MoneyQueen’s MFW Journey and Daily Diary

Floxxie

Clear out your PM box MQ; you have so many messages it can't take any more!

MoneyQueen

Mail box cleared.. sorry

MoneyQueen

Have put in the readings for Electricity and Gas tonight and they have automatically reduced our direct debit by £3. So the new monthly payment will be £39:j

DH has also done few hours overtime last week

And I have taken this Thursday and Friday off for spring cleaning of the house :rolleyes:

The telly that DH had decided on is no longer being displayed on John Lewis website so he is looking for another one now. I am perfectly okay with this as I still need to apply for the 12 month 0% purchases credit card. Promotional period on DH's credit card will run out in Oct 2009. So we do need to get another one. Am going to do this over the weekend.

He is also looking for another Desktop but is having trouble finding a suitable one under £500 (he needs a very good configuration for some of the softwares that he need to run). So we may have to order one at Dell. This is going to cost us atleast £800. :eek:

Grocery Budget has totally gone out of the window this month as we have eaten out thrice and also we have done quite a lot of bulk buying. We went to Costco last week :rolleyes:

Have done a bit more MBing but DH is not very happy about the time I spend on Saturday mornings on MB. so MB is going to take a back seat for some time. :rolleyes:

Take care everybody

Floxxie

Morning MQ,

There's plenty of time to get back on the straight and narrow; it's so hard trying to do everything at the same time!

If you do order from Dell, don't forget cashback.

Haven't done much MBing myself due to lack of time to place any bets. Poor excuse really as it does make money but have too much going on to concentrate on it well at the moment.

Have a good couple of days spring cleaning.

setmefree2

The SMF2s all use Dell computers. Very reliable - we've never had a problem with any of them.

Well done on all your progress but particularly on using less energy

MoneyQueen

Hi,

I have updated post #129 with the balances for May...

Net Debt : £28,217.3

Haven't taken the Energy readings as I got hurt during the weekend break in Inverness and hence can't bend to take the gas reading

The Grocery spend for May has been £157 which is less than last month :j

Have to do a credit card payment in June as the 0% rate ends.
Therefore from June, we had to amend the monthly standing orders of 4 Regular Saver Accounts to £25 each so in June the total saving will be £3200 instead of the regular £4600

Will provide an update for June when all direct debits have been taken from the account

Take care everyone

StuartGMC

MQ
Hope your back improves quickly. Reviews when necessary are essential to keep things realistic in our plans, so the changes you note are reasonable and I'm sure the benefits of the break (less the pained back!) outweigh the reduced savings. We have to live too as well as pay off the mortgage.

MoneyQueen

Hi Stuart,

I know what you mean with the breaks in between. We have decided not to have any long planned breaks till we are MF. but we will continue to have unplanned weekend breaks/ day outs etc. nearby whenever the weather is really good.

Unlike earlier we didn't eat in fancy restaurants this time but instead invested in a cool bag, ice packs and a thermos. So we had healthy homemade food for the first day. Also took advantage of the Rhino Megane Test Drive Offer with Avis which was a deisel one so fuel cost was also lower than with our 2000 cc petrol car. We had totally forgotten that we had requested for a test drive after reading about this offer on MSE few months back - but then someone from Avis phoned on Friday enquiring about a suitable time for them to drop the car off

The Hotel was a bit expensive than normal as we booked one on Friday night only. But over all we had a very nice time:j

btw, I have applied for a new 0% Credit Card for myself as DH's 0% promotional period will end in October. It already has a balance of £3383.55 at the moment. If we add any more to this then we may have to withdraw some funds from our savings accounts to pay it all off in October which I am not willing to unless absolutely necessary so we will have all our purchases on the new credit card which has a 0% period for the next 12 months. :money:The new card should be with me in a few days time

DH has postponed the purchase of the new telly and PS3 as there are not many good deals available at the moment. And he is not able to decide whether he should go for laptop or a desktop. A laptop will be more expensive for the configuration he wants but then it won't take much space in the study. I am sure it will be atleast another month till he finally decides:rolleyes:.

Not so good news now

We have to send £5000 to India before the end of August this year. Right now £ stands at 76.2 INR. I hope £ rises atleast a little bit in the next couple of months. This is going to be another dip in the savings :eek:

Floxxie

That's great going MQ!

Hope your injury heals quickly and well done OH on waiting a little longer for the TV and PS3 - wish my Oh was as a sensible as that.

MoneyQueen

Forgot to mention, Got a letter from our energy provider today. Based on our consumption, our monthly direct debit payment has been reduced to £35 per month :money::money::money::money:

Even though it is just £7 saving a month but as this is paid by direct debit rather than from the 0% credit card, we can earn interest on this rather than paying them in advance as our account has always been in credit with them. Every little helps

We were unsure when we got our boiler changed couple of years ago as it was only 5 years old. But it was not a condensing combi, stored water in a hot water tank and also was not very efficient. We also got the power shower replaced by a regular mixer shower as it was not compatible with the new Worcester condensing Combi that we went for.

It did cost us £2200 for everything at the time but now I think we made the right decision. Our direct debit used to be £110 then which has reduced to £35 now even though energy prices have increased since then. So the new boiler has almost paid for itself.:j:j:j

We still need to decide about our freezer which is 10 years old (though works perfectly fine) but as the socket is under the worktop, it is not possible for me to use an energy meter with it. Will get DH to help this weekend.:rolleyes:

Another update: Received £95 cashback from Quidco today in DH's bank account:j