Peonie's journey to smart money management

Peonie

Hi Shala, thanks for popping in.

I'm jealous your new house is being refurbished. We got the keys, had a look around, saw the amount of works that needs to be done and thought 'what have we done..'. Even though I wanted a property to renovate all the magnolia painted houses suddenly seemed very attractive. The scary thing is we've been living in escalating levels of mess for 5 months and I'm getting used to it. Not good.

When we thought we had to walk away from this house it was very stressful, especially as we dismissed all the other properties within the price bracket. I could easily have found a property in a higher bracket mind you.

Good luck with your house buy, do you have a move in date yet?

Peonie

I've been keeping up with everyone's diaries so thought I should update my own.

We've been in shopping to save energy again. The kitchen is still not fully sealed from the elements so we've fitted lagging to the water pipes, stuffed attic insulation into the open cavity wall and Mr P taped some bubble wrap around the outside water tap. A lot of cold air was coming from the washing machine's waste pipe so I sealed the internal open part of the pipe. Fingers crossed the pipes won't freeze and we will not have any expensive burst pipes.

I forgot to say we moved out of the master bedroom and into one with heating :T

The work on the kitchen has stalled , but in the mean time OH's uncle visited and advised us what needs doing to the electrics. Until he recently retired his uncle was an electrician. Now we need to find an electrician who won't charge £1,500 for a couple of days work.

I applied for my Tesco CC on the 13th January 2011 and the interest rate is 0% for 13 months. I'm new to 0% credit cards and I'm not sure if the 0% ends 13 months after my application date or when I received the card. I don't think Tesco would have been so nice to start the 13 months after the first purchase.

I've tried to keep up my SOA but I'm sure I've missed a few things this month. My balance for November is -£111 so far.

Why is Christmas so soon... I don't tend to buy a lot of presents but I've not got any yet. Family have asked for my list so I've updated the old Amazon wish list, after racking my brain I've only come up with 13 affordable things including a charity donation and a magazine subscription, maybe I should ask them to buy a roll of wallpaper.... When Mr P & I first moved in together we spent so much money on the house we agreed any Christmas presents would be for us and not the house. But other than clothes (not on the list) I really don't need anything, so that's it, soft furnishings have been added to the list. Under duress I looked for potential wish list items on the Laura Ashley website and ended up designing my future master bedroom. I really hope the line is available in 7 months time.

We're doing a secret santa at work, the limit is £5 and I'm buying for a lady who likes to do exercise and drink cider. I've read a few people on hear do the Shred and it's less than £5 to buy and has good reviews - it looks like a winner to me.

Right, it's 8pm and I'd better get my !!! off the sofa and onto the exercise bike.

Peonie

Just a quick one.

I've transferred an extra £100 into the ISA from the joint account, I'm going to cook the books and put it in as December rather than November so the joint account balance stays in the black. And the monthly saver has been credited by £300, meaning we've achieved 81.5% of the target.

I'll update my signature when I have the new mortgage balance.

shala_moo

Hi Peonie,

We have already refurbished 2 houses this year for my dad (the one he was leaving, to make it easier to sell and the one he moved into because it was a mess) I’m afraid I couldn’t have attempted another one without having some sort of breakdown.. i'm happy to let the builders do it this time!

They’ve said they are finishing the work on the 19th of December, but we still have to complete after that (as we don’t technically own the house yet) so if the solicitors are still in work mode it should be before Xmas if they’re in Xmas mode then it’ll be the New Year! Fingers are crossed for the former as the new sofa is being delivered on the 23rd!

Do you have an estimated time to finish your house? I’m sure it’ll look lovely once you’re done and think of the achievement you’ll feel.. Do we get to see before and after pictures – I love looking at houses

Good luck with the xmas shopping..

Peonie

Hi Shala, 2 houses in a year, I think letting the builders do the job was the sane thing to do. Does the 19th include righting your list of snags?

We don't have an end date, everywhere needs redecorating and while I'm saving our rainy day fund Mr P is saving for an extension and to extend the roof.

Tomorrow we're looking (again) for new doors, last time we looked there were a few we liked but do not know if they will all work together, in one space small space (kitchen, toilet, garage and backdoor) we could end up with 4 different styles. I think we'll need to find some doors with a visual continuity for this area or it could look a mess and annoy me for the next 30 years. Because seriously, how often do you change a door. Fingers crossed we'll make a decision this weekend.

