SeriouslySeekingtoSave strongly strides straight into slaying her mortgage!

SmlSave

What does this have to do with money saving? Absolutely nothing. Never mind

I'm sure that having your headphones count as MS as I'm sure being tried for murder is expensive

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

Lol. Good point! It would majorly interfere with work at the very least.

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

I booked my flights/hotel today; price had gone up £20 since yesterday, went up another £5 while I was on hold to book it and I also got charged. £10 single fee even though it was put through as single and I saw the double price was cheaper (pp that is). Still it was £250 for 7 days booked at the last minute. With Ryan air so they wanted to charge me £50 for taking luggage - OUCH!

I haven't taken that as of yet, I've measured my cabin bag to ensure it is in spec and I am going to go shopping for one of those many pocketed vests to cram everything else in. They won't get that fat fee from me if I can help it!

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

Well I tried to get into town early so I could open my Metrobank account ready for my trip to Greece. It will be nice to have an account that I can use without hefty fees. Anyway the public transport was having none of it and after leaving an hour early I was very nearly late just getting to work. I left the train and was on the underground system; reminded me again just how much nicer the trains are by comparison - I have sympathy now for some of my friends who just flatly refuse to use it. I wouldn't go that far but it sure is hot, crowded and dirty by comparison!

To add insult to injury I was nearly run over by a truck that decided to reverse as I was walking behind it, no warning and obviously no use of the mirrors. If I hadn't been paying attention and if I was less mobiles than I was I might very well have never been posting here again - gave me a hell of a fright!

With everything that has been going on with work (not feeling the love right now) I had clean forgotten about a barbecue after work. And what makes it worse is that is was a friends birthday! Thank goodness I got a text reminding me, a good get together with friends was a great pick me up :-). I will take a couple of bottles of champagne that I have at home to the next do as I didn't bring anything last night due to forgetting about it. Being money conscious is one thing, bludging off others and never reciprocating is another!

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

:hello:


Holy heck it’s been ages since I posted here!:eek: After I came back from my holiday the gloom of crappy weather struck me down in full force and I had a bit of a case of the blues . Once I’d thrown that off I started getting ready to renovate the house and stopped making my overpayments because of saving money towards said renovations instead. I also had a wee bit of a spend up with my biannual clothes shopping spree and bought my flights back home for my yearly trip .

I have popped in regularly to check on peoples diaries though I generally didn’t leave a post because my signature is very out of date and I couldn’t be faffed updating it. It’s still out of date of course but I will be doing that now. Pretty unexciting, just the itsy bitsy drops due to the standard monthly payments.

BUT – it’s now September so that’s a year since I bought this place (my first home – still makes me smile) and started my MFW journey. So it’s time to do a bit of a revision as to what I’ve accomplished over this past year, how many of my stated goals I managed to achieve and to outline some new ones for the next 12 months. I also need to publish my spending diary. I know how exciting a read that will be but I said that I would do so for every month and I am a woman of my word! :A Well, mostly.

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

As the last one was actually March. Doh!

Not a bad month, I'm sure my direct debit nPower bill is way over what I'm actually using and as I'm almost certainly going to be changing in a couple of months when my lock in period comes to an end that should mean a nice credit back to me.

Monthly Expenses
Mortgage One £355.31
Mortgage Two £118.44
Transport £122.00
Council Tax £59.92
nPower £18.00
Gym £44.00
Broadband/Phone £18.48
LoveFilm £9.99
Cellphone £11.08
Total £757.22


Food
Local Shops £10.10
Work Canteen Card £10.00
EAT £7.85
Marks & Spencer £8.34
Tesco £3.38
Supermarkets £25.71
Total £65.38


Entertainment
Rhodes Holiday (Hotel/Flights) £259.56
Train Tickets £8.60
Total £268.16


Shopping

Total £0.00 :T


Misc
Maplin £6.29
Hostel £17.00
Total £23.29


GRAND TOTAL! £1,114.05

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

Again pretty good considering that I had my holiday in Rhodes that month.

Monthly Expenses
Mortgage One £355.31
Mortgage Two £118.44
Transport £122.00
Council Tax £87.00
nPower £18.00
Gym £44.00
Broadband/Phone £18.48
LoveFilm £9.99
Cellphone £10.21
Total £783.43


Food
Local Shops £16.87
Work Canteen Card £20.00
Marks & Spencer £4.55
Supermarket £36.15
Total £77.57


Entertainment
Pubs/Bars £53.55
Theatre £13.00
Rhodes Spending Money £181.25
Train Tickets £26.00
Total £273.80


Shopping
Books £14.00
Computer Games (ebay) £27.40
Total £41.40


Misc
Shipping Company £17.24
Total £17.24


GRAND TOTAL! £1,193.44

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

My Food total has basically DOUBLED this month! Very very lazy!


