Owning your own home

@chalfie are you still after a gardener / landscaper? I know a guy who talks a good talk and is sound. Not used him myself...

Another interesting (ah-ha!) thing to watch out for when overpaying is that when you overpay your mortgage company will likely reduce your standard monthly payment slightly because you have a smaller loan than they expected when they did your initial calculation.

So, if you wanted your overpayments to reduce your overall term by, say, a year and you calculated what you needed to overpay to do that and divided that over a number of years to work out a monthly overpayment figure then you may find that because the standard payment keeps getting reduced you've only reduced your term by 11 months or so because you thought you'd be repaying say £1,100 a month instead of £1,000 a month but you actually paid £1,100, then £1,098, then £1,096, then £1,094 etc.

Yeah. I think we are, must have insurance as we are leaseholders.
All we want to do is:
new paving, squares (cheap, but not dirt cheap).
Level the garden a bit
Fence
Shed
Washing line

@rhowe @±ln(x) - Cheers those are the sort of things I was after.

The MSE calculator takes into account the tax free element.

Ultimately we’re not talking about vast sums and it is a bit depressing when you are talking about a couple of hundred £s. I guess every little helps though and the biggest difference is actually just putting away or overpaying some money.

Whatever you can do to make the most of your situation and put you in the best position for whatever might happen in the future.

Instant access savings accounts are good in that you can get your cash out whenever and for any reason, but they're bad because you get no return. Throwing it on the mortgage is good because you pay less interest, but clawing it back out in a rush may be tricky.

Offset mortgages are always worth considering if there is the option to.

Yep, and of course the best way to save cash on your mortgage is to not overpay for the property in the first place

Lol

Not sure whether this question fits in this thread or the home DIY one, but which appliance brands are lufgussers vibing on? We are doing our kitchen and wondering whether Neff, Bosch, Smeg and their ilk are worth the premium... Last time we got a £1 trial Which? subscription and bought the cheapest 'best buy' in every category and ended up with basic-but-functional stuff. Can afford nicer this time but also inherently tight/ skeptical of paying for a name...

Neff- We've got appliances that are 10+ years old in our flat and they're mostly going strong still (we had a 15year old washing machine break the other day, and our 12 year old freezer kinda needs replacing but it works really well still (well enough that it keeps going down the list of jobs that will eventually get done).
So unless there's been a marked decrease in quality- big thumbs up.

Siemens stuff is pretty great but £££ - we have a dishwasher & fridge/freezer

Our LG washer / dryer is also really good and not too expensive.

We've got an AEG washer dryer. It's on everyday, generally. Sometimes x3 a day.
It's quiet, it's quick. It washes well.

followed which? when i bought my fridge freezer 17 years ago
beko still going strong

followed which? when i bought white goods for new kitchen 10 years ago
washing machine and dishwasher both bosch still going strong

see what which? has to say

Your local Library may well have a Which? subscription that you can use on their PC's...

Miele4lyf

Bosch, Neff and Siemens are the same company and some of the products are near-identical.

AEG are the same as Zanussi and Electrolux and probably not that great.

Work have Neff stuff, and the fridges are all great, but the dishwashers always break.

I had a Liebherr fridge-freezer which was built like a tank but eventually (after 18 years) the door hinge collapsed. I replaced it with an Ebay Miele which was a rebadged version of the same fridge.

I had a Smeg dishwasher in the old flat and it all still worked 18 years later but not very well and it was quite knackered.

I've bought a Miele dishwasher and a Siemens fridge for the new place. Time will tell if they are reliable, but the dishwasher is built like a tank and the features (cutlery tray, moveable racks, wine glass stem holders, auto-door opening and a crystal glass programme) made it worth the considerable extra in my book. The fridge arrives tomorrow.

A lot of our stuff is Samsung, it works, it was reasonably priced, the washing machine plays Schubert's Trout Quintet when it's done.

My Son loves that. So much so that he sticks the machine on 3 times a day...

We are doing our kitchen and wondering whether Neff, Bosch, Smeg and their ilk are worth the premium...

We're just going through the same process. We looked at Siemens and Bosch in John Lewis and it seemed pretty low quality, flimsy plastic knobs etc. Ditto Smeg (terrible type around the dials which made me wonder how much care had gone into the rest of the design). So we looked at Miele at their Cavendish Place showroom and it seems much better quality. We're now trying to fit the cost of one of their ovens and a hob into our budget.

AEG washing machines are really repairable. I've fixed two separate faults on ours in the last couple of years (as it went over 8 years old), a motor and the door lock. Parts are easy to get, and easy to fit, which is a huge bonus in my book.

We're looking at them again.

We also like our AEG under-counter double oven, but the new models don't have such good oven spaces, so we're not sure on them.

There's a Beco fridge-freezer the wife had her eye on, but I think she found one from someone else that looked better.

I'll have to take a look at the Miele bits though. That dishwasher sounds good, and we'd not found one we liked yet.

We went with Beko and Baumatic because we're cheap but they're surprisingly good. The Baumatic gas hob is excellent - no flimsy plastic dials like even an AEG and Bosch we looked at. The Baumatic oven is fast and consistently heated. Baumatic dishwasher is good and solid. Biko Washer-dryer is slow if drying too (5hrs 30 mins!?) but does a good job. We went for a Haier fridge freezer which is a revelation. But bearing in mind this is our first kitchen and we're going from cheapo argos own brand fridge and a counter top microwave sized electric oven with a broken hob. Basically anything would be a revelation.
About 1500 quid for all the appliances including extractor.

Thanks for the replies! Yeah Miele is the shit - my folks' house is lacquered in the stuff - but it is next-level price bracket (£1,000 per appliance, basically, if you want anything other than the most basic functionality). Maybe we'll mix it up and not be slavish to one brand/look.

The Brixton spin doctor (washing machine repair guy) recommends Beko and Bosch when it comes to dryers.

He knows his onions.

@chalfie, that garden work sounds a bit "builder" for my guy who is more of your garden design / planting type. Sorry.

The question you'd ask a washing machine repair man is "What brand do you never see?" :-)

I had a Baumatic oven. Lovely thing it was, cooked everything to perfection. Until about two weeks after the warranty expired, when it completely died, whereupon I found Baumatic had gone bust and the only thing to do was replace it. The Brand has now been bought by either Hotpoint or Hoover and I wouldn't touch either of those companies with a bargepole.

my in-laws have boschin their reasonably new kitchen and both the oven and hob have been dogpoo. supposed to flash, turned out gash