A blissful home - mortgage_girl's MF diary

mortgage_girl

I'm trying to be as frugal as I can at the moment and i'm gradually trying to find ways to increase my income, in an attempt to soften the blow of xmas. So i'm currently using up all my ready-made meals in the freezer and planning on doing more batch cooking this weekend. I also want to find uses for the left-over lemons from my xmas cake baking sessions, so i'm going to try and find some cheap and cheerful recipes online, preferably for something sweet and tasty as that'll mean no sweet-treat purxhases this weekend .

This evening i've also listed about 20 books on Amazon, if they sell I should hopefully bring in about £150 so i'm hoping that i'll get some buyers for them. I've also started to list some things on the local selling pages on fb and made a tenner this evening from a box set that sold. I'll gradually list more on there as I declutter, so hopefully I can build the xmas fund a bit more (aka pay off the credit card).

Time to get tucked up in bed with a book.

Have a good evening everyone!

MGx

mortgage_girl

Well having just reached the sub £70k mark with my mortgage, i've decided to really up my game and try and reduce my mortgage by £10k this year. I think I must be mad but you never know what you can do if you don't try.

It's been a busy year so far consisting of putting up new bedroom furniture in January, decorating another bedroom in February and digging over the veg patches aswell as and some old bookshelves into a raised bed in March. Alongside that i've been kept busy on weekends by looking after the chooks - i've got 9 now :eek: and every other spare minute has been spent surveying, swagbucking and selling unwanted bits and bobs. So i've had very little time to catch up with the mortgage-free wannabee world. I'm hoping to settle down with a cuppa a bit later tonight and catch up with some posts and hopefully pick up some more hints and tips. I love this site, it's such an inspiration and I always find it helps keep me on track.

Have a good evening everyone.

MGx

mortgage_girl

Well i'm feeling really motivated to hit my target this year so i'm making the most of my current enthusiasm by decluttering my home and making some money in the process. There's a long way to go but i'm trying to list a couple of things on the local fb selling page each evening and i've also made about £50 in am@zon vouchers by using their trade site to get rid of some unwanted books. I did try some other sites but am@zon offered me the most and I can always find a use for their vouchers so they're as good as cash to me. I'm aiming to make an extra £200 this month to put into my op pot so I need to keep up the momentum. Alongside that i'm also doing surveys and 'sw@gbucking' on a daily basis and have just redeemed another £5 voucher.

I've become aware recently that I really am overspending on food so i'm making a conscious effort to use up what's in my cupboards. I've got a huge stash of various dried beans so i'm looking for inventive ways to incorporate them more regularly into my diet. I'm going to try making a butterbean balti on Friday and see how it turns out. I'm also going to devote some time to looking through the recipes in the 'Bean Book' this week and see if I can get any inspiration.

I'm also trying to make small changes on a daily basis to help me save a few pennies here and there, they all add up afterall! I'm making an effort to reduce the time spent in the shower (which also frees up a bit of extra time before I go to work), i'm turning the tv off when i'm not actually watching it and today is the first day that I haven't had to put the heating on - long may those days continue! Hopefully these small, pain free changes will help me on my journey to mortgage freedom.

Right, i'm waffling now. Think it's time to get tucked up in bed with my kindle.

MGx

mortgage_girl

Thought it was about time that I updated my diary, I can't believe it's been a month since I last updated it, time seems to have flown! I've just updated my spreadsheet for the month and was pleased to discover that because of my overpayments i'm actually 20 months ahead of where I should be with my payments, which isn't bad considering I took sole ownership of the mortgage early in 2011. :j :j:j
Seeing that has really spurred me on to hit this years target of reducing the mortgage by £10k. Actually, if I hit my £8k overpayment target then i'll actually reduce my mortgage by £11,500, which would be amazing. I'm nearly 1/4 of the way towards my target so I do need to put a bit more effort in. Hopefully tightening the reins on my food spending and being a bit more careful with my petrol purchases will help a little but I also need to be making more money by selling my unwanted stuff and doing extra surveys.
So my aims for the end of the day are to:
- Sell a stash of books on webuybooks *almost done - listed on am@zon instead
- List my unwanted hamster cage on the local fb selling page *done
- Get enough points to claim another £5 voucher on sb's *done
- Complete one survey *done
I'll come back at the end of the day and tick off what i've done! Right, best get on with it.

MGx

mortgage_girl

Half term has finally arrived, hooray! Even better - the sun has finally come out and i'm managing to get my washing done and hung out to dry. I'm planning on getting lots of gardening done this holiday. There's a few veggie seeds I need to plant and my pepper and aubergine plants need repotting. I also need to put up netting for the beans and peas. I've managed to weed half of the flower bed (it was neglected last year and is pretty much overrun with weeds) so i'm going to get the other half done this week and get the rest of the perennials planted. My plan is to cram it full of as many plants and flowers as possible to keep the weeds down.

There's just a week to go to payday and so far I haven't had to borrow any money from my savings accounts, so I think i've managed to get my budget back on track. In fact, I might even have a little bit left over at the end of the month that I can put towards the mortgage. I'm really excited about my mortgage overpayment next month as it'll take me below the £68k mark, it always feels good to get those big numbers down.

The builders have finally started work on the roof, i've given them a list of other things to do too which will increase the cost, but it will save me money in the long run as I wont have to pay twice for scaffolding etc. I'm also hoping to use some of my savings this year to have a new front door put on. The current one is made of wood and has lots of gaps in it, making winter's very cold, so i'm thinking that a new one would be a good investment as it'll save me losing a lot of heat in winter. Plus with interest rates being so dismal i've figured that I might as well just get it done.

Have a good bank holiday everyone

MGx

Lois_E

New front door sounds like a great idea, mortgage_girl - not only cheaper but warmer and more comfortable.

mortgage_girl

Yes definitely Lois, i'm even thinking I might really push the boat out and go for one with a lovely stained glass design...I never thought I could get excited about a front door. :rotfl:

Lois_E

What a lovely idea. What sort of design would you like to get?

mortgage_girl

I'd love one with a lighthouse design. There was a house I always wanted to buy when I was at university that had a 'lighthouse door' so it's something that's always stuck with me.

mortgage_girl

Well, after 16 months of waiting (and one snowy winter of fretting!), the roof is finally finished :j:j:jand i'm now just waiting for the joiner to come on Tuesday and attach a loft ladder so that I can actually get up there. I've had it boarded out aswell so there's no more danger of falling through the ceiling and it should make it more sturdy/safer when storing stuff up there (although i'm determined to keep it as clutter free as possible!). I've also had the roof felted, it wasn't done before as it was the original roof from when the house was built, so i'm hoping that my blissful home will be a little bit warmer this year.

My 'to do' list did add quite a bit to the total so i'll be paying out just over 4k (:eek:) for the work that's been done but the roof was in such poor condition that there was no avoiding it and, as far as i'm concerned, you can't put a price on peace of mind (torrential downpours and snow blizzards will no longer cause me sleepless nights). I'll have to dip into my savings pot a little but i'm sure I can find some ways to be 'extra thrifty' and rebuild them as quickly as possible. So to get me started i'm going to set myself a spending challenge for June. I usually allow myself £100 spending money for going out/treats so i'm going to see if I can half it. It'll be hard but if I get creative then i'm sure that I can crack the 'Rubber £50 challenge' and find lots of fun but cheap ways to keep myself amused.

MGx