Benbenandme's Next Installment ...

benbenandme

Ooh thankyou all, wasn't expecting so many posters Sorry to have abandoned my lovely new shiny diary all afternoon but I have been doing lots of thinking / planning and we also ended up going out on our bikes tonight to see some trains, (recurring theme for any newbies ), as the rain finally cleared up, but I will be explaining some of my ideas in a bit.

benbenandme

Hovel Lady, I've founf, and just finished reading, your diary ... a lot of it reminds me of me / hypno / immoral angel, back in my early days on the board here I've never heard of the hovel books though, I'm assuming from the comments that they are a bit like "How to live the Good Life?"

Hovel_lady

benbenandme wrote: »

Hovel Lady, I've founf, and just finished reading, your diary ... a lot of it reminds me of me / hypno / immoral angel, back in my early days on the board here I've never heard of the hovel books though, I'm assuming from the comments that they are a bit like "How to live the Good Life?"

The Hovel books by Elizabeth West are:
Hovel in the hills
Garden in the hills
Kitchen in the hills, the hovel cookbook

The Wests move to "Hafod" in North Wales in 1965. "Hovel" is the story of the first nine years of thier new life in semi-dereliect farmhouse overlooking Snowdonia (according to the back of my book).
"Garden" is the follow up book.
I can't praise these books enough - do read if you get chance. And if you want to know what happened next she wrote "A patch in the forest".

benbenandme

Thankyou, I will look out for them I was also very impressed with your list of moneysaving books :T

Hovel_lady

benbenandme wrote: »

Thankyou, I will look out for them I was also very impressed with your list of moneysaving books :T

Pity I didn't take more notice of them earlier! :rotfl:
Books are my thing, I have hundreds. Hay on Wye known as the town of books is one of my favourite places. One day, I WILL go back with real money (not cc's) and have a VERY good time

benbenandme

Chocolate is my thing, one day I will eat lots and lots of it , hmm think it may be a bit late to say that :rotfl:

benbenandme

So, after deciding last week that the mortgage pot was to be put on the back burner for the summer, I have changed my mind I know its utterly sad but I actually enjoy doing it I know I'm a geek but I like seeing the extra little bits and pieces add up and tbh, I'm not the sort to just splash the money, I've lived too long this way now to change. Thats not to say we will go without this summer, but today for example we have had a nice day, been swimming, been out on our bikes, and the total cost of that was £3.65 :money:

I have worked so hard at paying off my mortgage that I refuse to let my numpty of an ex stop me from doing so now So, I plan to carry on squirelling the extra bits into the mortgage pot and budgeting carefully for everything else. The car passing its mot has meant that the car maintenance fund has built up quite nicely now, so that money will be added to each month ready for next years mot.

What I will do though is put any money I get from maintenance (yeah yeah I know :rotfl::rotfl:) into a separate spends pot, and that will be used to treat us

So on that note ... the isa payment went out yesterday so thats £50 to add to the pot, and once I've workes out the finances I'll see whether any of the £35 I had saved into the summer fund can go into the mortgage pot, although I have a feeling it will be needed for the soap and glory treats I bought last week

Hovel_lady

Mortgage free - how excellant would that be?
So, small treats with the maintanence money then :rotfl:

beanielou

At the end of the day its what you want to do and if thats what you are happy to do then thats great

benbenandme

Hovel lady - the likelihood of receiving maintenance money is minimal :cool: It would only be small treats

Thankyou Beanielou - I felt guilty when I wasn't putting it into the pot and was wondering if I'd be nearer knocking off another month. At least I know that if things get too tight I can always spend it instead, but while I can manage to save some then I will