Mouche’s adventures with her first mortgage (while coping with her first baby)

mouche

Hope everyone had a nice weekend. Ours was fine and quite MSE considering. There was a grocery shop on Friday that included some not-necessary items (ice cream, crisps etc.) but we need some luxuries I guess. Until we really cannot afford them anymore, I can’t see any way to get Mr. Mouche to give them up. But on the other hand the weekend which was a major festival in our religion was very MSE (if you ignore the petrol spent in travelling to the places it was being celebrated. For a £10 donation (optional, but expected) we ate free meals for lunch and dinner on Saturday and dinner on Sunday. Not to mention enjoying the time spent with friends and in worship.

OH found a £1 roadkill though it is so covered in grime we will have to use it in a machine – I couldn’t hand it over to a person!

My £7.05 for the Amazon Trade-In has registered and I have just spent 0.96p of it on cheap curtain hooks as LO did a Tarzan on Sunday and broke the hooks (not his neck fortunately). I thought it best to get the cheapies as I know this will not be the last time this happens and I’d rather replace the cheapies than watch expensive ones break! The 96p you will be glad to know was taken from the ‘Furniture’ fund, divided into four and squirrelled away into the four designated ‘extra cash’ funds – emergency, building works, private school (might as well call that one pipe dream!) and OPs. Together with my weekly Tilly Tidy, my OP for this week is – wait for it – 28p!! Mr. T better be right.

I have also finally managed to cobble together £10 worth of books, DVDs and CDs that Momox will take (£10 is the minimum). It’s a total of 22 items but it will give me back some space and £10 is £10. I just have to find a large enough box to pack them in and send them off. CeX wants a few pound worth of stuff as well and Amazon Trade-In wants another £4 worth so at least some money coming in.

Also, did 40p worth of surveys on Onepoll in my lunch break. Tried to sign up to Pinecone but I don’t fit their profile.

On the non-MSE side, our fridge seems to be dying as food keeps going off in it. How does one get a fridge repaired? It’s well out of warranty and we don’t even know how old it is as we bought it off the previous owners of our house.

poorbutrich

mouche wrote: »

My £7.05 for the Amazon Trade-In has registered and I have just spent 0.96p of it on cheap curtain hooks as LO did a Tarzan on Sunday and broke the hooks (not his neck fortunately). I thought it best to get the cheapies as I know this will not be the last time this happens and I’d rather replace the cheapies than watch expensive ones break!

:rotfl:That sounds interesting. Perhaps you could film it next time and that way you might earn £250 instead of it costing money!

PS. Loved your roadkill find -that's hardcore :money:

mouche

Hi pbr…that’s a good idea actually - I was just telling OH this morning that we should sell LO to Disney as he’s such a cartoon! Lots of people have suggested that we sign him up for modelling. I got a far as sending his pcs off to some agencies and then the whole Portugal thing happened and I had to tell the ones who were interested that we were leaving the country. Don’t think there’s any point now as OH will hopefully be back in work soon and then ferrying LO around to auditions etc. won’t be practical.

Do you know what the show is that buys home videos though?

On other news – there is none. I worked from home yesterday so that OH could use my travelcard to go for an interview. Some money saved at least.

I have to confess to splurging £1.55 on two Kindle books – it’s not a lot but I wasn’t supposed to spend anything on myself this month. Since they were off Amazon, they came out of my Gift Card balance. I’ve paid the savings back resulting in a 84p OP today – woohoo! So far in October I’ve made three OPs for a total of £1.95! Tilly has a lot to answer for. 

I sold a book on Greenmetropolis. It’ll only give us 40p after paying postage but am planning to use some second class stamps we have at home to pay some of the postage so we don’t spend much cash.

OH has a couple of leads for work so I’m really hoping they lead to a job. Once he’s back in work I want to apply for a new mortgage as we are now at 30% equity. If we get the mortgage we want, the interest rate will drop by 0.6%. It’s a tracker rate so could go up any time but I’m hoping to overpay to the next LTV level before that happens. But they won’t let us have it on just my income.

poorbutrich

mouche wrote: »

Hi pbr…that’s a good idea actually - I was just telling OH this morning that we should sell LO to Disney as he’s such a cartoon! Lots of people have suggested that we sign him up for modelling.

Do you know what the show is that buys home videos though?

.

That's very exciting! I was thinking of You've been framed but there are probably others!

mouche

Thanks pbr...next time I get a funny video of him I might send it to them. Though I guess all kids are cute, funny, adorable to their own parents! How is your LO doing? Is he two yet?

