New recruit: First steps (advice appreciated)

BaconandEggs

Our first overpayment has been made: £250. Feels good.

BaconandEggs

Something else sold iro £3

BaconandEggs

Been doing lots of miles recently. Not good. But my fuel economy was a little higher on the last fill. 36 mpg.
I'm sure this would increase if I wasn't doing so many business motorway trips.

BaconandEggs

Keeping up with the OP's. Had an expensive month as paid for this year's holiday and a Wedding!
Been trying to grow more things in the garden and carrying on with the DIY.
Particularly pleased with last night's efforts. Had a broken shower isolator switch. Not sure how much it would have cost to buy a new one or get someone out to fix it (what I might have done in the past). Cost me 50p and gave a huge sense of satisfaction.

BaconandEggs

Been working hard. When I haven't I've been out in the garden. Going to turn my free time towards finishing off decorating the main bedroom soon.

Had a large problem with the main car. Not sure how much it's going to cost - but not looking forward to it.

Pretty pleased today with a call to BT. Was paying £16.90/month line rental, which included free evening and weekend calls. Have got this down to £10/month! Fantastic saving for about 5 mins work (£82.80).

Have been looking at getting my girlfriend insured on my car. Insurance up for renewal soon. It appears that getting her as a named driver on my policy works out cheaper than getting her policy changed to allow her to drive my car. Not sure that makes sense. Due to the problems with my car, I tried to get insured on hers at the weekend. I was added as a named driver on her policy and was expecting to pay ?? £80 ?? to do so. In the end it worked out we got a refund of around £25!! for doing it. This was made up of the price difference for changing the location of the car from old address to new address (nicer area, plus kept on drive as opposed to road) and second driver discount (!?)

Have been keeping up with overpayments and have reached an important milestone. We are now sub 100k -and 5 figures!!!! Chuffed!

BaconandEggs

Have been fairly busy since the last post on this thread.

We have since got married! Not something that will help the current MFW fund

Apart from that:
The car's been fixed but we need to get some work done to some of the roof ridges - which will potentially cost £900.

On the plus side, we've been doing a couple of extra days work here and there and this has helped. I got a pay rise of £900 too.

Had some lovely things from the garden and really pleased I decided to start growing this year.

Have continued with the DIY - surprising myself everytime I manage to do something new. Even if it's something simpe like changing a light switch.

No major courses/meetings or holidays booked soon so looking forward to getting my head down and into a routine that resembles "normality".

I did a spreadsheet last week to allow us to total up our earnings from ebay. Turns out we made over £1000 in the last 3 years (however - whether you look at that as a good thing or a bad thing depends! - it means we've previously spent more than that on the stuff we sold (although some decent profits were made on some things)). Got me thinking about what the biggest things we have wasted money on in the past are. For me it would have been music, games and videos! Glad to say I'm much more sensible now.

Got our first mortgage statement last week. And we're on the right track hopefully. The overpayments have been made at £250 per fortnight (someone told me this is more beneficial than £500/month but I'm not convinced) and I made an extra £250 payment.

We've got together our emergency fund that we intend to add to and will hopefully be able to gear up our overpayments over the next 6 months.

I still haven't got round to sorting my bike out and might do that after work today. Hoping to cycle to work more as parking charges have increased.

BaconandEggs

Energy company sent a letter informing us that they are halving our direct debit (to £30) as we have accrued credit on account. I suspect this will be used over the coming months of winter. Our usage in winter has been £46 pounds per month in the past (on avg).

Managed to fix our tarriff just before the large rises came in recently so hopefully our bills won't be too large.

Just drawing up some plans for some custom storage I'm going to build in one of the spare rooms.
Going to take some measurements in the garden later as I'd like to do some scale drawings of some changes to be made in Autumn.

Managed to get 10l of paint for £8 with a voucher I had knocking round - so that will keep us busy Saturday.

BaconandEggs

The second quote I have for roofing came in at less than half the original quote! So potentially a saving of at least £450

BaconandEggs

Got 30l of white paint from B and Q today. Can't believe how much paint we've got through this weekend. I've done 3 coats on the ceilings and coving. 2 coats on the walls. So spent most of the bank holiday painting while listening to loud music and drinking coffee to keep the energy levels up. I imagine there was alot of DIY going on this weekend!

Have managed to have a bit of a rest and went for some nice food this lunchtime with friends.

Getting a few quotes tomorrow which might set me back a bit:
New aerial in the main bedroom, having a drain looked at and some electrical work.

Food shop this week was particularly cheap for some reason. Going to start asking family what they want for Christmas this evening so I can get that sorted. Have already agreed with sisters' family that we won't be buying presents for each other but will instead will have each other round and cook some nice food. We managed to get a very cheap but nice tree from Focus in their closing down sale so hopefully there won't be too much to sort nearer the time.

BaconandEggs

Saved £8 on xbl gold membership!