KolaKubes Crazy Rags to Riches Mortgage Challenge! Part One - Saving a deposit!

Emsky*

:TWow!" Thats organised!" I'm still half way through my xmas prezzies!" And you've managed to do it all under £80 is fab!"

I'd love a sewing machine or something, but I'm gonna learn how to knit first incase I don't enjoy it or don't end up finishing anything.

By the sounds of it you'l be making fabric wall hangings soon too!" :rotfl:

KolaKube

Emsky I never ever finish anything either - I have a huge bag of knitting and crochet projects half finished gathering dust on top of OHs wardrobe... but honestly, sewing (on a machine) is the quickest thing ever! I made the beanbag in an hour. In terms of effort / gratification ratio I would definitely recommend it :j

Emsky*

I might OH for a sewing machine for xmas haha!" Don't think he will though, he's got his mind set on buying me a mountain bike :rotfl:don't know why, I haven't been on one since I was 13!"

Wheres the best place for fabric?? And how are you enjoying driving?

loumac

Wow! :eek: I haven't even started my shopping. Feeling suitably embarrassed into now... Ha!

Well done though, sounds like some very organised shopping.

Sewing sounds good too. I can cross stitch and that's about it. But equally I never finish any of those. xx

museumworker

Fantastic news on xmas shopping, I have only got a few things and loads to buy (think parents x 4, siblings and in-laws x 15, nieces/nephews x 12, 3 x great nephews, and friends x about 20 or so; oh, and OH and DD!:eek::eek::eek:)... if you can recommend any particular bargains please do!

I would love to sew, have a sewing machine now but am so unconfident on it not sure where to start! Have been working on skirt since July... MUST finish this weekend! If you can recommend any easy but impressive things to make, particularly as gifts, it would be appreciated.

KolaKube

museumworker wrote: »

Fantastic news on xmas shopping, I have only got a few things and loads to buy (think parents x 4, siblings and in-laws x 15, nieces/nephews x 12, 3 x great nephews, and friends x about 20 or so; oh, and OH and DD!:eek::eek::eek:)... if you can recommend any particular bargains please do!

I would love to sew, have a sewing machine now but am so unconfident on it not sure where to start! Have been working on skirt since July... MUST finish this weekend! If you can recommend any easy but impressive things to make, particularly as gifts, it would be appreciated.

Hiya museumworker!

How about some easy fold-over xmasy cushion covers (but you could do them in a fabric thats suitable for the rest of the year too - e.g. dunelm mill have a fabric thats cream with gold stars on). Or the bean-bag footstool cube I made was seriously the easiest thing ever - I think the total cost came to about £5? I'm having a go at curtains this weekend, but will also be making some xmas stockings? Which you could then fill with a few little things e.g. chocolate coins and a magazine? Or some padded hot water bottle covers? A tea cosy? Mug cosies and get some cheap little mugs and fill with hot choc? If you wanted to go all out you could make a fabric advent calendar? Or you could do something really simple like hem some nice christmassy fleece (before anyone says, I know you don't NEED to hem fleece, but it makes it look nice!) to make some nice little blankets? It's easy peasy, I've never had a sewing machine before now and am knocking things out left right and centre :rotfl:trick is to measure perfectly and make your seam allowances perfect.

Re: bargains. I've picked up my bargains as I've gone along really - at one point boots had 2 for £4 on garnier face creams etc (£5 each normally) so for a few people I got a face cream,exfoliator and then bought a matching coloured flannel and put in a little gift bag. They were doing the same with apricot scrubs for £6 so one person got the body and face scrub with a matching body puff in a little bag. And I made up a little soap and glory bag paid with my boots points.

A couple of bargains on amazon were the league of gentlemen entire boxset down from £39.99 to £13.93 <perfect for brother>, and flights of the conchords series 1 and 2 down from £34.99 to £14.99 <perfect for other brother> - both bought with a birthday voucher so free to me, so I didn't really look round to see if I could get them cheaper.

Debenhams had a whole stand of pretty boxed jewellery reduced at one point so I got quite a few pieces from that too <had to be a bit selective but there were some lovely bits in there>- that seems to be an ongoing thing on and off in store, but it's not obvious where they are online? They have CK perfume and aftershave reduced by half - so £11 - bought for my and OHs dad to go with a few other small bits (voucher purchase again!)

I think most of my other bits and pieces were quite person specific so probably wouldn't be much good to other folk (e.g. a book of old pics from the town we're from for OHs dad).

Hope some of that helps! It's a big load off having it all sorted for little cash.

In other news, today OH is in having the details of his losing his job thrashed out - I don't think he's been there long enough to get any sort of payout so I'm not sure what they're going to say

Kola xx

KolaKube

Right everyone! It's time for the dreaded SOA.... drumroll please!

I have based this on my take home wage as of December as I have now found this out (my current pay is £2200, but this will be dropping to £1500 from Decembers pay day). It looks pretty good, but unfortunately when OHs job goes we'll be dropping by his £1600 so it looks like we'll have a little shortfall (and clearly, this doesn't cover everything, as there's no way we have this much money left over each month even on my current wage - there's no area on there for general things bought (e.g. this week I spent £35 on fabric, bean bag fillings etc! - where does that go?!)