Monthly Expenses
Mortgage One £355.31
Mortgage Two £118.44
Transport £122.00
Council Tax £63.00
nPower £18.00
Gym £44.00
Broadband/Phone £18.48
LoveFilm £9.99
Cellphone £10.21
Total £759.43


Food
Takeaways £18.90
Local Shops £29.14
EAT £7.80
Work Canteen Card £30.00
Tesco £11.93
Marks & Spencer £8.83
Supermarket £35.01
Total £141.61


Entertainment
Pubs/Bars £19.80
Total £19.80


Shopping
Computer Games (ebay) £10.00
DVDs (ebay) £20.50
Total £30.50


Misc
Cash Withdrawl £40.00
Total £40.00


GRAND TOTAL! £1,021.84

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

An expensive month due to my annual water bill (which is higher than it needs to be but I don't have a meter) and the bill for 10 Personal Training sessions which I booked through my gym.

Monthly Expenses
Mortgage One £355.31
Mortgage Two £118.44
Transport £122.00
Council Tax £63.00
nPower £18.00
Gym £44.00
Broadband/Phone £23.48
LoveFilm £9.99
Cellphone £11.64
Total £765.86


Food
Takeaways £12.00
Local Shops £31.73
Work Canteen Card £10.00
Marks & Spencer £13.66
Supermarket £49.87
Total £117.26


Entertainment
Movies £22.00
Pubs/Bars £11.00
Total £11.00


Shopping
DVDs (ebay) £2.24
Total £2.24


Misc
Groupon - Streetcar £29.75
Water Bill £199.34
Personal Training £435.00
Total £664.09


GRAND TOTAL! £1,560.45

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

SeriouslySeekingtoSave wrote: »

So the two major changes that I want myself to make this year are:

• Learn how to make my money work for me (I've learned a lot! Still putting things into practice but I feel I've made great strides on this)
  
• Stop wasting as much money on food (A definate improvement. I still have a high fritter factor compared to many but I've cut this back a huge amount)
  

Along with these two main gaols I have specific targets to reach. I may not reach all of them but…

1. Reduce my Mortgage principle by £10,000 before September (Yup :T)
2. Find a decent ISA and put as much money as I can into it before the 8th of April. (Decided against it and made a big OP instead. Maybe should have gone ISA - I'll definately get one before this year ends)
3. Keep my pension payments up – currently I’m paying 3% of my salary, work matches 3% and a further 3% is also going in as part of my benefits package (Yes)
4. Go to the gym at least 3 times a week (Had a few flakey spots but overall pretty good. Right now I'm a total gym bunny - I have muscles on my arms! My arms! I thought I was only allowed bingo wings!)
5. Maintain a monthly spend spreadsheet like I did 3 months before taking out my mortgage. This was fabulous in motivating me everyday to NOT spend money on frivolous things. I will post this at the end of each month so I can have the shame (or the congratulations) of anyone who wants to look at it and say ‘why are you spending that much money on food!?’ (Again yup. But I did let it get out of date... Bad me! I was only spending on my credit card though so I kept a record of everything so it's been quite easy to catch everything up)
6. Cut my monthly food budget to £150. (does anyone notice a theme here...) (Way over achieved this. If I have a food bill of £150 nowadays I give myself a good smack up the side of the head!)
7. See about any extra savings I have (after my £10,000 mortgage target and a cash ISA of £5,1000 – hey, thinking positive!) and see the best place to invest it. Perhaps more on the mortgage, a good savings account or a stocks/shares ISA. (I have £300 a month going into my 8% savings account with FD)
8. Work on my new place – for this year I just intend to do the things that I can do at a low cost ie painting and maybe the floors. (I was doing a bad job so I've hired my friend. More expensive than I'd like but I'm sick of living in an incomplete house and having everyone keep asking me when I'm going to have my house warming!)

Right, I think that is quite enough to be getting on with! Wish me consistency and motivation

Well consistency and motivation got me through this year with all flags flying. And I think it's going to get easier as I go on so next year should be a humdinger! I'll get working on an updated list. New and improved, now 200% more money saving!!!!

Or something like that.