Day 10: Mortgage Day

10 days and my first missed post. For someone who's been a sporadic blog poster in the past, I still think this is a major achievement.

Yet, day 10 of the cuts challenge is an important one.  It's Mortgage Day.

This is one of the only bits of the challenge that took some advance planning (this Friday will see more).  My excellent mortgage adviser and I have been in, let's just call it, frequent contact trying to pin down Halifax on a new mortgage (oh, you know, the usual lost forms, reneging on rates, etc, etc, ad nauseum).

6th October was the first day of my new mortgage. And for all their faults, once all had been sorted out, Halifax are proving a damn sight more human than Standard Life (now part of Barclays apparently) in the contact I've had with them and the solicitors.

And the saving... well.  It's pretty significant, 20%, but because I have moved to a tracker from a fixed to get this deal, I will have to save the difference to ensure I am covered for future rate rises (even if it will need a rise of at least 2.5% for me to start paying more than I was before).

But this is obviously a blow, as it's not 40%.  Now either I shrug my shoulders and try to find savings elsewhere in my monthly spend to make up for this (roughly around £250 of additional savings) or I adopt a lenient approach to the banks as Government has done and allow this to go buy.

Having been critical of this kow-towing to the financiers in the past, I should stick to my guns and go for the saving.

The £40 a head dinner and drinks at Garlic & Shots last night didn't help.  So I need to go into the next 20 days or so with a renewed effort!