Zeddy's quest for a new house

Zeddy

Hi everybody - I'm Zeddy

A bit of background.....

Mr Z and I live in what I think of as a tiny one and a half bedroom house, which for the time being is fine for us, but it is by no means our forever house. My hope is to move to the forever house in between 3-5 years. To make this easier I'm putting a lot of effort into reducing our current mortgage and increasing our savings so that we have more of a deposit for this dream house.

At the moment we can only overpay 20% of our monthly mortgage payment and it has to be done monthly - if we miss a month we can't then top it up at a later date - so its basically not very flexible. Because of this we've set it up as a direct debit with the mortgage payment so we overpay by £200 no matter what.

In addition we've some standing orders set up into savings - £500 a month into one pot and £200 a month into another pot, so including the mortgage overpayment we're putting in to our future £900, which still allows us to lead a reasonably comfortable life but without the luxuries that we had got used to.

The bit which changes all this is I'm expecting our first baby in May - so in the interim we have new baby things to buy, I will then be going on to statutory maternity pay, the thought of which is incredibly scary (which is why we've bulked up our savings) and then when I return to work there's the childcare to pay for, plus extra expense of having a child and whereas I know children are only as expense as you make them - I really don't want to scrimp on some things which to me are important, such as enriching their life with memories and fun.

So basically my main priorities over these next years are:
- continue to overpay our mortgage by £200 per month - £2,400 a year
- not draw too much on our savings over the next year and where I can by doing extra things to make money - ebay/amazon/surveys try to save
- have a quality of life where we don't resent saving for the future
- enjoy being a family

As it stands we have now over paid our mortgage by £1,200 and we have £8,000 in savings pot one and £1,000 in savings pot 2 and £2,500 in our general savings.

I know this year could be a real challenge but I really hope that we can end the year with our savings the same as at the moment and that we've overpaid the mortgage each month by £200.

Thanks for reading, I'm now off to get more motivation from everyone else's diaries.

abouttimetoo

Hi Zeddy :hello:

Welcome to the gang and best wishes for your plans. I look forward to reading your diary

PS Great typo, does wonders for the ego of we diary people :rotfl:

Zeddy wrote: »

I'm not off to get more motivation from everyone else's diaries.

Zeddy

abouttimetoo wrote: »

Hi Zeddy :hello:

Welcome to the gang and best wishes for your plans. I look forward to reading your diary

PS Great typo, does wonders for the ego of we diary people :rotfl:

Thanks for spotting that - I've now edited so not to offend any more people!

I've had a good day today - got a cheque in the post this morning for £32 from a survey site - so that will get paid into my account and then moved over to savings.

Mr Z's Dad popped over today and gave him a £200 cheque as a belated wedding present (we got married 3.5 years ago, but there were issues). I'll move that to savings once he's paid this in, with the intention of buying a cot for the baby with this money.

Also ordered a £10 voucher for Boots from pigsback - its taken an age to get to the number of points needed but it will help to put towards baby toiletries when the time comes.

Despite the original typo in the first post I have spent the afternoon reading other diaries and am feeling very motivated and am hoping that I can keep it up. :T

Floxxie

Welcome Zeddy,

Congratulations on your MFW challenge and the impending arrival!

I personally find being on maternity leave very easy to manage in terms of finances; you won't have any childcare costs, travel costs, lunches, work clothes. And although you have a little bundle to look after, you have more time to do surveys, eBay, mystery shopping, match betting etc.

I'm sure that you have already had a good look around to find bargains on baby stuff. Remember to join the Boots and Tesco baby clubs. Sign up to Pampers, Huggies and any other products you are interested in. Even if you won't use the products, you can use the vouchers they send for money off your shopping. And don't feel pressured into using the famous brands; own brands are more than adequate and save a lot of money - it took me three children to find that one out! Children really don't need much spent on them to make them happy - my children are happy with balloons and bubbles and a walk around a park.

I look forward to reading your diary. Good luck with everything.

Floxxie

Zeddy

Thanks for all the tips and advice Floxxie - I've certainly learnt through Mr Z's nephews that its often the simpler things that keep them amused, so I must keep reminding myself of this. I find at the moment that I'm feeling so excited and now got more energy so am constantly buying things which I'm sure we don't need - I think I'll try and not buy anything baby related this month as I went through a list the other night and apart from the big things we seem to have what the recommend or we've decided not to buy it yet and wait and see if we do actually need it.

I've had a good day today - sorted out a number of issues
1) Restarted pension contributions - I was on an occupational pension and then moved employers to one that doesn't have a pension scheme that they pay into. So I've changed the pension to a personal one and set up a dd for that. From 1/1/09 I've had a payrise so I've put an estimate of what the net increase will be and am paying this into my pension. Its nothing like the amounts that used to go in but its better than nothing.

2) Opened a Sainsburys credit card which is 0% on Sainsburys purchases for 12 months - I know stoozing is harder with interest rates being as they are but I wanted to try it out. Also we get extra nectar points.

3) Found out that as of April 09 the government is giving all mothers who see a midwife or other health professional and baby is due aftere 6th April £190. I didn't know this before so its a very pleasent surprise.

StuartGMC

Zeddy
Best wishes with the changes about to happen for you both this year and for continued progress on the MF date. I agree you don't need to spend the earth on them when very young, and with careful discussion as they grow you can educate them to appreciate the value of items and the costs, but that'll be some years away!

Our dd has just turned 11 and we are now entering a new phase in her development, which I guess will help to prepare us (a very little) for her teenage years... did I mention how time accelerates once you have children?

Lynn11

Good luck in your challenges for this year and hope you enjoy being a parent when the time comes. As stuart says its up to you how much you spend on the kids but they do not really know any different. I go to a sing and song class in the local library which is free and my daughter loves it. I was really surprised about note 3 for expected mothers - oh well its best to put to your best advantage.

gallygirl

Zeddy, good luck with your challenge & impending arrival. I agree with Floxxie, once the initial shock to the system is over with, you will have less outgoings and more opportunities to save money (home cooking, shopping around etc.) so the financial impact may not be as bad as you think..

setmefree2

and

Zeddy

Thanks for all the good wishes and advice.

Today was the first day back at work and wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be - I slept lightly last night as I kept thinking about all the things that needed working on in January. Things are always so much better once you get into them.

Felt very pleased with myself as last night I slow cooked a joint of meat and after dinner minced it and then made a cottage pie and left it in the oven so all I had to do when I got in was switch the oven on - organisation is a wonderful thing!

Mr Z has just gone into work for a couple of hours to work on his disertation and isn't expecting to come back to late tonight - so I think I may go and complete my tax return as my bank have given me my interest earnt figure now.

Zeddy

Unfortunatly we've had another surprise expense today - the floor fitters came to lay a new carpet in our bedroom and a new floor for our kitchen, but when they got here they said the kitchen floor wasn't in a good enough condition to lay the floor, but they could sort it for £100.

As we've spent so long waiting for this dream kitchen it seems worth it - but along with starting our dd payment for the kitchen its going to be even harder to keep up with our current level of savings and still breakeven this month - but it'll be worth it.

I've also had to pay my annual subs of three hundred and something before Christmas, so put it on cc and then put in my expenses. I'm so hoping that my expenses are paid into my bank account before the cc dd is taken.