Sometimes it's the small things that make me think :doh: why have never I thought to do that before? We buy the Mexican food kits and do not use all the spices or salsa and throw the remaining away. This week I poured the remaining spices into a spice jar, there's easily enough for another meal. But the salsa, it comes in a sealed packet and I think the remaining salsa could be freezed in ice cube trays.

We went out for a birthday meal to Pizza Express and ordered from the deal meal, essentially they got a few things wrong from our order, i.e. made my pizza bigger and gave us the normal rather than the tiny sized cake and coffee. We really thought wow this meal deal is brilliant. But the staff had put the order through wrong and we got the bill knocked down to what it should have been. Result.

This months mortgage payment has been paid so I can now update the signature, it is:
Mortgage at its highest: July 2011 at £154,000.
Mortgage now: 1 December 2011 at £151,441.16.
Mortgage free date: originally July 2036, now June 2036.
MFW no 214: overpayment £700 plus £11,000 extra deposit, target £2,000, target achieved.
Rainy day fund: saved £9,775, target £12,000, achieved 81.5%.

By the end of the month the rainy day fund will surpass the £10,000 mark and that's a great milestone to achieve.

After 5 months of payments and 1 large(ish) overpayment we now own an extra 1.2% of our house, making the grand total 31.2% (owned to value) :beer:

In November my end of the month SOA balance came to -£124. This month I intend to stay out of the red. I would love to say any extra pennies would go into the rainy day fund but I may have to put them aside for the final credit card bill.

Peonie

My mother-in-laws estate has now been fully agreed and closed (if that's the right term to use). Throughout the process the staff at M&S were fantastic and provided useful advice that made a horrible time easier. I won't mention the companies that were obstructive.

But I would like to thank Lois and other people on here who also provided advice. In the end Mr P decided to contact the companies directly rather than through a solicitor.

Peonie

Eeeek, we went food shopping and managed to spend £176.57. I bought a lot of food that can be made into many more meals and froze, if only there was any room left in the freezer. We'll need a few fresh bits like milk, bread, a bit of fruit and I said we'd make the starter and desert for Christmas day; so we'll need a few extra ingredients. But, the food should last us until the New Year.

The shop included £10 worth of present for my nieces. We picked up a few multi-buys - saving £12.23 and another £5.50 using pizza vouchers.

I've had a good weekend, the house is partially Xmas decorated and will be finished today, and I watched my nieces gymnastic showcase this morning; they were fantastic.

The works Xmas party has been and gone, we had a meal during the week, although it was not party central it was very MSE as the meal price was cheaper than at the weekend. In all I spent £40 on the meal and drinks and another £5 on the not-so secret-santa.

I phoned the CC company, they said I only need to pay back the balance in March. I need to hunt out the paper-work to see if this is correct or not. Another job on the list.

Peonie

Hi MSE-ers,

I have come up with an amount of money I plan to save next year - £4,000.

Of this: in 2012 I hope to save £2,000 and reach my rainy day target of £12,000, and save/spend an additional £2,000 for the remaining goods and works to the kitchen and utility room.

We still have a MFW dream and I would like to credit the mortgage with a few pennies but while the mortgage interest rate is low and the savings interest rates are slightly higher we're better off saving, at least for now. And, it's on hold until we finish some work on the house. Let me try to put the state of our house into some sort of perspective; all of the neighbours are shocked when they find out we are not immediately doing major works on the house.

So that's it. I hope the readers of this diary stick with me.

Peonie.

Peonie

And finally, here's our SOA. I gave up asking Mr P's to tell me his small spends a couple of months ago; so instead I have listed our constant monthly bills. Where the bills are not monthly; I have noted this in the list.

Mortgage £690
Council tax £167 - pay 11 months out of 12
Life assurance £33.57 (for both of us)
Pension £172 (for both of us)
Credit card £25 (finishes early 2012)
Kitchen loan £167 (finishes mid 2012)
Electricity & gas £92
Water £78 - pay 6 months out of 12
Telephone £24
TV license £25 - for 6 months out of 12
Mobile phones £30 at least (for both of us - we are on pay as you go contracts, £20 of this pays for phone internet access)
DVD rental £6

I also estimate we spent £3,500 in the last year on food for 2 adults, 2 cats and other supermarket related goods e.g. cleaning products.

When we have the garage back we want to bulk order cat food off the internet; we think it will be cheaper than buying from the supermarket.

mpgsheep

Hi Peonie, just popping in to say hi on your diary! You seem very organised, I haven't even started thinking about a target for 2012 yet! I kept finding my goalposts were moving all 2011, so my targets chopped and changed.