First-Time Buyer, Mortgage free desires

philhews

Lois_E wrote: »

If you stop paying for it at the end of your current contract, you will still have the box and it will still get the free channels whether it has a valid card in it or not. Depends whether the channels you want to watch are the free ones, though.

Oh ok, well I'll keep that in mind for when the contract is out. At this rate I could end of with quite a bit more money to play with come October!

philhews

Well nothing particularly exciting happening at the moment, this month's mortgage payment goes out tomorrow which will take me below 95k.

I spotted some clotted cream reduced when I was shopping last week so bought a couple of tubs which has led to scones being made (second batch almost ready) also made bread on Sunday which should see me out this week (froze half so it doesn't go stale).

philhews

Scratch that, scones jammed and creamed up, fresh from the oven with a home made sloe gin to rinse it down with. Delightful!

katsu

sounds a fab MSE treat - well done you!

quintwins

oh that sounds yummy, i'm just noseying i don't belong here yet, but have you tried doing your shopping online, you can see all the offers and exackly what you have and for how much then you can remove things you don't really need, then if you want to save on postage you can print it out and go instore with a list

also lois is right you get all the freeview channels free to your sky box if you cancel it, also there are loads of places you can watch stuff online now

philhews

It may be a MS treat, but having looked at the pack of clotted cream, given I'll have shifted two in a week, from that alone it's over a day's calorie intake and almost 300g fat :eek::eek::eek:

It's a good job I do a lot of exercise but that's still going to take me a while to shift!

philhews

Well this week's shop was £16.76 so well under what would be on budget which is nice.

The garden is slowly starting to yield more and more edible things, so that should help bring down the shopping bill too, and mean I have lots of lovely fresh veg whenever I want it!

Petrol for the week was £23 something which was helped by a day working at home and getting 49mpg, given I normally get around 43/44 I'm very pleased with that!

My cashflow forecast for the rest of the month has me ending ~£250 up on last month, that is only covering essentials, but I hope I have enough cash for drinks after tennis and the one night out I have planned is a friends wedding which at the current rate could be covered by the groceries surplus so fingers crossed for a good month!

philhews

Right, it's been two months and the main reason for lack of posting is that nothings been progressing, I've been spending as much/more money than I have coming in, mainly due to a holiday which was about £300 and car insurance which was £386 (£40 cashback to come from tcb :T), also the renewal quote was £630 :eek::eek: so saved a bit there.

There's now nothing planned as large expenditure for the next few months, so I should be able to get myself saving a decent amount, helped by having an £80 payrise last month. 2 months time will see me in my house for a year, so there's opportunity to save on house insurance renewals and other things, then it's another month until I can get out of my phone contract to save £25 a month and company bonus a month later.

So looking from here it's all going in the right direction money wise, and should allow me to get going into my savings target for this year.

shadybrady

Hey Philhews, just to add to Lois's post - ditching sky saves you loads !!

Me and the missus decided to bin sky Dec 2009 - we were paying about £45 a month and most of the time we were watching 'free to air' channels anyway (BBC, ITV etc).

We did decide,however, that we would like the recording facility so we bought a Humax Foxsat HDR box (about £300) but thats it, just unplug your sky box and plug the Humax box in its place. It gets all the free to air channels including BBCHD and it also has ITVHD which SKy doesnt and Channel 4HD and the recording functions are good. Its not a slick as the sky menus etc but after the £300 it doesnt cost you anymore !!

The box will pay for itself in about a year or less if you were paying £30 or more to sky a month !!

Shady

philhews

Hey shady, yea, I know I could save a load with getting rid of sky, but I do watch a reasonable amount of sky only stuff, also it gives me a discount on their broadband which is the only unbundled provider in my exchange, so to have fast internet it has to be with them.

Getting rid of the tv contract would only save about £15 a month in the end I think, and as I'm only looking to pay off a mortgage more quickly and not in massive debt I think it's a luxury I can justify keeping.