Owning your own home

https://www.plumbnation.co.uk/site/honeywell-dt92e-wireless-digital-room-thermostat/

Next. The house had a bunch of ugly wall mounted lamps. They've been removed (thankfully) and been there's these wagoboxes in their place. I assume they're just holding the wires cos they're live?

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Yeah good practice to terminate any loose but still potentially live wires in a terminal box (wago is just a brand, loads of different ones. UK folk often just use a ceiling rose/lighting connection and terminate it inside that as they are cheap and obvious why its there). Dodgier practice is just wrap it in electrical tape and hide it in the wall.
Was chopping in a skirting board for engineered wood floor to go in and cut right through a surprise ring main for the downstairs flat! No idea how I didn't get a shock, but made a good fizzle pop sound until their RCD tripped out and scorched the paint on the skirting. Why it was hiding in our skirting board I don't know.

Did one part of our mortgage a few months back and went for 2 years (which regretting). Now doing the other part and going for 5 - can't see any way this shitshow will be over in 2.
Was looking back to when we first took out part 2, 19 years ago - was a tracker +0.6% at the then base rate of 5.4% - obviously has been brilliant over that time, but now looking less so. First mortgage was in the early 90s - 10% - ouch.

God that sounds shit. Yeah we're definitely saying no. As @NickCJ and @aggi also say it'd be loads of hassle with contracts, insurance, etc for no benefit at all.

Although our chain is short, we're the middle of the 3 parties and are therefore carrying the most risk if it goes wrong.

We did something similar where the folks we were buying from wanted to wait until the new tax year, really late in the process - a week before exchange if I recall. It was our first home so we had no chain.

We ended up signing a rental agreement to stay in "our" house for a pound a month, when we exchanged. It turned out well for us as we got to assess all the things we would do without using in and saved two months rent.

Our buyer has asked if we're willing to complete with them alone, before our vendor is ready, but we can stay in the house till our vendor can complete.

Just tell them what would have to be true for you accept this, i.e. duration, rent (£1 or whatever like above), terms for leaving, who provides insurance, maintenance etc. You might find your solicitors can draw up and agreement that satisfies you and gets the buyer what they want, which is I assume a cheap mortgage.

Guess it's all moot if you are a zillion miles from exchanging on the place you are buying.

Our new place has 4 bins, one for paper/card, one for plastic, one for general waste and one for garden waste. Has anyone got any smart solutions for separating the recycling without just having 3 large bins next to each other in the kitchen?

Ikea stackable boxes have worked for me in the past.
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/sortera-waste-sorting-bin-with-lid-white-10255897/

Hafele have a lot of options. I've got the door mounted ones which I'm happy with
https://www.hafele.co.uk/en/products/kitchen-fittings-accessories-appliances/kitchen-bins/19/

joseph joseph totem is not bad in terms of relative size of each compartiment.
space saving too if that's a factor, stainless looks good and washes easily.

Be going in circles reading on this so...

My mortgage is set for renewal next summer and obs the consensus is interest rates are going up.
Does anyone think it's worth putting savings (lump sum) into the mortgage to try to bring the repayments down?
Expecting house prices to go down but we have a 40% LTV at the moment...

We have a dual compartment from simplehuman, for trash // plastic glass. Food waste in a separate caddy, and cardboard gets taken downstairs separately as it's often big/awkward for a bin anyway so makes more sense to put it straight in the box to take out.

Depends if you need the cash in the near future. Obviously the month-to-month impact of even quite a large lump sum paydown will be disappointingly small.

Compromise would be fixed offset and dump the savings in there 1 day after completion. But you would usually pay a higher interest rate for the flexibility to get the cash back out again.

I think "it depends" but I'd consider it - question is when to put the money in, do you overpay as much as you can now or hold onto the cash. I'd be looking at:

• what return can you get (guarantee) on the cash while you wait until renewal vs. what would you save on interest if you pay it in now
  
• how much are you allowed to overpay without incurring penalties
  
  

There's probably not much risk in sitting on the cash then paying in a lump when you remortgage - you'd just need to try and get a better rate on the cash for the <1 year until you remortgage.

4 bins

I hate thread >>>
My suspicion is that peak recycling rates are achieved with 2-3 bins, by 4 the average person (myself included) decides that it's too complicated / too much hassle and starts using the main bin for everything.

helpfully the general waste wheely bin is smaller than the other 3...

Here's a link I've previously bookmarked from one of the other threads: https://www.lfgss.com/comments/15935659/

Sumo pls

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Joseph Joseph need to stop using that ugly grey on everything. We've got enough of their tat.

It's nice but £250 for a bin!

Pfft it’s beige- matches our early 2000s fridge freezer

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The texture of their plastic reminds me of bakelite

I've got that in dove grey. Petition to make it the official LFGSS bin

Really like that floor. What is?