Mortgage Free by 01/01/11...so goes the plan

gallygirl

wynnvegas wrote: »

I've booked Channings for the 29th. It's a flashy (for us, anyway) place in Edinburgh and (shame on me) also does buy 1 get 1 free on the recently arrived Tastecard. No, I don't have any MSE shame in me and, despite being mortgage free, wasting money will never be on the menu (no pun intended). I've never actually minded spending money - it's the waste that grinds me!

oooohhhh, Channings is v nice & actually good value with a bogof :T

wynnvegas wrote: »

I think Tuesday might be quite a hard day. As I get to thinking about it, I'll be exactly the same age on Tuesday as my dad was when he died and it's a landmark which we've always talked about (as four brothers anyway). Part of my motivation in paying the mortgage off was to make sure M was never left in the lurch financially if the worst happens to me. That said, I'm lucky to be in perfectly good health but you never know what's round the corner and, somewhat morbidly, I can kick off whenever it comes knowing that I've at least provided everything I could for my family. Surely, in part, not having any regrets is something in itself.

Cheers,

Billy

It will be an emotional day for you but you've achieved wonders for one so young so be proud of what your dad inspired in you. If he's watching I'm sure he feels the same :A

gg x

PS - may start my Waterloo Station jigsaw tonight

[Deleted User]

hey Billy
yup thats the kinda jigsaw Id like.... Id rather have a 5 star all inclusive holiday there than a jigsaw but perhaps Ill start with the jigsaw! :rotfl: .... Im the kinda person that picks up holiday brochures to look thru the pretty pictures (kinda like kids with the argos catalogue at xmas!) ...
meal out sounds loveley and still a bargain (I got the tastecard too, planning on taking mrtyo out for a meal in a few weeks when I get paid..!)
hope tuesday goes okay, its bittersweet I guess to have achieved what you have at the same age as your dad ... Ill bet he would be very proud too

right off to update my own diary instead of lurking on everyone elses!
have a good weekend!

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Well done - you certinlay both deserve the treats. Onwards to new challenges now!

Squirrel

wynnvegas

Morning Everyone,

Wow - a lot to catch up on. I'll get the replies in first (I do feel it necessary to respond to everyone who is kind enough to gee me on - I lurk far too much on other people's diaries and should comment more!) before moving onto the weekend.

Taxi - I feel we're getting overly morbid now! I hope the treatment is progressing positively and that you get clear of the cancer asap. You did give me the idea of a musical coffin which would a) doubtless be a big seller for those that have any notion of the afterlife and b) would freak people out no end in graveyards! I'll use the working title of the Idie at the moment before that Steve Jobs gets the patent in.

babyb - Edinburgh born and bred. I did spend a couple of years up in the wilderness that is the North of Scotland but auld reekie has always been home. Don't think I think of it fondly though - between the mess they've made of the roads, the stupid tram project, the attempt to introduce a congestion charge (seriously, imagine a referendum asking Scottish people is they would like to give the council more money! - add wee blue freaky face thing here...), the city centre being overtaken by recruitment agencies and overpriced restaurants and every second person being a green meanie traffic nazi, I tend not to be as frequent a visitor as I once was. I try to venture into the city centre as little as possible although we have previously (and will again) made an exception for a few nights out at the festival.

Gally - Channings is out! M is extraordinarily picky with her food (chicken is the only meat she'll contemplate and even then she is usually less than impressed in the frequent need to stuff chicken with black pudding) so the Channings restaurant got the heave ho at the weekend when we investigated the options for the tastecard. Unfortunately, the tastecard (other than our upcoming jaunt down the road) is going to be pretty much wasted as we can and do cook nearly all the pub grub stuff better than the GBK-esque restaurants and, of the fancier places, the limited menu normally rules them out. M now fancies The Dome in Edinburgh so that's an option but, following an amazing meal I had a few years ago in the Gateshead Hilton, I'm now considering there as an option for the weekend of the 29th. For M's birthday on Wednesday, we're going to a tiny restaurant in Howgate which is phenomenally good and well worth the trip out. I'm going to try Champney's in Linlithgow today to see if that presents another closer to home option for the 29th. Little wonder I'm putting on weight again!!

