How Sez Sees It

I do these every so often and they are quite fun for me to figure out what the hell is going on in my life, even if they are not so fun for you to read. Helps me get my random thoughts in order. 1. In a week and a half I will be married! That is a terrifying prospect. I know I keep mentioning it but it will be so weird to go from a Critcher to a Harding in the space of a 15 minute ceremony. I actually can't wait for it to be honest but it will be strange after being a Critcher for nearly 30 years! 2. My knee is clearly not as bad as I thought it was. You may recall that I had a weird injury the other week (everything in my life is weird at the moment). I was sat at work and someone asked me to help them with something on the printer and when I stood up my knee trapped some cartilage. I have not felt pain like that probably ever, even when I tripped over a box working for Sainsbury's years ago and landed on both of my knees. The result was that, four weeks before the wedding...

Having just bought our first house I can tell you it can be confusing if you don't know when certain things need to happen. How can you put an offer in if you don't have a mortgage? How do you know how much mortgage you need if you don't have an offer accepted? When do you pay and how does it all work? Here is how we did it and this worked really well. Save Get your deposit sorted. House prices change all the time but keep your eye on costs and build up your deposit. I had 10% saved up and used that alongside mortgage calculators (see links in below item) to work out what we could borrow and afford to pay each month. This works the other way too and they can help you work out how much you need for a deposit. There are schemes which require only a 5% deposit ( Help to Buy ) but it is advisable to save up before approaching this scheme too. Remember, you will have to afford mortgage payments and payments to the provider too. Also bear in mind additional costs such as ...