JEMW - My Diary - Act I, Scene I

jemw

Well, I’m not sure if anyone is interested in another diary but I think it will help me stay motivated and to be honest, I do lack motivation some times! So, here goes!

Hubby (28) and I (25) have been together for almost 10 years, married for 2 years and bought our first home together 18 months ago – yes, right before the housing/mortgage market hit a huge downturn! After living the high life on one very low wage (Hubby’s) and my student loan income, we ended up with 24k CC debts :eek: :mad: :eek:

At the same time as buying our home, we got a loan to reduce the APRs we were paying and to repay the debt quicker. Obviously, the loan is a higher APR than the mortgage rate (but only just!!), so priority is to overpay the loan and then start to overpay the mortgage to become mortgage free. I haven’t set a deadline or date for us to do this, but I suppose once we start to see the savings OPing makes, this will come in time.

For this month, I have set a budget for us to stick to. It probably seems a little generous compared to some of the other diaries I have read, but this is what we are going for! So after paying all our immediate bills, ie. mortgage, loan repayment, water, council tax, etc, our goal is to spend:

£250.00 grocery bill
£100.00 going out
£100.00 eating out
£60.00 petrol (will be heavily dependant upon work)
£25.00 meals at work
£50.00 misc shopping
£25.00 clothes

I know that we can strip the above down even more and some of you are probably thinking we should, considering our debt levels. However, this is what we feel we can do at the moment comfortably and we will re-assess next month to reduce this even more.

I’m not sure how often I’ll be updating the diary, but I usually lurk most days, so it will probably be more often than I initially think!

I’ll try to post our progress so far shortly and thanks for reading if you got this far

setmefree2

and Good Luck

determined1_2

hey, another diary

how's that spreadsheet working for you?

RosieTiger

Welcome to you, good luck with your targets !

dexter_fan

Welcome and good luck with your personal challenge

Everyone here is very helpful and supportive

DF

jemw

Hi Guys

Thanks for the WELCOME messages :beer:

Well, i have spent all afternoon listing old clothes on eBay; 37 listings to be precise!! Even if only a quarter of the items sell, we should have a nice little bundle to put towards the loan OPs this month

So, progress so far:

£2,500.00 saved and put in offset account for mortgage
£7,800.00 being "held" in offset account for mortgage (holding it for a family member due to interest rates being rubbish)
New Monthly Saver Account (5% AER) with regular £250.00 SO (will total £3,065.00 after 12 months)
Share option taken at work @ £80.00 per month for three years. Share purchase price £7.60, currently tracking @ £14.68 :j
37 eBay listings listed for free
Fantastic mortgage OP spreadsheet created for me by the wonderful Determined1 :A:T

So, short term goals are:

Additional £2,500.00 savings for emergency pot (to be added to offset account for mortgage) – to be achieved by December 2009
Decide how much OPs we can make against the loan and mortgage using D1’s spreadsheet
Look for more things to list on eBay

Well that’s it for now I think. Thanks for reading!

Jen

jemw

determined1 wrote: »

hey, another diary

how's that spreadsheet working for you?

Hey,

It's FAB! I love it and Hubby is really impressed too! :A

How easy would it be for me to adapt it to my Loan account? I know we should OP the loan first as this is the most expensive debt, but as we have a OP limit on the mortgage, I kinda want to do both? It would be useful to know how much more we'll save though (just OPing the loan) and whether it would be worthwhile?

Sorry if that doesn't make sense! :rolleyes:

determined1_2

Dropped you a PM

pammyj74

hi and welcome to the MFW thread.
I am sure you could cut your eating out or even your work meals by taking some packup into work?

well done on your savings etc

jemw

Evening all - thanks for your replies

Just a quick post for today; have to have an early night due to a super early day tomorrow!

Todays progress:

• Stuck to food at work budget and saved 5 pence as they undercharged me for the jam "Every little helps"
• Last minute notice given at work today, advising I need to travel to another site tomorrow (200 miles) - managed to jump a ride with another employee to save petrol (petrol allowance is rubbish, as I have a company car allowance)
• First £250 SO taken for my 5% savings account :j
• Additional £30 SO taken for a bog standard, rubbish interest savings account I have, which I forgot to cancel. Not sure whether to keep this SO or not - suggestions please? Should I put it into my Egg Savings Account or use it towards OP's?
• The fabulously, ever helpful Mr Determined1 is also creating a Loan OP spreadsheet similar to the one he designed for our mortgage :j:A

Well, that's all for now - although I must admit to :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: most of the evening reading the following thread - apologies if you have read it already!

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=741653

NNFN
Jen

jemw

Week 1 Update

Well, we are definitely on track for our budget this month and therefore should have £900 left over at the end of the month

Determined1 has created another great spreadsheet for us, to enable us to compare the OP savings we will make against the mortgage vs the loan.

I've sold a few items on ebay and have bids on several other, with most of the rest of the listings I added having some watchers, so fingers crossed we may make a bit of cash on here to add to this month's pot :j

Still haven't decided what to do with the £30 standing order, anyone have any ideas?

Once we have finished paying into our emergency fund, I've decided to take a leaf out of Determined1's book and make the OP at the beginning of the month, rather than the end. Then, we simply *have* to stick to the budget!!

Hope everyone has a good week!