Tomorrow will be a strange one for sure. Probably even more so as we've never marked my dad's death or funeral dates. There's always an effort made to visit on fathers day and there's always a gesture made in his memory on his birthday (wherever we happen to be). The strange thing is, seeing nearly all my family still congregated in a relatively small area, I do wonder if I'd have turned out completely differently if he had lived a few years longer or still been alive yet. I do my best to honour his memory and know fine well he'd have been proud of me - maybe not for any achievement other than being something of a nice and caring person and doing what I can to help people. I'll cut this off before I become too self-egrandising!! Please pop some progress pictures of your jigsaw on your diary (or here if you're not for being publicly outed yet). M is forever wittering on about starting with the central picture of a jigsaw but I can't get my head round doing anything other than the edges first - she's a strange one...

TYO - I'll see if I can dig it out but that jigsaw reminds me of a photo I took (although M claims it was her naturally) on North Beach in Oahu. We're looking forward to revisiting Hawaii in 2012 but that kind of beach scene keeps the motivation up. I had a good crack at the Singapore section of my current jigsaw so I'm very hopeful of finishing that one tonight - I'll get pictures up tomorrow of the state of play as it ends tonight either way! I'm like you with holiday brochures. At various points last week, M and I were considering a Tanzanian safari, Mauritius, Japan, Western Australia and a few option in South America. It's nice to know these are all viable options but we'll need to work through a schedule to get round them all and that could take us the next 5 years.

Squirrel - thanks for popping in. There are a number of new challenges on the go although we've amended our aims for the next 18 months already - it was only last week that we started the initial planning and half of that has now been reworked!

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Morning Folks,

19 days to go today and, thankfully, it will be a stupidly busy 19 days so there'll be no need for me to count down the remaining 1.6 million seconds one at a time! Had a quietly productive weekend with very little visiting other than Friday night to see a couple of friends before they jetted off on holiday on Saturday morning. They are away for a couple of weeks whilst their extension gets tidied up and hopefully finished off. At a project cost of £50,000, I was hoping to see a massive difference but, in the main due to my thinking that their previous extension was pretty decent anyway, iy doesn't seem that much bigger. With all the planned electronic wizardry and plush furniture to come in yet, it will no doubt be amazing when it's finished. The £7,000 96" projector may well be the best thing I've ever heard contemplated (says he who was drooling over a 60" plasma at the weekend) so I hope it ends up being as good as I envisage it - primarily as their house will be our home from home whilst we get all our various works done next year.

Speaking of which, I now realise I may have been slightly optimistic in a couple of my budgeting exercises. The kitchen, initial budget £6k, will now be much closer to £10k now that M has visited a kitchen showroom. Kitchen cupboards now aren't enough - the space between the cupboard tops must now be filled with fancily lit glass containing stupid "show" cups and plates and the bottom of the cupboards must now all come with spotlights to, wait for it, "make the granite look more sparkly". This is what I have to live with! In fairness, because we're adding a good few wall cupboards, the lack of light might be a tiny bit of an issue but we've got the Magnet guy coming round tonight to start the drawings and such. Once we've got those, I'll scan them in and seek comments and suggestions!

The other change was the car M fancies. She has moved (for once in her life) to a downgraded option and now fancies the Mazda 2 instead of the Audi A3. This, it turns out, is just as well because I had budgeted for the Mazda 2 so the A3 would have run us another £6,000 or so and stretched things out properly. This is a settled option at the moment but a year is a long time for her to chop and change her mind so there's no fixing that option on the budget yet. She has also said (which I'll hold her to) that if Ted (the current car, named after the character in her favourite slot machine) can last a couple of years, she'll keep him until he gives out on her. It's only a 2005 car so I think she can eke a wee bit out of it yet - this time last year, I was driving a 2000 Ford Escort so she can suffer a wee bit longer.

