Pay off mortgage and start having fun!

lulabelle1

Bless you, I know how you feel. I hate the way that my mind is constantly thinking about money, saving, mortgage etc etc ALL of the time regardless of what I seem to be doing. It's just always going on in the back of my mind.

Thank goodness I'm not the only one.....

Don't be disheartened about your grocery challenge, I think you've done an amazing job. You have spent in a month just a bit more than I spend in a week, so please pat yourself on the back and be proud of yourself.

Best, L

pink_poppy

Haha, I'll put my hands up as well, I think there's a few of us 'obsessed' MFWers on here :rotfl:

I've been counting the days until payday so that I can make another overpayment & then I'll be counting the days until my normal payment goes out so that I can see what my balance is. I do have a spreadsheet (thanks to yukki :j) that I can fiddle with to my heart's content but I do like to see it in black & white on the Bank website

[Deleted User]

Gosh I would need chocolate biscuits too if I was faced with bootcamp!! :rotfl:
Dont worry too much about the grocery spends- mine probably are way over budget too- diet going okish (lost a pound!) but did stop for a mcdonalds today on the way home! ooopsss....
hope you feel better now!

Sepa74

It's a hard month for diets and also for money saving.

Everyone is so used to indulging over Christmas that it's hard to stop, and then you feel guilty and reach for the choccie biscuits!

And as for money saving, those wretched sales make it so hard!! I did my largest ever grocery shop yesterday.... just under £100 :eek: But it would have been £20 more except for all the BOGOFs and half price offers I threw in the trolley!

It's still the largest grocery shop I've ever done, and it will last for months, but it's still blown a massive hole in my budget!

newgirly

I am glad i'm not the only one who is addicted to being mf.

Still not feeling too well, but am going out tonight for a meal with my best friend and our dh's. I also have a friend and her kids after school, did have another friend for lunch but have cancelled until next week, I just don't have the energy!

I really need to do a big shop as we have been getting a lot from the local shop in the next road, some really cheap things but lots more that is dearer, organisation not going well really. I have cooked with eggs a lot this week though as my parents have got 3 chickens that after waiting for quite a while they have just started laying, last night the kids had scrambled egg on toast and I made dh a 6 egg bacon, potato and courgette frittata which went down well.

Still debating whether to go for the riverford veg box delivery again, it is dearer but I hate shopping and do have a butcher which I never use round the corner, plus a bakers. When I go to the big supermarkets I seem to end up buying lots of snacks for lunchboxes and not that much dinner stuff. I don't know. :cool:

icontinuetodream

newgirly wrote: »

Hi cath, its not just the extra to buy the house its the fees and the money you will spend over the next few years getting it just how you want it, its more sensible to stay put!

Being MF seems such a long way away though, I have seen quite a few posters on here who I thought were new and have clicked on their diaries only to find they have been here longer than me and just update once or twice a year. I wonder if these mfw's are thinking about it everyday like I seem to, or am I just obsessive?

I wish I could just make the payments and then get on with life , but I am definatly an all or nothing type of person, luckily it has changed from all spending to (in the main) all moneysaving or at least thinking about everything we spend on. Will I be able to ever get to the point when we have no mortgage, I hope so, but don't really trust myself to do something daft along the way.

lulabelle1 wrote: »

Bless you, I know how you feel. I hate the way that my mind is constantly thinking about money, saving, mortgage etc etc ALL of the time regardless of what I seem to be doing. It's just always going on in the back of my mind.

Thank goodness I'm not the only one.....

Don't be disheartened about your grocery challenge, I think you've done an amazing job. You have spent in a month just a bit more than I spend in a week, so please pat yourself on the back and be proud of yourself.

