Mortgage Free - so good they'll do it twice! Wynnvegas aiming for the big house

wynnvegas

Early evening all,

A strangely dull week thus far. The new snow has come and gone with no more drama (although it did seem to be a much bigger deal when it affected the good City of London). We both get paid tomorrow which will be great as the bank balance will look it's healthiest for good bit of time. Planning to pop in and buy the bathroom next week when the sales hit. Noticed FlyThomasCook are running a charter to Vegas in mid-July next year which costs £140pp less than the Virgin flight leaving the next day. I'll take a saving of nearly £600 over a telly in the back of the seat. Now that I've discovered iphone and ipad movies and TV programmes, I don't think we'll do too badly on that flight. The downside is that it limits us to going for two weeks. The upside is that we'll get away again later in the year. We're planning a wee jaunt to somewhere like Berlin or Amsterdam whilst the bathroom is getting taken care of in April so that may yet leave me enough holidays to shoot off somewhere decent in October for a week. We're thinking about Thailand or Japan at the moment but that's not even entered the planning phase.

Thankfully, my OCD need to plan things keeps me out of trouble. Now that the mortgage tab of my SOA spreadsheet lives at the end of the 15 or so other tabs, planning the holiday becomes a proper project. We're going with direct flights from Manchester this year so FlyThomasCook looks the likely bet but then the base hotel prices need looking at for each of the weks we're in Vegas and that's before the offers start flooding in. I'll introduce the rest of my spreadsheet mania tomorrow...

Cheers,

Billy

LilacPixie

Billy - your way more dedicated than I am.. Jigsaws I lose patience with quite quickly. I get paid Hogmany, OH got paid today but its all accounted for which isn't so good. January is always a tight month for us.

You seem to live a jetset lifestyle I find myself half full of envy and half exhausted reading of your plans...

wynnvegas

Hi LP,

Jetset isn't nearly it I'm afraid. With such a big famly, it's just difficult to get any great degree of time to ourselves so it seems a lot more frenetic than it actually is at times. We took the decision, on the basis that you can't deny yourself everything in life, that the three-week jaunt to Vegas every summer was the only thing that would be ringfenced during our mortgage payment period. That meant no other holidays, day trips, theatre, cinema or concert tickets, daft Hot UK Deals and Grabbit board spending or discretionary home improvements. Now that all these things are back on the table, Moyra has been on the case with tickets for various theatre shows (can't see a performance of Grease go by her) and she got Bon Jovi tickets last month for their Murrayfield show. I haven't been too bad at all since we paid the mortgage off but my plan is to back to my good old "present cupbaord" tactic of hitting the boxing day sales. Last year was the first time in a long while that I didn't stock up on all the toiletry gift sets, christmassy stuff and reduced game sets for the kiddies but I'll make up for that next week and then some. Still no sign of a sale in Buyrite so fingers crossed for it kicking off in the next week. If not, all is not lost as we'll just have to factor in the extra 2.5% in 2011. It's not getting done until April so there's no real hurry to buy it so I can wait their sale brinkmanship out!

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Morning Folks,

Payday is here. I don't ever need to look at the bank to know this. The throngs of tracksuited and unwashed neds that appear in droves at the end of a month tell me that there is a bit of money burning a hole in their collective pockets. I don't know if benefits are paid at the end of a month as it seems none of these people work any but dodging the poor has become an unfortunately regular sport of mine at the end of a month. I saw a wee soul yesterday in Home Bargains who looked like he'd broken open the penny jar to get his wee lassie a £4.99 doll for Christmas which was just about the saddest thing I've ever seen.

My overt and worsening snobbishness aside, this next week is quite an eventful one as we'll be able to present Moyra's Auntie and Sister with their flight confirmations to Vegas in addition to their presents. For the first time in a long while, we've put a lot of thought and a good bit of money into each immediate family member's Christmas so I can't wait to see what they think of their presents. I'm considerably more excited about seeing other people open the stuff we've gotten them than I am about getting stuff myself. My sister said last week that it's something to do with having or being able to have everything I need and want. I told her not to be daft (and that chocolate never offends) but there may be something to it. If ever my Christmas spirit dips though, Moyra is infectious as she goes for this time of year in a big way. This is apparently a good year as it's the first when she's had a new pair of Christmas themed earrings to see her right through December. How she's managed to avoid a pit of depression all these other years where a couple of pairs of earrings had to be worn twice, god alone knows.

I got confirmation of Bathstore's sale this morning which focused my mind on buying our bathroom. We're waiting for Buyrite Bathrooms to announce their sale so that we can nip in, confirm our order, avoid the 2.5% VAT rise (all of £75 or so). I need to get our Project Manager round to requote for the bigger boiler that we're getting so that we've got a final cost to aim for. It may be that the spare room turns into a bathroom and present storage area for the first three months of next year. We've definitely decided to shoot away somewhere whilst the bathroom is getting done and, thus far, a European city break seems the likely option. We've never been to Paris so it might finally be time to get over there as it comes highly recommended by everyone we know who has been.

