Richard Brook

My wrist still had no mobility and was very sore outside the cast, add that to having a dog at home and the Orthopaedic surgeon recommended keeping a cast on two more weeks (which ended up being three due to a bank holiday).

I'm starting to try to take the dog walking and training classes more seriously and pick up more hours (and/or find a weekend job) as I really want to do a minimum 5% overpayment per month average on the mortgage (preferably 10%). I also want to rebuild savings after everything that happened and the house purchase. Unfortunately I've had zero luck finding a weekend job.

The bright side of this is that I didn't buy the house solo, and for now my partner in crime is chucking more in to match up my overpayments so far. So we do have savings (and insurance which includes emergency repairs). Just not as much as I like, especially because...

Patrick has had someone at work come to him and ask him to sign as guarantor. Oof. He's known the guy for four years and trusts him, but I am super wary and wanting to be prepared in case they flake out. Originally I was going to say no-can-do. I mean, we have not even been here a full six months. It's not like half the mortgage is paid and if the guy flakes out we can take a loan for a year's rent and only be a little in the hole, it's finding a way to pay rent a whole year for a house on top of our mortgage hole. And even if he trusts the guy, well, his trust-dar is not the best.

But in the end I told him ok.

First, the guy is here on a Visa and immigrants have a hard enough time here. I mean, there are literal progroms going on. Diversity is not a bad thing here.

Second, Patrick's worked with him four years.

Third, I feel like people helped us when we needed help - including Patrick's parents who signed as a guarantor for me because estate agents here wouldn't let anyone outside of Northern Ireland sign as a guarantor for me. Deborah housed us while we were looking for a house. So it's important to pay that forward, do unto others as you would want done unto you and all that.

He also said the guy is trying to get into cybersecurity and will hopefully be in a much higher paying job in a few months, but I take that with a grain of salt, same as I'm trying to become a nurse and project manager or Patrick's trying to become a regional manager. We all have aspirations, we don't all make them.

So as the other saying goes, hope for the best and expect the worst. I am trying to take earning more money much more seriously in case the worst should happen. Similarly I did tell Patrick that if he is signing as a guarantor for this guy he needs to be prepared that he might need to take up a second job up to a year to cover the lease until it completes.

And who knows, maybe paying it forward will bring karma back around to us. Maybe I'll get a job at the organisation just three minutes away by bicycle. If I did that £310/month I'd save would make it much easier for us to cover if the guy took off.