Peonie's journey to smart money management

Peonie

I am starting this diary to document our journey to saving money to pay off our mortgage early and to increase our rainy day savings.

We bought our first house in 2003 in the middle of the property race, as house prices were rising quicker than we could save a deposit we took out a 100% mortgage to the sum of £77,000. Two years later the value had increased and when remortgaging we increased it to £90,000 and used the £15,000 to install a kitchen, do some other work on the property and to buy a used car.

Along the way we have had a few nice holidays and the boy and I even got married!

Fast forward to 2011 and we have our house on the market, to cut a shortish story even shorter we have accepted an offer and yesterday put an offer on a larger house in need of work and in a more desirable area (exciting). If the offer is accepted our mortgage is going to increase CONSIDERABLY (scary).

When we got married our savings took a hit, while I do not regret anything we purchased for our wedding day or the amazing honeymoon afterwards, I do like the security of having savings for a rainy day and I want to build them back up again.

But first and foremost the fees to buy and sell a house seem to be growing by the day, and I do not want to:
1. add the fees to the new mortgage, or
2. use our savings.
So in the next 2 months we need to save (or not spend) as much (or as little) as possible.

So how are we going to do this?
In one word, sustainably.
The boy and I still want to enjoy our life together, but we want to learn to be more sensible with the money we have.

Since my lightbulb moment in October 2010 I have started to make in roads to smart money management which I will cover in another post. It's going to be a long journey but with the ideas on MSE I hope to make it shorter.

Peonie.

Peonie

House 2 mortgage start
Aug 2011 - £154,000 - original end date Jul 2036

Annual progress
Dec 2011 Mortgage - £151,441 - overpaid by £700 - new end date Jun 2036. Rainy day savings - £10,075. See page 9; post 170.
Dec 2012 Mortgage - £146,800 - overpaid by £87 - new end date May 2036. Rainy day savings - £12,000 - achieved. 12k in 2012 savings challenge - £6,580/£4,000. See page 25; post 486 & 7.
Dec 2013 Mortgage - £141,200 - overpaid by £910 - new end date Mar 2036. Sunny day savings - £3,416 - achieved. See page 38; post 742.

Peonie

This list is to remind me of ways to make the most of the money we have. I will continue to add this list over our long journey.

The banking game
Move money to a higher rate savings account
Transfer money between accounts to satisfy account requirements
Zero % credit (card) and stooze

A happy home
Cook a Sunday dinner
Make soup and freeze
Freeze vegetables on the turn
Breakfast at home
Buy sell by food, freeze excess
Packed lunches

Helping the purse and the earth
Reuse glass jars and plastic containers
Grow own food
Buying pre-loved items
Using gifted pre-loved items

Getting those points - loyalty cards
Nect@r
BOOts

C-C-Cash back
Check Mr T's & Mr A's Price Checker
Quidc0
TopCashBak

Doing and getting what we want - cheaper
Check coupon/voucher apps for deals at restaurants
Gr0up0n


Abbreviations

MS - Money Save/ing
NSD - No Spend Day
TCB - T0pC@shBack

BeauBelle

Hi Peonie.

Good luck with moving and paying off your mortgage. Its seriously addictive!!

BB

newgirly

Hi welcome to the mfw's, sounds like you are already quite organised, have you thought of posting a SOA ? its often a good idea to get others perspectives, just incase there is something that can be reduced even more. Good luck with the house move.

gratefulforhelp_2

Good luck! Its def a good idea to post an SOA, though I'm still plucking up the courage myself!

originalmiscellany

I think there are two factors, I don't know/have to hand all the info I need, and generally I'm happy with our finances, so don't feel the need to get an SOA. Utterly two faced of me, but that's life

Peonie keep up the good work, I'm sure if you persevere and post regularly, you'll be impressed with how it goes. I like the fact you've listed sustainability as a word for improving, not a concept of "I'll save 20k a month from my 2k wages" but through sensible saving and hard work.

yukkibear

welcome to the boards, look forward to following your journey

Peonie

Thank you for welcoming me so warmly. I will post a SOA at some point, probably after we move house.

Talking of the house, our first (and cheeky) offer was rejected by the vendor, the same day we added £5,000 to the offer which I fully expected to be rejected. But it was not rejected, wohoo!!!!!! If all goes well we will soon move into the house we intend to live in for the next 30 or so years, if not the rest of our live. We're really happy.

Two days later the surveyor for the buyer of our house visited and he said there were no problems, so I don't think they will try to lower their offer (fingers crossed). I feel a little anxious about the survey of our new home, there are some problems we have found, but who knows what else there may be. With that in mind we have decided to purchase the homebuyers survey which we hope will help is to focus our home improvement efforts.

We have been lucky to have an offer on our house very quickly but it has meant we have not saved the all funds we need to move house. All in, it's going to cost us £7,500 to move home, including solicitors fees and the product fee for our new mortgage. I found out by chance one of the benefits of being a member of Unison is the discounted legal advice for conveyancing, meaning we will save £400 in legal fees.

But we are still £2,000 short. To plug the gap I have applied for a Tesco 0% credit card over 13 months, in the short term we will pay for what we can on the credit card and then stooze. This means we will stay in the black, it will not affect our savings and we will not have to add any fees to the mortgage. I have not used a credit card for years and have never stoozed before, do you think this is the best option or can you think of any others?

Peonie

I said I would post on how we have made a few money savings changes in the last few months, let's see if I can remember them all.

We have:

Started to cook a Sunday lunch. We would cook a normal meal on a Sunday, now we cook a large joint of meat that can last 3 dinners and a couple of lunches. Having the meat cooked means we have been eating more vegetables, less ready meals and that is good for our health.

• Bought less take outs, ate out less and bought less ready meals. We will still eat out, but we will check out the coupon/voucher apps to see if any of the eateries we want to go to have a voucher.

• Installed coupon apps to our phones as above.

• Signed up for a Nectar card today!

• Learnt about Quidco and TopCashBack - we have not used them yet as we are trying to save, save, save, but we will do.

I:

Have started to take lunch to work. For 7 years during the working week I bought lunch from a shop or the work canteen. I don't take lunch to work everyday, but it's a start.

• Make homemade soup and take it to work. We went through periods of buying vegetables for the composer (or so it seemed like it), and now we use them up. To freeze the excess soup and stock I have used plastic tubs, I am now running out of them and have started to use glass sauce or jam jars rather than buy more containers.

• Have started to regularly eat breakfast at home. Picking up a mega thick slice of toast dripping in butter became too much of a habit.

• Made stock from a chicken for the first time - it was not a massive success but I will try it again.

And that's it for now.

SmlSave

Welcome to MFW peonie I've just found your diary.

But we are still £2,000 short. To plug the gap I have applied for a Tesco 0% credit card over 13 months, in the short term we will pay for what we can on the credit card and then stooze

I think this sounds like a good idea and you've obviously thought it through. I think the main thing is to keep an eye on the dates when 0% ends!

Good luck with your house sale and purchase

yum...toast and butter....nomnomnom