Account of my mortgage free efforts

Zeddy

I have found recently that I spend approx half the month trying to be careful with my money and the other half being less so. I'm hoping that keeping this account will help me make better choices.

At the moment my Mr Z and I live with little miss Z in a small one and a half bed house. Our dream is by the time little miss Z needs to apply for school (well I guess us on her behalf!) we will have moved to a bigger house, maybe even a forever house closer to better schools.

We're on a fixed rate mortgage, for another 4 years, we have approx £145k left. We naively signed up to a mortgage where we can only overpay by 20% of our monthly payment, which we have done for the past year, since we took out the mortgage. So pay £1,200 a month instead of £1,000.

I went onto SMP at the beginning of June, up until then we were paying £700 a month into savings to use for the next house move, plus we were also saving our left over salary, but not specifically saving an amout as such.

Without much of a conscious effort we have £18,500 now in savings. However, since going on SMP we've just been trying to not dip into our savings, while still enjoying spending time as a family.

From October to December we'll be back to our original income, but have no childcare expence, so I hope to be able to get to £20k savings by the end of the year. Then from Jan, we'll be on the same income, but have child care to pay for, which I estimate will cost us £500 per month on average. So technically our capacity to save will go down, but I'd still like to make an effort to save £450 per month.

So...lets see...

dimbo61

keep up the good work but dont firget to have fun with your new daughter
Overpaying by 20% is very good so dont beat yourself up and build up savings in ISA,s and regular savers.
Being on a fixed deal does give you security for the next 4 years

setmefree2

well done on all your MF progress :T:T:T

Zeddy

Thanks dimbo, I keep reminding myself that there is so much more to life than money and while we have a nice amount of savings, we can afford treats, especially if they involve time saving so that Mr Z and I can spend more time with little miss Z. I know at her age (16 week) she doesn't really need much money spent on her, however, I am partial to meeting up with other new mums for coffee and cake - an investment in my sanity!

Thanks setmefree - I love your icons, they're very welcoming!

Yesterday was Mr Z and my 4th wedding anniversary, we were stuck with what to do, pre little miss Z we would have gone out for a lovely meal, however we agreed even just taking her out for lunch wouldn't be too enjoyable if she got upset, so decided to buy a meal from M&S, so had a lovely selection of Indian food - which was enjoyable. I managed to eat the whole meal with only using my fork, balancing my plate on the side of the sofa, all while feeding little miss Z.

During the day the only money we spent was £1.35 at the gym on a pepsi - I had to wait with little miss Z while Mr Z saw the instructor, we thought he'd only be 20mins, but instead he was gone for an hour - so I felt I needed a drink while I waited.

Other than going to the gym and taking little miss Z swimming there, we didn't do much else. Once we were home we played around with little miss Z - I'm so shocked at how much interaction you can have even with a baby of this age (clueless about babies icon needed here)!

Jonbvn

Zeddy wrote: »

clueless about babies icon needed here!

Will this do?;)

wantabetterlife

Welcome Zeddy.:j:jI will be watching your thread with interest. I am also on SMP at the moment with baby no2 and am estimating childcare costs of approx £500 per month when i go back to work in november. Only started overpaying the mortgage in january and have managed £875 to date. Not a lot but i hope when i get back to work i will be able to make more progress!
Best of luck

Zeddy

Yes that does the trick Jonbvn!

Wantabetterlife - childcare costs are rather scary aren't they!

A useful aside of being on maternity leave is that I have time to walk to shops which sell cheaper goods, instead of leaving things to a last minute panic and paying over the odds for something. We're off to a Christening on Sunday and I needed to get a card, so I walked up to a retail park near us, a good 35min walk (saved petrol - hopefully will have walked off the bag of crisps I ate for lunch too)! I found that Matalan had a party shop, which sold Hallmark cards and I managed to find a lovely one for £1.30, which is much cheaper than one I would previously picked up from Smiths or the like.

That's all I spent today, which I'm rather pleased about.

I also called up British Gas today as we had our statement for gas and electic through today. With actual readings, they now hold £280ish of our money. I had phoned up a few months back when I realised we were building up a credit to be told that they couldn't repay me any of the money and they could only lower my DD by 10%. Given that I had only just given birth at this point I let it go. But today, as my brain is slowly repairing itself I went for it.

