My MF Dream... be free of the shackles by 40... 117 months to go

MyMFDream

I think i will have a bit of a bash at an SOA later on today if I get a quiet time.

Iris_Blue

MyMFDream wrote: »

Oh I know 'where' it goes for the most part I just find it very annoying.. Mostly its overspending on clothes and food, I have not quite worked out if that is because I have set the amounts too low or if I just overspend willy nilly. Spending diary is pretty much essential i think..

You'll only really know about the spending dairy by the end of the year.You can do guestimates. You're good with money anyway but you need to keep a record.

Not that you asked but they way I do it is : I record all my money on budgetbrain and have on there a column for clothes : £57 - I then put this away every month ( it sits in my current account for ease ) I then have a page in my diary headed "Clothes" where I write down the clothes incoming money /outgoings (garments bought and for whom ). That particular budget is overdrawn at the moment but I'm sure it will balance out over the year.

My food budget was :eek: £800 overdrawn by the end of last year. It all seemed to happen when the baby was born in October, no cooking you see! - so that one didn't work out! I'm still paying it back into my "pot" now

This works for me I'm sure others do it different.

MyMFDream

No SOA yet.. Well I have one with fixed costs like life insurance, BB/TV costs/utilities/council tax etc and that is fine.. difficulty arises with variable things namely food, clothing, house spends. Ideally I would like to do £300 a month for food, £50 clothing and £50 on home&garden and £150 on fuels for car. Looking back over last 4 months we have overspent on these things Marjory with the exception of fuel for cars but with prices as they are its only a matter of time. I estimate that nursery run alone costs around £2 a day in fuel with OH commute to work a further £4. That means we are roughly £120 a month just on 'essential' travel and totally ignoring other necessities like shopping, hospital/doctor appointments and any visits we do to friends or family or arranged play dates. I suspect by summer we will need to up fuel budget.

Food budget we seem to of been floored by too many take aways. That was due to a combination of circumstances thats shouldn't happen again so hopefully I should be closer to budget in March. Clothing wise well 3 kids and it seems like oldest 2 have needed shoes and wellies in last few months plus more jeans and even shopping in primarni it all mounts up and I buy startr1te/cl4rks shoes for them all be it from the local shoe factory outlet place but it fair mounts up. Hopefully we will have some clothing free months and it will even up but not looking all that healthy at the minute.

Realistically I fear £600 a year for 5 of us clothes and shoes is just impossible especially considering children are young.

I think I am possibly being unrealistic. I have been having a rough calculation and to hit my target I need to be overpaying £600 a month assuming interest rates stay static over the next 10 years at 6%.

Very very tall order.

Iris_Blue

Remember though to still live your life. Don't take the budget too far back.

Your budgets are going to be all over the place because of what went on in your lives recently. You stop cooking as much because you haven't got the time and you're tired. It's perfectly normal. It will settle down again.

In the possible £600 a month OPing ( which sounds too much tbh ) - Do you include extra income through clicks, jobs on the side, surveys etc ? Or is that just from your money. What I mean is have you calculated them in.

It hits home when you look at your figures doesn't it - depressing!

SmlSave

Welcome to MFW Dream

The great thing about this board is that everyone approaches OPing their mortgage in different ways. There's no wrong or right way.

The good thing about an SOA is that you can see where everything should be going and a spending diary will show the little things you spend a lot on when added up.

Perhaps you could have a takeaway once a month as a treat and get the kids involved in making pizzas etc? I'd suggest a look at the OS board which has loads of ideas in regard to groceries.

Lots of luck

MyMFDream

Iris I haven't factored in extra money from the likes of cashback sites, survey and clicks etc.. I am just using that to overpay extras, the £600 i have guesstimated has to come right from our income which should be possible as other costs fall over next few years as the kids need less childcare. Our home related fixed bills are a little over 30% of our monthly take home pay currently so fingers crossed in a few years wages will rise, interest rates will be lower or I will be able to secure lending at a lower rate than now which should assist us in the future..

At the moment we are £20.41 a day in interest and pay slightly over £700 a month as a minimum payment but to me MF within 117 months we should be paying 1306 a month from now. Obviously with lack of discipline in budget that is not happening at the moment but hopefully should as things start to come together.

MyMFDream

i'm still pottering away, really enjoying writing my blog and my mind is wandering to if it is possible to actually make money with it.. I doubt it though purely pleasure.. I do think i should commit to writting on DY as reading other diaries some people are doing very very well with that.

It has been a good weekend here so alot or work done in garden.. not many things have beaten the snow though.

MyMFDream

Not alot going on here, spent the weekend at our allotment surveying damage 4 monthes of inactivity was caused... Not too bad actually, lifted the rest of the over wintered leeks and some potatoes. I investigated Mr T loyalty scheme and i'm ashamed to say i had over £200 of unused vouchers so i have 'invested' £26 worth in some raspberry canes, strawberry bare root plants and seeds/seed potatoes. I have also been heavilly hunting on the freebi boards for free seeds. Allotment groundrent is £50 per year for around 120 sqm of ground so it does really pay for itself when you think you get freebie cauli seeds that give 30-40 heads of cauli compared to £1.30 each in shops.. then you have carrots, broccoli, onions etc the list is endless.

Iris_Blue

It sounds like you've been busy planning for the year ahead. The allotment sounds like its going to be fab!

MyMFDream

Allotment is great fun when you have the weather, unfortunatly it has been rainy and very windy here so I have not got anything else done. I don't mind the rain but it's not fair dragging the kids there. Hubby been working late for some extra money so I didn't even have the option of leaving them with him.

In March we spend £716 on things that did not come off our bank account by direct debit. I am quite disappointed as it sounds alot but until I break it down into what was spent where I won't actually know. I do think some of my budgetting 'amounts' in the ideal SOA are unreasonable as I really haven't adjusted them in almost 2 years and since then fuel prices have rocketed and we have an extra family member to feed and buy clothes for.

We were spending £150 a month on petrol when it was 96p a litre, it's £1.30 now so it is unreasonable to not adjust budget to reflect this probably to £200. Hubby is 15 mile commute to work 5 days a week, and I am the same when working plus the whole child care, nursery runs. While i'm on maternity leave I don't seem to be covering less miles either because we still have the nursery run then the pick up which used to be done by the childcare provider so really I think i need to be realistic. £250 for food nappies and cleaning stuff plus formula is also impossible I think. we are £16 a week on nappies and formula alone as middle child not dry in night yet so we have 2 in nappies. She is only 2 and even days can be a bit hit and miss so I think dry at night a way off yet.