greent's mfw journey

greent

Another £50 OP made this morning from ebay sales Am loving clearing out stuff and getting paid for it - roll on the next FLW! Stuff I would have previously freecycled is getting listed on ebay first (usually - not always) - sold a cast iron parasol base which has been sat in the garden unused for 6 years for £9.50 - ok, not masses, but still money in. Some unused flooring from a project 3 years ago went for over £10.

On a wider note, the Olympic torch was in Gloucester this morning. Start point was 8.15 - thought it best not to get kids up, dressed for school and out of the house by 6.30am to try and catch it! We watched the live webstream instead. I appreciate it's a 'once in a lifetime' thing, but the logistics of achieving 4 children up/ fed/ ready for school by then was just too hard!! And no doubt someone would need the loo.... They were happy watching it in the warm and dry instead.

Not really sure where I'm going to get more money from for overpayments at the mo... only have £16 os on cashback and not much to sell at NCT sale in July. Need another FLW, but expect that to raise £50 max (although that's obviously not to be sniffed at!!) Am getting frustrated, as our sub acct 02 is so close now - balance appx £2570 - whilst I could clear that from savibgs, I don't want to. We're due to pay it off at the mo in August, but I want to make that July - which I only need about £164 for, so that should be possible. Then we can start to make inroads on sub acct 01 - which hasn't had any overpayments for ages, so has only been reducing by about £450/ month. We can start reducing it by about £1300/ month when sub acct 02 has gone!! Can't wait

MoneyMission

I'm with you on the not getting up early for the Olympic torch. We're very lucky that ours will come through about 5.30pm so the kids will be home from school and we can walk down into town and see it.

Well done on all your fleabaying. That really is a great total amount so far.

greent

The kids were fine on watching it indoors - a few friends went to watch it.

Just made another OP of £20 - full bag of £2 coins

We were woken up at 5.20am today by the smoke alarm going off directly outside our bedroom door. They're all (3) wired into the mains, but it was informing us that the battery backup needed changing. However, instead of just 'chirruping' this every so often, it actually went off properly for 30 seconds every 3 minutes!! We took the battery out, went back to bed (replaced battery later) but couldn't get back to sleep. DS3 woke up about 6.15 and Dh brought a cup of tea back to bed. Got up at 7am to yet another glorious day and have been quite productive as a result of being up and about so early (in tesco by 7.30) DH is rebuilding the step up to the garden from the patio, so we've bought slabs & gravel. Had some sort of concrete stuff already in garage I've been de-dandelion-ing the garden ready to plant out the veggies

Had to buy DD new school blouses and skirts as she is having such a growth spurt! And yet more underwear...! And DS a small suitcase for his school trip - our other ones are purple, plum and flowery - and he won't take any of those, funnily enough!!

Am hoping that's generally it spendy wise this weekend. other than a small food shop and Sunday newspaper tomorrow!

Oh - we're having towbar fitted to DH's car on Weds - so we can now go away camping next weekend - if we can find somewhere!

CathT

Hope the weather is this good next week for your camping trip.Will you stay local? You're in a nice part of the world aren't you?

greent

Gloucestershire and surrounds are lovely, Cath - but OH doesn't want to be too local - so we're looking at around a 2hrs drive. Mind you, I can't find anywhere with electric hookup that has pitches yet! Have provisionally booked guinea pigs into boarding as my mum (who normally has them) is away for the BHol weekend and neither Dh nor I trust his mum (who lives half a mile away) to look after them properly!!

Lovely weekend. Paddling pool out for the 2 youngest, BBQ with warm hm scones and hm jam (and extra thick cream) on yesterday - yum! Used up stuff, too - BBQ used up half pack of Charlotte potatoes in the fridge from March(!), a pot of flavoured couscous from AFoods and steak, pork loin (for kebabs) burgers (homemade -s o used up mince, manky peppers and breadcrumbs) from freezer

Talking of the freezer, did an inventory and tidy today - have masses of steak.... loads of runner beans from last summer and lots of Apples from last Autumn. However, this week, as we will probably go away, I am looking to use up things in the fridge as a priority.

Have increased DD by a further £100 today - taking effect from our payment due 1st June. This means that mtge sub acct will definitely be repaid in August and brings our full MF date forward to Feb 2016. We'll be under £55K by December too - woo hoo!! I'm not entirely sure that a regular OP of £905 is entirely sustainable, but we shall see!!

ammonite

greent - I am so glad we decided to clear out the house and list on eBay, seeing the money add up is really motivating isn't it? Sounds like you are doing really well.

We had the paddling pool out too, was lovely!

Well done for the OP that is a huge amount!!!

greent

Well, we'll see if it's sustainable going forward! DH wants lots of work done on the house, so we have a lot of expenses coming up....!

ebaying is great when I'm in the mood - I have to say that I don't like the mobile app -I prefer the desktop version for relisting unsold items I am losing the enthusiasm at the mo, though


Have finally booked somewhere to go thos weekend - have spent hours and hours looking for somewhere (easily more than a dozen) and have booked the place I found Sunday night (DH wasn't keen but it has been really doing my head in looking for places/ phoning them etc) We're off to Modbury (ish) in Devon - a pretty area. Wanted somewhere we hadn't been before, really, but I just couldn't find somewhere which suited us as a family and our very large tent (8m x 5m!)


1st June tomorrow - looking forward to updating my figures and the MFiT take 2 challenge - we've reached (exceeded!) our target for December - yeay! Come December we should have knocked an extra 10-13k from our original target - which I thought was going to be hard to achieve.. at times it's been a struggle, but we've done it Now just the last £62+k to go!!

greent

Sold a few of DD's clothes to a friend today for £6 and claimed tcb of £1.02 = an OP of £10

Balance (not confirmed by C&G, I expect they'll differ (in my favour) by a small amount) is now £62210 , of which sub acct 02 is £1639. Two months and it'll be gone forever.......!

greent

Off to Devon for a few days - enjoy the extra long weekend, everyone!

greent

Well, we're back from our decidedly soggy camping trip! Took 6.5hours to do a 2.5hour trip to get there! Arrived MUCH later than anticipated and it started bucketing it down as soon as we got to our pitch. We had no choice but to pitch in heavy rain I mopped up over half a large bucket of water from inside the tent once it was up! Fed everyone around 10pm! Kids fell asleep straight after and we finally collapsed into bed at gone midnight (with stuff still to do but we were falling over with tiredness by that point)

Went to a NT property whilst there (we're members) Spent far too much on food out and about so need to rein it in for the rest of the montha s we're now a bit skint after some rather large CC bills this month too (and next month's will also be big)

Monday was beautiful - and Tuesday, when we left, was tipping it down again, so we packed up in really heavy rain and came home with it all wet. Spent yesterday drying and cleaning. Still have sleeping bags to do! Ah well, it wasn't that bad, and it was a learning experience....!

REgular OP has gone throughon 1st June. Nothing since. Have some items listed on ebay from the FLW (spent a couple of hours on Tuesday when we got home) so will update some of them (basic details input on some just to get the listing up) and hopefully some will sell!!

Off to the accoutants in amoment - will find out how much the corporation tax bill for the year will be.....

oops - jus looked at time! - Must get ready now!!