Now that I've found out first hand the persuasive power of sticking down some goals (albeit financial ones only thuis far) onto an online forum, I'll let everyone into my main objectives for 2011:

Weight - finally get to 12 stones. Still 6 pounds to go at the last count and these have been impossible to shift but a concerted Froggy G inspired effort will shift them yet!
Job - Form the consultancy that I've been talking about with a few people I know. What we do with it once set up is up for debate but getting the thing formed, named and generating some interest is a step enough for the moment whilst we're all in full-time employment.
Skills - Finally do the three things I've always wanted to be able to do - sing, draw and learn Mandarin. I've recently bought books, instructional CDs and now iphone apps for all three so I'll update the progress as I go. At the moment, my Mandarin consists of counting to 20, saying hello and managing the alphabet. I genuinely can't sing to save myself so that will need a bit of work and a professional tutor and my drawings consist of squares and stick men (which you can do a surprising amount with).
Family - Restart the shopping frenzy every week to help out the family with staple foods and whatever offers of the week are on. I'll post the offers in this diary of a week as well on the off chance it may help a few others. Our deal with the family was that we would accept money for this until the mortgage was paid off so it's really nice to now be in a position to help everyone out.
MSE - Kick off the Wynnvegas matched betting career, keep the diary up to date, become cheerleader in chief of the MFi3T2 and MFW2011 challenges, keep up with the brilliant progress of everyone else and clear the shelves of the really good offers when they come along!
House - Get the bathroom, boiler, kitchen and all flooring / carpeting done over the course of 2011. Clear out the current office (to become the DVD / CD / Book library) and replace the ol' PC with an ipad (the work laptop will suffice for any officey / school stuff that needs doing). Possibly get a new telly and surround sound piece to hook all the technology together and investigate whether it's worth looking into the new consoles for PS Move or Xbox Kinect. Get the cityscape jigsaw finished and the big daddy jigsaw underway! Difficult to set goals for the big house at the moment but we'll aim to progress that as much as we're able.

A brilliantly merry Christmas and New Year to one and all. Hope Santa brings you all you wished for... See you all in 2011 for the next installment.

Cheers,

Billy & Moyra

*Jellie*

Best of luck with all your targets- it is great to have you cheering us all on!
I'm going to start thinking through my targets while I'm cleaning today so thanks for inspiring me.
Have a great Christmas and new year x

wynnvegas

Morning All,

First big purchase of the year has just been completed and I suppose it's the first big piece that we've bought since paying the mortgage off. Flights to Vegas for Moyra, Moyra's sister, Moyra's auntie and me are now booked so we fly from Edinburgh to Vegas (via that London) in mid July. Got a reasonable price as expected of just a touch over £3,000 all in so that lets me get on with hotel shopping in the next few months. There's an art to booking Vegas hotels that readers here will become well accustomed to but we're going for decent but not overly flash on that front as we're picking up the tab for the rooms as well. Unfortunately for Moyra's sister and auntie, we're not going as far as spending money so it's not quite the all inclusive gift that it might one day be but it's nice to do something for them both as they've had a really rought ride of it for various reasons over the last year and a bit. Assuming no BA strike action in the summer, we're set for a great couple of weeks away.

Next up is the bathroom. If all goes to plan tomorrow, we'll be buying the new bathroom suite which will be the biggest two bits of 2011 out of the way. Progress is otherwise slow on the resolutions front as I've managed to stick on three pounds in the last couple of weeks, only so much as ordered the business start up software, not cracked open the drawing pencils as yet and had a cursory glance at the learning mandarin app. We have had a look at beginning v.3.0 of the big house plan and we have had a good clear out of the rubbish in the house and we're aiming to move on in the next six weeks to clear some space for our mini living room project.

The next stage of the battle for a decent "squalor" is to get an ipad. This will let us get shot of the big PC and all associated bits and bobs upstairs (including the ridiculously oversized computer unit. We can then move the bookcases in the living room which currently houses all our CDs and DVDs upstairs into what will become the world's smallest library housing our CDs, DVDs and books. We can then slap the telly onto the wall and get ourselves the xbox and kinect which, having had a wee shot, is a properly clever piece of kit.

Hope everyone's 2011 is going swimmingly!

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Morning All,

Second big purchase of the year occured today as planned as we bought the new bathroom suite. All in, it's £2,443 excluding the new spotlights which we need to get which is a great deal as it's 40% off the total price. It takes 4 weeks to make some of the more bespoke pieces so we're well on course to get it in for the April week as planned.

Cheers,

Billy

[Deleted User]

Happy New Year!!
sounds like 2011 is off to a great start and what a bargain on the bathroom!! thats definitely on my 2011 list ...shouldve been a bit more proactive in the sales I guess but nowhere to put a bathroom yet!
how goes the plans for the big build ?..

wynnvegas

Morning TYO,

Happy new year. If 2011 kicks on as it has started, I'll be more than happy. I'm really tempted to up the timescales and get it put in during March as I want a shot of my new 12-jet jacuzzi bath but it would mean living in the house whilst everything was up in the air. We're better off jetting away somewhere in April whilst it's getting done and coming back to a shiny new bathroom. We'll then start on the kitchen!!

Version 4.0 of the big house is looking pretty decent. We think we've got the build cost (based on £1,000 per sqaure metre) down from £545,000 to somewhere around £375,000 whilst retaining everything we want (including the stupidly massive wardrobes!) but we haven't been to look at the two available plots as yet. Hopefully the threatened snow doesn't come again this week as we could well get out for a viewing or two and up the motivation levels by a factor at the weekend.

Cheers,

Billy

RosieTiger

Billy, you have no chance reducing the costs any further as the female wardrobe will never be big enough to contain the shoes otherwise!:rotfl: