Bumbling along to be Mortgage Free

taka

cha97michelle wrote: »

The only negative of the week was i needed a filling this morning. My last dental treatment was a couple of years ago and was a really nasty extraction that took over an hour and left me with a severely blistered and sore mouth and a bit of root left in that moved about for ages and kept hurting and getting infected. I hadn't realised but i was actually quite scared while sat in the dentist chair, so at least that is now over and done with and hopefully i will be less scared if i need more treatments in future. Prevention better than cure i think. At least it won't be for a while. (£46 for dental treatment :eek:)

Ouch! :eek: In several ways! Was that private dental treatment? £46 sounds a lot for 1 filling! Maybe the costs are different in England than here - 1 filling would be between £7 and £17 something I think here but we get charged for each one (up to a maximum I think). Sadly I seem to be flinging loads of ££ at the dentist at the mo - I've not been for a couple of years so I am having all sorts done.

gratefulforhelp_2

Michelle, how do arrange the practicalities of overpaying? Do you have an online mortgage account, or do you pay over the 'phone?

taka

cha97michelle wrote: »

taka i am an NHS patient who has to pay for treatment. The cost depends on what band of work you need. I had an initial check up a couple of weeks ago and that cost me £16.50. Today my treatment is a band 2 treatment so i had to pay the remainder of £29.10. So really i got a filling replaced a clean and polish and a check up for that amount. It is a one size cost for everything i would have needed in that treatment. So i guess if i had really awful teeth then i would have got better value for my money. I am just thankful it wasn't a new filling (this one has been in since i broke part of the tooth on some rock when i was 14 so 16 years isn't bad). Also he was a good dentist - i didn't even feel pain when he stuck the injection in. He was also very good with my nerves.

Wow, that IS completely different pricing system to the NHS dentists in Scotland. We don't pay for a check-up but pay for each filling/scale etc. Sounds like your dentist is a keeper... mine hasn't quite got the hang of the fact I'm abnormally hard to numb at the back of my mouth. My jaw was sorer (from 3 injections :eek:) than my tooth that had a deep filling 2 weeks ago.

danielley

Hi Michelle

Been reading your thread over the past few days and have finally caught up. Wow is all I can say.

You have given me so much inspiration, I especially love the way that you get as excited over a 79p overpayment as much as a £17k one

My mortgage is currently at approx £72k and I am making overpayments of £120 a month on top of my £380 normal payment. I have been trying to save furiously, much more successful since joining Nyk’s/Fru’s Frugal living challenge 2010. At present all savings are going into my 09/10 ISA (first one I have ever had) but eventually these will go off the Mortgage.

I do not have the facility to make online overpayments like yourself with NW (I am with C&G) but apparently this will be changing soon as they are incorporation HBOS systems (or something like that) I don’t know why but I would feel a bit funny phoning up paying off the odd £ here and there (bank guilt?) so I will wait until I am able to do it online (unless it is still not available in a few months)

Good luck with everything

x

gratefulforhelp_2

That sounds like a really good set-up, Michelle, with your mortgage. All those small amounts really add up to good progress.

I can't do that with ours, its amounts over £500 by debit card, or changing the standing order.

hex2

Hi Michelle - just wanted to say thanks for mentioning geo-caches either here or on Facebook. Took the boys for the first time today and they really enjoyed it. A good cheap and healthy hobby for us all to share.

LittleBit_2

cha97michelle wrote: »

Seems though we were on a roll, we then went and picked a bathroom suite that i liked. We ended up picking a bath/shower and fittings from one shop, and a toilet, sink, surrounding cabinet and vanity cabinet from a 2nd store. That looks like being about another £1700. :eek:

Luckily, the ILs wish to pay so looks like we might have to find the money initially but they will reimburse fairly quickly. Money - so easy to spend, so hard to accumulate. (So that will be going on the CC to rack up some more rewards!!) We could do with inlaws like yours, am very jealous we so need a new bathroom

We went to the effort today as there are still sales on this weekend so a small saving to be had. We don't do things by halfs is all i can say. But it will be so fantastic to get it all done as the current kitchen and bathroom combo are pretty grim. This year our house is going to get sorted once and for all.

Decisions need to be made tonight, and we need to apply for the boiler scrappage scheme. The new boiler alone should save at least £20 a month on the gas bills, and we would move from an F rated one we inherited with the house to an A rated one.

We have made the first step anyway. The guy who did the quote said the loft needed more boarding to move the boiler up there so we went to B and Q and got some today, and some reflective stuff to put behind all the radiators when they are taken off for the work. We could do with getting at least one other quote to see if this really is an ok deal and then book it in. Exciting times.



hex so glad to hear you enjoyed geocaching. The things we like best about it is it is very cheap, extremely healthy and enjoyable, you can do it without much specialised equipment and you can do it anywhere you want to. We have done it on all our recent breaks, and have plans to go and do some near the ILs house next time we go. Our two love it too. I think i remember some other flyladies mentioning it too. It is getting quite popular. I'm really interested in this, but am not sure how I use a GPS unit. Can I use my Tom Tom, or do I need something else?[/QUOTE]

Glad you're having a good weekend, and its great that your house is getting sorted

LittleBit_2

Hi,
We tried Geocaching on Sunday and really enjoyed it We couldn't find the first one at all :mad: but then we went to another one about a mile down the road, and found it :T And we walked 5 miles and didn't even realise!
I think we might go again this weekend. Thanks for mentioning it. Free things to do with the family always go down well...

GreenNinja

Hiya cha, really enjoying reading your diary, it helps to motivate me on my own MF quest! In reply to your comment:

"Does anyone elses brain seem to work on overtime trying to get things to balance differently?"

Oh yes!! I spend a lot of time (usually at work!) frantically trying to rework figures in different ways in my mind to make my overpayments bigger! Usually happens the opposite way though, something crops up that has to be paid during the month that I hadn't accounted for!

LittleBit_2

Hi Michelle,
Try not to worry too much about the expenses. These things come up unfortunately, and as long as we can manage them then that's all we can do.
I ended up spending more than I wanted while we were away too