Best, L

pink_poppy wrote: »

Haha, I'll put my hands up as well, I think there's a few of us 'obsessed' MFWers on here :rotfl:

I've been counting the days until payday so that I can make another overpayment & then I'll be counting the days until my normal payment goes out so that I can see what my balance is. I do have a spreadsheet (thanks to yukki :j) that I can fiddle with to my heart's content but I do like to see it in black & white on the Bank website

We are not alone!!! :D:D Perhaps we should start a support group for mse addicts!! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

newgirly

Oh dear, I think I need a new title for my diary along the lines of "start having fun and don't bother to pay off mortgage"

We have bought a car today which was a tiny bit spur of the moment. Its a vauxhall zafira, which has 7 seats, but it is a year older than the car we have now. We have talked on and off for about 6 months about whether we should trade in our car before the value drops too much, and it was too much extra we had to add to get a decent car that was bigger. Today I spotted this car at a local family dealers (dh's friends have used before) and it looked very clean, 20k on the clock , top of the range spec.
We talked before and decided we would go to a max of £1500 + our car, and thats exactly what they offered us, plus mot/new tax. It was a bit of a surprise as it was quite a bit more than we were offered a few months ago by another dealer, so we went for it.:eek:

We don't really need a bigger car, but it would be nice now dd is older to be able to take a friend on holiday for her, plus we have 2 spare seats whenever we need them, so we can take extras with us on days out if we want to.

I now need to work out the finances and how best to pay it off asap.

January is not going to turn out to be my most frugal month this year I think.:D

newgirly

I have been thinking about quitting doing onepoll surveys, it take so long to get to payout (£40) and there seem to be more draw enteries than cash prizes, I am on a couple of pounds at the moment.

January has been a good month for earning, but i did sell a gold necklace which helped a bit, I'm trying to think of what I can do for feb to up the income, I thought maybe start the ebaying or matched betting, maybe focusing on one new thing each month, I was wondering if anyone on here had done matched betting successfully ? Its so complicated I don't want to get it wrong!

I now have extra money to make try and make to offset the extra cost of the car, I have worked out that it will cost £10.40 per month more in insurance / tax , petrol should hopefully be not too different than we pay now, as I drive much less as the kids walk to school.
We already have a weekend in centerparcs and a week in devon with my parents this year, but I'm hoping that a bigger car will allow us to go on cheaper holidays, it might sound daft, but dd has grown out of caravan park holidays with us and the boys , but if she can take a friend with her then she might be more keen to go ? It won't be for long I am sure as she is 15 this summer, but I want to keep her around for as long as possible.:o
Also somewthing which had not occured to me until this morning is that we might be able to pull a small caravan with a bigger car. We have a massive caravan dealers at the end of our road, and every year we go and look around but have never bought one but its something we would both like to do one day. I might have to have a look at some on ebay, and see how much an old one is, next years holiday could end up being on a campsite.:D

Anyway enough frivolous talk, I am supposed to be earning money not spending it. Last night i went to aldi to get some bits and ended up with loads, fruit and veg sooo cheap, it has forced my descision on the veg box, as much as i would love to get one every week, when I can buy it for less than 1/2 the price 10 mins away it would be crazy to spend more.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

yukkibear

I've dabbled in matched betting before and am happy to help if I can but my knowledge is very limited.

I'm also planning on making some extra cash in feb so we can keep each other going. Mne is for a washing machine

lulabelle1

Hi there

I've been reading your posts for a while now and have just seen that you are considering stopping the surveys etc and looking for extra ways to earn some money.

I would take a look at how much time you have been spending doing the surveys and then look at the number of hours in a month compared with the money you have been receiving for doing this.

I'm guessing that the time you spend isn't fairly matched to the money you receive and I wonder whether you might be better to perhaps do a few hours "work" instead.......

Could you perhaps pick up a few hours cleaning or something like that and get the same money. Apologies if this is not possible due to family commitments etc etc I just thought I would throw it in there.

When I joined the forum and decided I wanted to be MF I had some suggestions from people about doing surveys etc, but for me it just didn't make sense as I could pick up more money by throwing a little bit more effort into my job.

Well done on everything you have achieved so far!