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet
Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household.........
Number of cars owned.................... 1
Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1500
Partners monthly income after tax....... 1600 [due to disappear in april]
Benefits................................ 0
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 3100
Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 0
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 500
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 95
Electricity............................. 35
Gas..................................... 80
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 0
Telephone (land line)................... 20 [includes internet!]
Mobile phone............................ 20 [£10 each for PAYG phones]
TV Licence.............................. 13
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 0
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 250 [yikes - probably a conservative estimate! But does include alcohol etc, we very rarely drink out]
Clothing................................ 50
Petrol/diesel........................... 150
Road tax................................ 5
Car Insurance........................... 160 [OHs - I promise you this was the best deal we could find, he hasn't been driving very long!]
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 20
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 36 [my monthly bus spend]
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 0
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 0
Contents insurance...................... 15
Life assurance ......................... 0
Other insurance......................... 27 [this is my professional indemnity insurance, which is actually paid annually, and my monthly subscription to our union, which I am rep for so it definitely can't go!]
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 20
Haircuts................................ 5 [doesn't happen very often in this house! Especially as I'm growing mine for the wedding from a bob to mid-length]
Entertainment........................... 50 [covers OHs DVD fetish]
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 1551

Assets
Cash.................................... 2300
House value (Gross)..................... 0
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 3000
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 5300

No Secured nor Hire Purchase Debts
Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Total unsecured debts..........0.........0.........-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 3,100
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 1,551
Available for debt repayments........... 1,549
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 0
Amount left after debt repayments....... 1,549
Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 5,300
Total HP & Secured debt................. -0
Total Unsecured debt.................... -0
Net Assets.............................. 5,300
Created using the SOA calculator at www.makesenseofcards.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using IE browser.

So clearly I've omitted quite a bit of day to day spends, as there's no way we have £1549 left over a month - we just about manage to save £1k on my *current* wage, god knows how we'll get on if it drops to my lower wage alone. Which is shocking really as we should have much more left over than we do! And I thought we were quite careful - clearly not! :rotfl: I guess it demonstrates where we would be if we bared everything back to tight basic spends only rather than an accurate demonstration of all our current spending (which is not anywhere near as tight as it could be!) - that reduction to basic spends only might come sooner than we think unfortunately. All help and advice gratefully received :cool: There's no way I'll be able to make OH keep a spending diary, so that's out! I suppose if he wasn't working our petrol spends etc would be down, and my bus ticket could go etc, so when the dreaded happens I can re-post a new SOA.

In other news, I have just made a batch of HM houmous, which is delish, good old river cottage recipes! <eaten with some pittas lurking at the bottom of the freezer, and saved a trip to the shops for lunch!>

Hope everyone is well

Kola

KolaKube

Hello all!

Off today and have spent it buying mums birthday present (birthday friday) and mooching around the charity shops buying myself some pretty things for pence

For mum I got the intense beauty serum and an eye cream from the boots No7 range, got the free gift (worth £38?) with it, then also a £5 skincare voucher at the till which I went back and put towards a little face cream from the time-delay range - nice present for a total spend of £28.99 :T

For some reason I have been feathering my nest this week - I have been re-designing the flat on a shoe string, especially with my new sewing machine, colours cream, wheat, duck egg blue and a darker teal. I'm into all things pretty, earthenware, shell / cut glass today I was impressed to find at the charity shop: a beautiful brand new teal silk lampshade (50p!) which has made over an old tatty lamp so it looks gorgeous in the living room, a wheat heavy earthenware mug (49p) <love them!>, duck egg blue earthenware candlestick holder (99p), a gorgeous cut glass square perfume bottle with a little glass stopper (99p), 2 heavy wine glasses (29p each! - my 'expensive' <and yet very lightweight and cheap feeling> ones from tesco have all got smashed over the past year). Thrilled, everything fits in wonderfully and I love them all! It's amazing what quality things you can get for pence at the charity shops - completely out of style for most of the young trendy couples in this area, but they suit me perfectly!

Tomorrow is payday and I shall be transferring £1k into the pot as it's my last 'big' payday. I will need to have a think about how much to transfer when the lower wage kicks in. Will update sig tomorrow when the transfer is done.

Sipping a glass of cheap plonk (£3.99 at oddbins on offer! And he wrapped it up in about 10 layers of gorgeous tissue paper which I have rescued and spirited away into my wrapping drawer) and eagerly awaiting kirsties homemade home at 8. Happy!

Hope everyone is well!

Kola

KolaKube

Hehehe - the little candlestick had a makers mark on the bottom (I had to investigate - I love knowing where things have come from) - and here it is!

http://www.edinbane-pottery.co.uk/commissions.php

£25 from a little pottery place in Scotland, seemingly made on commission - I'd love to know who asked for it and why, I might e-mail them (or is that a bit sad?!)

Kola

loumac

KolaKube wrote: »

£25 from a little pottery place in Scotland, seemingly made on commission - I'd love to know who asked for it and why, I might e-mail them (or is that a bit sad?!)

Kola

Not sad at all, it's nice to know what journey something has made! Think it's sweet.

Loving all the spending, well done you! Sounds like you're a good person to go shopping with. Ha! Enjoy making your 'nest' so pretty.