Pay off mortgage and start having fun!

Thanks pavlovs ands AJ

I had a lovely day yesterday, lots of nice presents and some cash too. We never made it to the garden centre as dh had work paperwork to do urgently, so we will go next week.

I have the day off today :j am going shopping with the plan of buying a new handbag to go with the new clothes with some of my birthday money.

One of the best presents I got was a copy of "a girl called jack"s new cookbook. I read the whole thing last night and it's really good, I can highly recommend it and it was only £7 on amaz*n the other day, fab recipes with very cheap basic ingredients , low fat and easy to make. I've made a few of her recipes already but there are a lot more in the book than on the blog.

Hi alchemilla , thanks


Its been a good day today, I bought myself a new cath kidst*n navy spotty bag with
some of my birthday money (in the sale of course ) and also had lunch bought for me! I've been very lucky

Off to the gym soon to try and work off the half a box of chocs I ate earlier

I'm trying to back to a bit more old school mfw-ing , since last year it's been borrowing for the loft conversion, spending for it on using the 0% cards etc. and no actual mortgage oping. Although the next 2 years (if we are lucky !) will still be repaying the loan and debts , I want to get a bit more back to the stuff I used to do to squeeze the pennies.

So inspired by my new cook book:

Make all meals from scratch, also :

Stop eating out / takeaways
Start air drying some of the washing (still have my wonderful heated airer:happyhear)
Heating off as much as poss
Try and make some snacks for the hungry teens, less carp from the supermarket
Lots of no wine days
Bake bread
Start one poll again
Ditto valued opinions
Start a jar for saving for treats
Clear the log cabin of excess junk that was previously in loft , Clean out hot tub and make room look gorgeous so kids can have friends over more (and go out spending a little less)
Buy some herbs for cooking again, last year's died
Start doing a bit of DIY and decorating again
If time do a few Xmas makes
start making laundry detergent again

Phew that's it for the moment, any other suggestions are very welcome

New mortgage rate reserved :beer: balance is about £146k with 8 yrs 2 mths left to go on interest only :eek: I need to extend the term really but they will only do it if we switch back to repayment , but we want to clear the debts first, which will take 2 years.

I have now been on the mfw board just shy of 4 yrs, when I joined we changed mortgage provider and switched mortgage term from 33 yrs to 12 with an end date of April 2022, I am a bit gutted that we probably won't make it. Maybe a new more realistic target would be may 2026 witch is exactly 25 years after we bought the house (with a 25 yr mortgage) I guess with only one average income for most of the time and three growing kids something has to give.

We could probably tighten our belts a lot more, but I feel that at the moment we are doing ok, still mostly frugal with occasional weekends away and the odd takeaway. But no new cars holidays etc. Me going back to work has made a big difference to the finances, at least the building work we have had done will take a couple of years to pay for not the 7 years of the original loan term.

I'm going In To work today as dh has staff off and lots of work, I may need to do an extra day a week for a while , unfortunately unpaid but I am getting the equivalent days in holiday which will come in handy in the school holidays.

This weekend I plan on getting some cheap multipacks of plants from bq and planting them in the front garden with some little wall hanging planters i bought in £ land yesterday with my birthday money. Other than that it's just sorting out the bomb site that is our house