I walked into the place, it felt like it was mine. I put in an offer on Friday 2nd February which was accepted on the same day.

What I had meant to do, was make sure solicitors, mortgage and deposit were perfectly in place before I made the offer.

What I actually did was to have the mortgage applied for but not confirmed, no solicitor and only about 80% of the deposit available. So I ran round like a headless chicken getting a solicitor through http://www.easier2move.co.uk, transferring money from savings accounts and hoping that there wouldn’t be any problems with the mortgage.

So how did this great idea pan out?

Well the estate agent wouldn’t take the house off the market until they had the solicitors details. Which didn’t arrive till the following Tuesday. The mortgage Approval In Principle although given, never arrived - I just told the estate agent and the solicitor the details (which subsequently changed anyway). The deposit and fees money is still in the process of being put together, although there has been a bit of a saga with one of my online savings accounts.

So far, so good.

Feb

23

Lend me your eyes

Filed Under OT | 1 Comment

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your eyes.

This is a quick post to welcome you to my blog and to say hello to the world.

I will at some point write about personal finance topics, from the point of view of me.

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