All the small things - tell me what you have done to be MF today

wantabetterlife

Today i have...

• Had to do a long drive....90 mile round trip but didnt go over 65 mph and managed to get up to 55mpg...i cannot believe the difference it makes to fuel consumption....think i am developing OCD with this
• Family walk to Lidl this evening to pick up some cheap biscuits...no fuel used and free exercise...about a mile and a half there and back :j
• Have packaged all the ebay items ready to post in the morning but am still waiting on one person to pay.....this seriously gets on my nerves when people dont pay after the auction ends as it just drags things on and means more trips to the post office :mad:
• Dinner in MIL house
• Get a payrise this month of a £1000 per year which is about £50 in my take home pay....wont feel the benefit of this until i go back to work after maternity leave though.
• Lunch made for DH and DD today

wantabetterlife

tinkerbel wrote: »

ps - out of interest, when people are OPing their mortgage, do you also have some savings which are seperate for just-in-case? or is it purely over pay but then you could take a break if times got hard?

Hi tinkerbell, i do have an emergency fund but it is only about 2.5k but i also have 1.5k of an overpayment reserve in buy to let mortgage that i could access fairly quickly. If times got really tough for us i could also extend the term of our mortgage back to the original length which would save about £300 per month on payments. Ideally you should have enough to cover 3-6 months of expenditure...easier said than done...i just dont get the same buzz from saving as i do from overpaying

curlygirl1971

tinkerbel wrote: »

ps - out of interest, when people are OPing their mortgage, do you also have some savings which are seperate for just-in-case? or is it purely over pay but then you could take a break if times got hard?

Hi Tink

I budget to OP 8% of my salary PLUS any other bits that I can scrimp together which sometimes another £200 on top.

Bearing in mind that I'm an obsessive controlling security freak, I have several savings pots:-

1) Is a savings account that isn't really savings - its for one off and annual expenses but sat in savings to earn interest. I pay into it every month like a bill. If the forecasted future balance looks like its too generous then I either fix a portion of the savings (more interest) or use some of the balance as an OP

2) Fixed savings - I guess this is my emergency fund. There are various schools of thought on the forum. Even Martin I think suggests that maybe you don't need one (IF an emergency arises then use a credit card) and some people say have 3 months salary tucked away and some say have 6-9 months worth of 'unemployed' expenses tucked away. Meaning that if you were unemployed you would'nt have the same expenses as you would working. I have more than 9 months worth but it's in fixed tax free savings earning at least the same as my mortgage is costing.......for now.

Some mortgage providers allow you to take payment holidays when you've been OP'ing so perhaps that also another option

Also do you have anything like Sickness / Redundancy protection? If so then perhaps this is another reason why you might not need a generous emergency pot

tinkerbel

Hi All,
Thank you for the responses so far! I'm only asking because I didn't really know how it works. I'm not yet in a position to OP my mortgage at all as I dont yet have a mortgage!! I'm focusing on saving for a house deposit (so I have the smallest mortgage when I need one!) at the moment but I just wanted to factor in how savings worked because the way I'd read into this thread was that you threw every last penny at OPing, but now I see that that is AFTER you've "paid yourself" into some savings accounts. Is this the same for more people on here?
I'm finding this thread really inspiring at the moment and its making me focus on how I can make tiny savings which I know will add up!!

Accountant_Kerry

Hi all,

-Well the moneysaving 2 dine in for £10 deal turned out to be more moneysaving than expected as i haven't been able to eat anything since!
- Couldn't leave the the house so NSD's for the last 2 days and MIL bought round more emergency loo roll!!
- DH has been in exactly the same state so he hasn't eaten either.

All very money saving however I would never intentionally take it to these extremes!!!

lincoln-potter

- Dropped DS off at nursery this morning (kicking and screaming all the way)
- Went to Post office to pay in £160 to my bank but the PO was far too busy so will try again tomorrow

Last night I
- Hung some pictures and put up shelfs
- Collected together some bits to take back to B&Q for a refund - £30

misscousinitt

Hi

Today's offering is very thin on the ground:

* Lunch from home; DH had pack up too
* Dinner from stores tonight (got to make shopping list for when I get paid)
* Have an offer for a survey on VO!!! Will I get screened out? We will see later.

GreenNinja

Hi Michelle,

Thanks so much for starting this thread, it has given me so much enjoyment and so many great tips reading through it!

Bought a dress from M&S which was £45 using £14 vouchers (free money for using my credit card which I pay off in full every month) so the dress only costs me £31.........

....... two weeks on, my friend texts me from said shop where she is having a mooch round to tell me that my £45 dress is now in the sale for £8!! So I hotfoot it down there after work and find one left!!! in my size!!!! so buy it and return with original receipt saving myself the princely sum of £37, £14 of which I get back in my vouchers.

:T:T:T:T

curlygirl1971

tinkerbel wrote: »

Hi All,
Thank you for the responses so far! I'm only asking because I didn't really know how it works. I'm not yet in a position to OP my mortgage at all as I dont yet have a mortgage!! I'm focusing on saving for a house deposit (so I have the smallest mortgage when I need one!) at the moment but I just wanted to factor in how savings worked because the way I'd read into this thread was that you threw every last penny at OPing, but now I see that that is AFTER you've "paid yourself" into some savings accounts. Is this the same for more people on here?
I'm finding this thread really inspiring at the moment and its making me focus on how I can make tiny savings which I know will add up!!

Tink

Things were very different back in the day I was saving up for a deposit - think I only needed £5k!! And I was lucky as I was living at home with parents.....So whilst I was living at home I was able to set up a savings account and put money aside for the next years expenses (eg Car Insurance, House Insurance, Dentist, Christmas....). This has been a great help - some months its been flipping difficult to find the money and other times I've even had to raid the pot. But I guess it would be my one hot tip for anyone looking to move into their first home.

cha97michelle

Green ninja glad you are enjoying it.

tinkerbel I don't know about other people, but the first thing i do every month when DH gets paid, is send £635 over to my various savings pots, as i have worked out a budget for everything i can think of that needs paying annually or quarterly and that covers that. Then if i pay for anything annual that month like car tax, insurance, water bill etc, the money comes back out of the relevant account. I also have a savings pot with about 1 months salary in my name, and the same in my DHs name. (If anything happened to either of us, the other could access money - learned the hard way when my dad had an accident and was intensive care for 5 weeks and mum had no money whatsoever, and 4 dependants aged 6 - 20).

Then i take out of the equation the monthly DDs. What is left then is what i can use for food and fun, save or OP. Generally though, in my case there is not a lot left there for overpaying so i scrimp and scrape, and also do all these extra things as that is spare money that can be overpaid.

When we were saving for a house deposit, i used to save £500 from my salary every month without fail before buying anything. Just shows how much money got thrown around then and could have got wasted. I'd be lucky to do £100 now.

Hope that helps hon. I didn't want you thinking that we all overpay without thinking of the future. I find especially since having kids, you have to plan more to have money available at a later date because they have a habit of growing and needing new stuff. Before we just paid for things as they arose, and knew the next wage was only 2 weeks away (me paid on 15th and DH on 1st) so we always had something up our sleeve. It doesn't work on one wage though.