As it's M's birthday on Wednesday, I promised myself I would wrap up her various presents at the weekend. That fell by the wayside as we instead watched the entire first season of Chuck and I managed to make significant progress on the jigsaw (just as well as, come the first of November, we're going Christmas tree shopping (it gets put up on the 1st of December so time was running out to get the jigsaw done)) as well as finishing my latest chapter of the Flashman papers. I forgot exactly where I had gotten to with them so have started again and gotten through the first 4 in the last four weeks - outstanding writing and some of the funniest comments I've ever read in them. I will have to wrap the presents tomorrow as I'm away playing pool and darts tonight with some of the boys from work. There's no getting round not wrapping them tomorrow as M will be up at 5:30 on Wednesday morning expecting to have things to open and be delighted with. This will be the last year of small-scale presents anyway but, as we should have a wee bit of spare cash and next year is her 30th as well, I'll need to up my game considerably - not looking forward to having to think that hard!!

Cheers,

Billy

LilacPixie

Billy - Can I ask what showroom you OH visited? Magnet is not low priced by any means possibe to get what OH wants but still on 6k???

wynnvegas

Hi LP,

We popped over to the one in Dunfermline. Wasn't actually much to see there and we probably won't end up using them as they're both inflexible and expensive (£12,500 was the initial guide quote) but we'll use them initially to give us some visual respresentations of what we're looking for. Our joiner is going to take those pictures and do it less expensively although the £6k was my initial guess plucked from thin air. I need a similar project to draw up the intended bathroom suite - any ideas of who does that as a matter of course?

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Morning Folks,

18 days to go and, with all the bills gone for the month, the credit cards both still in credit and, mysteriously, over £1,300 in the bank, no problems on the premise that the mortgage will go on the 29th. Really looking forward to it even though the list of post-mortgage bits and pieces grows by the day. We had the kitchen designer in yesterday so we're back through to Magnet on Saturday to see a few design options and to play with the CAD software. I think I'll look to see if there's any type of beginner software for generating 3D models as, for people like me with no artistic imagination, it makes all the difference to the planning (and looking forward to things) phase.

I was on a little personal milestone roll to myself yesterday. Nothing important but won 9-2 at darts, 8-0 at pool (it turns out the pool cue that was no use whatsoever for snooker works a treat on the game it was intedned for!) and finished (the picture part at least) of the Singapore quadrant of the big jigsaw - http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/Jigsaws/DSCN4281.jpg. It's plenty satisfying slotting that last wee piece in - just the solid blue border to tidy up but that normally proves relatively straightforward so I'll get that completely done and tucked away by the end of the week - it will give the living room some more space for a start!

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Morning Folks,

17 days to go and, despite the disppointment of the football last night (still, 3-2 against Spain isn't that bad) there isn't a lot to report. We've got a few birthdays to attend to at the weekend and a bit more kitchen and bathroom shopping to get done. Thankfully, my trip to England tomorrow has been postponed until next week so no massively early start and 800-mile round trip to cope with - I was tired just thinking about the M6. It's M's birthday today so we're out for dinner tonight to a lovely wee restaurant. She was over the moon with her presents - I was less over the moon at having to "share" the moment at 5:45am!

Cheers,

Billy

Froggy-G

wynnvegas wrote: »

Morning Folks,

17 days to go and, despite the disppointment of the football last night (still, 3-2 against Spain isn't that bad) there isn't a lot to report. We've got a few birthdays to attend to at the weekend and a bit more kitchen and bathroom shopping to get done. Thankfully, my trip to England tomorrow has been postponed until next week so no massively early start and 800-mile round trip to cope with - I was tired just thinking about the M6. It's M's birthday today so we're out for dinner tonight to a lovel wee restaurant. She was over the moon with he presents - I was less over the moon at having to "share" the moment at 5:45am!

Cheers,

Billy

Good morning Billy!

Happy Birthday & Best wishes to your OH ! :bdaycake:
Was gutted for Scotland too, thought they really deserved something out of that game...:mad:

396 hours till you are Mortgage Free!

Will wave at you next time you come down the M6!

Have a great day, and enjoy your night out!

Froggy :rotfl: