We’re almost halfway through January now, with very few updates of the state of the house purchase. Given we’ve had a load of snow it wouldn’t surprise me if a number of things were delayed, such as laying of the turf or the fencing (essentially all of the external works). The last I heard was it was mostly internal works such as electricity that was being sorted so I’m going to assume that things are progressing, albeit slowly.

At the same time I’ve worked with my mortgage broker to extend the mortgage offer to cover beyond January. The current offer was due to expire one day before the earliest potential completion date so this was something that had to happen and thankfully it was straightforwards as ever. What I didn’t know (but my broker informed me of) is that the offer can only be extended once there’s less than 30 days left on the offer, so although this was something that I had requested earlier - it couldn’t be actioned until as of a few days ago. The good news though is that we’re now covered until the end of April which covers the majority of the potential completion dates.

In money-burning news, I’ve now secured all of my flooring; or at least the actual ‘floor’ part of it, setting me back a lovely £3,300. That said, I can’t complain too much given that I was actually able to secure some incredibly steep discounts. For the downstairs flooring I was able to get the cost down from £55 a square meter to just under a smidge of £30 a square meter which is a huge saving, considering it’s approximately 60 square meters of flooring. The upstairs flooring was a bit more expensive per square meter (working out about £34 per), but I was still able to get a decent discount on that too. I’m fairly fortunate as well that the companies I’ve purchased from are able to hold on to it as well, meaning I don’t have to find space to store it all until moving day. Given the size of the order that was a real concern for me!

Things such as the underlay and the actual fitting will be additional costs, but at least the bulk of the cost is now covered. I’ve already estimated the costs of the underlay and fitting, with that we seem to be coming in under budget assuming everything goes as planned: but significantly cheaper than what the house builder wanted!

Meanwhile as we enter the new year of trading stocks seem to be gently rising again after a fairly torrid end to 2025. I’d like for it to have a minor sharp jolt upwards if possible to help generate some extra value for when I withdraw a huge chunk to pay for my house deposit. The issue I foresee with that hope though is that we’re starting to hit all-time highs of such things like the S&P500, meaining that there’ll be individuals who would rather not see it break these highs (yay shorts). Still, I’m hopeful once we break that barrier we might see a bit of a rally.

On one hand it sucks a bit using a chunk of my S&S ISA to pay for the house like this, but on the other hand it’s a necessary evil. It’s exactly because of the ISA that I’ve been able to get such a fantastic house and better yet, without incurring any tax liabilities. Many also tend to see a house as an investment which I tend to fundamentally disagree with; but that’s a topic for another day. The key thing here is that with some look over the next decade it’ll help bring value to my overall net worth, but more importantly provide me with a stable home to live in.

Beyond all of that, I paid my first “big” bill to HMRC - just over £10k in tax! That includes approximately ~£6,700 of income tax for the previous year with a balancing payment of £3,300 for the next year. What feels a little funny about that is knowing that next years tax bill is going to be significantly higher given! The fun and games of self-employment tax planning I suppose. Still, it’s a good problem to have and I’m glad to be in a position where I can pay it off without any issues. Being able to put that tax money into the NS&I account has also been a fun little experiment. Over time I was able to ‘win’ around £500 overall since I started using it last year which is a nice little bonus. Okay it’s not going to make me rich; but it’s tax free and stable which is nice as you don’t want to screw with HMRC.

Always make sure HMRC gets paid first.