They said an automatic credit into my bank had been made for £200, but on the automated assessment, my monthly DD had come up that they did not need to decrease. I just can't understand this at all. The operator said that as we were approaching winter and they had just credited me with money I needed to build up more of a credit with them. I pointed out that my bill had at the most only ever been 75% of my monthly DD but they were having none of it and did not seem to understand my reasonings. I have now decided to go to paying my account quarterly for the exact usage, I lose a very slight monthly DD discount, but this seems to be the only way I can structure this so that they don't end up holding so much money. I'm tied in with them until 31/12/09, but come that day I will be changing supplier no matter what.

Ahhh that feels better getting on to paper! (well you know what I mean)

Queen-Bee_2

Zeddy wrote: »

I also called up British Gas today as we had our statement for gas and electic through today. With actual readings, they now hold £280ish of our money. I had phoned up a few months back when I realised we were building up a credit to be told that they couldn't repay me any of the money and they could only lower my DD by 10%.

Hi Zeddy - I have had all sorts of problems with British Gas in the past, such as vast underestimates of my meter readings (and then getting a £780 bill) and then an overpayment plan which put me in credit which I couldn't access!!

I now phone BG with actual meter readings, and pay my bills on demand. It means I don't spread payments over the year (ie summer is cheap but winter's not), but it's a lot easier to keep on top of them.

An old BF of mine used to phone in and give them falsely inflated meter readings just before a price rise - couldn't quite believe his cheek, but it did mean he had cheaper fuel for longer!
QB

Zeddy

Sounds like you had rather a cunning ex Queenbee.

Today has been a lovely day, we went over to my sister in laws to see her, her husband and two sons who are 2 and 6. It's always good to meet up with them. I did her tax return for her online, which was remarkably quick, just need to be motivated to get mine done now.

Spent only a little money with varying degrees of MFWness:

Petrol - checked where cheapest petrol was, ended up being tescos which was enroute - plus clubcard points.

As I'd been to the gym earlier in the morning I was feeling quite thirsty, so Mr Z got me two diet cokes - they're becoming a bit of an adiction at the moment. Really I should have packed a drink in the car - refreshments certainly are somewhere I could save a few pounds a week.

On the same vein, we popped into town with sister in law and I wanted to get something for the journey home as I was quite hungry. We had had lunch at my sister in law's but as I'm trying to lose baby weight I didn't have much as there wasn't anything majorly healthy - so picked up some babybel lights which were on offer to munch on the way home.

Had a lovely dinner, which actually worked out quite cheap, called potato mamosa, which is a potato curry with scrambled egg! Sounds bazaar, but really enjoyed it.

chirpchirp

Zeddy welcome to the board.

Don't worry too much about the childcare as you may be able to claim up to 80% of this back through childcare tax credits dependent on how much you are both working.

Zeddy

chirpchirp wrote: »

Zeddy welcome to the board.

Don't worry too much about the childcare as you may be able to claim up to 80% of this back through childcare tax credits dependent on how much you are both working.

Thanks for the welcome chirpchirp - that's a cheerie name! Unfortunatly I can't see that we'll be eligable for any tax credits, however we are very lucky, Mr Z works for the NHS and the nursery is affiliated to them, which means we eligable to a discount of £1 an hour, which is quite substantial really.

Today we went to a Christening, which was lovely. I'm not religious, so I find when I do go to any event in a church that its always very interesting. Today the vicar brought our a flip chart to illustrate some points from the sermon, which I found a novel way of keeping people's attention, next time I go I'll be waiting for a powerpoint presentation!

We then went back to the parent's house for lunch, which was a great spread.

Now, onto today's MFW efforts. I've listed our Wii and Wii board on ebay, so hopefully should pay for new sofa covers which we've ordered. We've had some fun with the Wii, but our lounge is tiny and now we have all this baby paraphenalia around, playing it is going to be nigh on impossible. So it seems a good swap!

I have a lot more to list on ebay, but along with a lot of other chores that need to be done, so I'm not sure if I'll have time to do any more.