The 9 year plan...hold onto your hats and here we go!

yukkibear

Happy New Year EH, hope this year is great for you xx

boredofbeingathome

Happy New Year EH. xx

EssexHebridean

Thanks to all for your new year wishes - Devon was fun and we had a good night out in Fancy dress on NYE - MrEH went as a baby complete with nappy & giant dummy, and I went as "Baby's worst nightmare" - think lots of black (including some fabby black silky fabric with gold spider webs on!) clothes, and some seriously freaky white face/black shadows makeup! Excellent fun!

Mineallmine - first step will be to add another £40 per month to the regular payment on the mortgage. This will have the effect of increasing OP's to nearly 42% and also will bring out MF date forwards by 8 months. The other four months will hopefully be made up by paying the odd extra bit here and there - ie first off will be the savings made for the two months we don't pay council tax & water rates - (both are paid over 10 months rather than 12) that should be about £270 to go against it and we also hope to pay the equivalent amount to a months interest as "extra" to the standard monthly payment a couple of times, effectively meaning that the whole of our "normal" payment in that month will come off the capital. IF (and it's a big if) I get any sort of payrise this year that will go back against the mortgage too.

So - looking ahead to 2010 - my aim of starting to buy for christmas and birthdays as I see things through the year has started well as I have bought a few bits already. I have also started a present list on the iPod so I can keep track of what I have. Total savings on the bits I've bought so far = £22 - total spend = £20! Need to continue to look out for bits and bobs though and continue as I have started. Might go and hit M&S near work on Thursday evening and see if they have useful stuff in the sale.
I need to get a diary that can be used for Kitchen related stuff, meal planning etc. I did wonder about doing it on the iPod but can't quite work out how best to do so at the moment. This week has started well though as I did a big cook up this afternoon and we have Fish Pie for tomorrow and cottage pie for Tuesday all cooked up and ready. Eggs hard boiled for sandwiches tomorrow and we had a roast dinner tonight too.
Tesco shop today was a little higher than ideal at £29 odd, but that did include a few stocking-up type bits like cereal for OH (We had a voucher!) Lots of fruit (we had a voucher!) and two bottles of worcester sauce (one at £1.95 or two for £3 seemed like a bit of a no-brainer!). Talking of vouchers I had one for 25 extra points (£1 in deals) when you spend £1 or more on yogurts. Bought 5 x Mullerlight on special offer (5 for £1) and effectively got free yogurts! :T
From various christmas goodies we received we have put aside a tin of biccies and a box of chocs, plus a box of jellybabies to take on hols with us. Nice to have some treats while we're away and it does stop us scoffing the lot now too!

taxi73

WOW you sound so organised..I do love it when a plan comes together.

boredofbeingathome

Sounds like a good plan- I agree with Taxi..


Err is it me or does anyone else want to see piccies? *Whistles* all innocent like....:)

Kittenkirst

Hee hee, share share!! :0)

Your meal planning does sound very organised, i am trying to be better with not food shopping- visiting tesco/ M&s 3x a week minimum is costing a fortune. Went in today and got two cartons of soup for £2 (4 lunches) a bread baton for 39p oh and some fizzy laces for 37p- so will raid the house for bread Wed & thurs and have only spent £2.80- is not amazing but baby steps....I may take a leaf outta your book and start doing some batch cooking...where do you think is good to start- share a kitched with boyf's family and not a huge amt of freezer room- but a bit

...talking of babys, hurry up with those pics :oP x

EssexHebridean

LOL - I have got a couple of pics but not downloaded them from the camera yet.....I'll stick one on here when I do. In the meantime though, bear in mind that OH is 6'1", a rugby player (think prop sized rather than fly half!) and has a large moustache.....!

Slight panic here tonight (understatement of the year so far there) as I though I'd lost the two new credit cards which have arrived and need activating. As the old ones have expired now that was going to be a problem, thankfully they did turn up though - although not, of course, until after the telephone line to activate them had closed for the evening!

Heating is turned quite a long way up now as we're forcecast to stay below freezing right through this week - MrEH has just gone out to scrape the car windscreens in the hope they won't be so bad in the morning, although this morning the biggest problem was the ice on the inside of the screen rather than the outside!

KP - batch cooking when you're short on space can be tricky. You could start off by coking up a pile of mince though, perhaps with some onion and muchrooms, maybe some sliced red or green peppers......then split it into portions and turn into bolognese, savoury mince mix for cottage pies, filling savoury pancakes, chilli etc? Each of the sorts of mince can them be frozen in a two-person portion ready to be taken out, defrosted and then served with rice or pasta, or topped with mash etc. Good luck!

Kittenkirst

oooooh that is a very good idea- could then use it for lasagne (one of gorgeous boyfs fave teas), think i will check out Sainsburys at the weekend and have a gander at good offers (have sainsburys vouchers from work so will use those)

A baby with a moustache- im even more intrigued now! x

hellnearth

Happy New Year, EH. It's blimmin freezin here and we have snow which is actually lying. DS is hoping he won't have to go back to school tomorrow.

EssexHebridean

Happy New Year to you too Hellnearth - Blimey - snow with you is pretty unusual isn't it! You've got more than we have at the moment!

I've just had a quite "LBM mark 2" moment. We had lots of shredding and filing to do, so knuckled down to that this evening. We realised pretty soon that the filing cabinet was getting a bit full so thought we would go through some old bank statements etc.....it's the first time I have really, truly taken on board just how much money we have wasted over the years in overdraft payments. The really sobering thing is that it was SUCH a way of life - I found one statement where we went over our agreed OD limit which will have meant a £20 charge on the top of the standard interest payable - two of the things which pushed us over were meals out though, what on earth were we thinking?! (Honest answer - we weren't thinking at all - we were burying our heads in the sand, never going near the online banking and hoping that everything would be alright. Thankfully, it was, but that was more by luck than judgement). Anyway, just thought I'd share as it was such a valuable lesson really. Makes me realise how far I've come too!