On the MSE front, I worked from home today and OH used my travelcard to go into London for another interview. The feedback from the last one was very positive and his old company are begging him to come back so hopefully he will be in work by the end of this month if not sooner.

Also, LOs nursery has offered to take the money they would have paid OH for helping out off LOs nursery fees. This is very helpful as it means we can now pay November's and December's fees with saved up childcare vouchers + the amount OH has 'earned' with them over the past couple of weeks. So no cash outlay for that till the end of December - by which time I hope OH will be getting a salary again.

Also have discovered that OHs credit hard has a surplus of £300 odd on it due to our car insurance going on it and then being refunded (after the DD had gone out) due to changing insurer. So must remember to spend on that card as a first option.

Oh and Onepoll has been very good with surveys for me of late - I made 65p today and have made £1.85 in 9 days - at £20.60 now. At this rate I'll get to payout in just over 3 months. I wonder if I will. Remind me at the end of January!

On the downside, we have received updated bills for our utilities and it seems we have used 3 times as much electricity in the past 3 months as we did over the same period last year. I can't think why it would go up so much. It might be a bit higher as OH has been home but three times as much!!! They have increased our DD from £42 to £77 and I haven't read the gas letter properly but I think the same thing is happening there.

This and reading MoneyQueen's diary have given me a kick up the backside and I have come up with a to do list of financial things I need to sort out asap. Today being Laxmi Puja aka the Hindu day to worship the goddess of money, I thought I'd make a start.

1. Open new ISA for self - DONE - have opened new account; now need to fill in form to transfer old ISA (0.75%) to new one (1.85% fixed till October next year)
2. Open new ISA for OH
3. Open regular savings accounts for self - DONE - have set it up to take £250pm from our existing savings account. New account - 6%; old account 0.1% (but it was easy access)
4. Open regular savings accounts for OH - am putting this on hold till he starts earning again as don't want to move all our easy access savings to non-easy-access accounts.
5. Track down electric/ gas/ Sky online account details - DONE - I am in shock. We have around £250 debt on our electric account and £400 debt on our gas account!!!! How did this happen? £650 is not a joke not to mention the increased DDs - £87 pm more for both combined.
6. Pay debt on utilities - Well this is certainly not happening straight away; we don't have that kind of money.
7. Research alternate TV/ phone/ broadband packages
8. Threaten to leave Sky
9. Fill SOA to know exactly how much is going where

MoneyQueen

Hi Mouche, just read your diary. Inspiring read especially considering all the changes that have happened in your life the last couple of years. :T for the new ISA and regular savers.

MQ

mouche

Thanks MQ!

It’s been a very spendy weekend and am also a little low due to the size of the debt with EDF. OH has been instructed to ring them and put the direct debits up a bit more so it chips away at the debt. I’d pay them off using our savings but until OH is definitely back in work, I don’t want to risk it.

Friday’s grocery shop was a bit more than expected though we were quite controlled in what we bought. Not enough I guess. LO has had the tummy bug so we went to the Indian shop to get some grandma’s recipe ingredients. Ended up spending about £15 on top of our regular grocery shop as OH can’t control himself in an Indian shop! Saturday afternoon was cheap as we took LO to the playground and discovered a lovely open space nearby which will be perfect for picnics in better weather. As it was we had a nice walk. Oh we also went to a local market and got some ultra cheap veg so we will be going there again. Plus, the jewellers (F Hinds) said they would replace the sapphire in my ring for free as I OH only bought it for me 4 months ago. I was afraid they would refuse or charge me for it so pleased with that.

Sunday was spendy again as due to weather we went to the shopping mall. I bought some things that I needed and got £5 off in the promotion. It was still a £29 personal spend though. Still, they were needed. Then OH and I shared a coffee and a cake. Which is a lot less than we would normally have spent but still…I wish there were indoor picnic spots people could go to! For a place with weather like the UK, surely there would be a market for a winter picnic area?

mouche

Another spendy day today as vacuum cleaner has packed up so had to get a new one. Managed to get one at half price in Argos. It’s got good reviews so hope it turns out to be good. The steam iron we got at the weekend has been a revelation! I broke the old one accidentally (it narrowly escaped landing on either my LOs or my head.) I tried the new one on Saturday and what do you know – it produces steam by itself! I don’t have to keep pushing the steam button. Is that how they are supposed to work? I suspect my old one was ‘broken’ long before I shattered it!

Anyway £50 for the vacuum will come off the OHs CC that has a positive balance and the cash will be allocated accordingly. But what with that and £16.49 for the iron, our appliances fund is down to a few coppers.

Have downloaded a free app for my phone that will help me track our gas/ elec usage – I just need to stick in the readings on a regular basis. According to that, we have used £2.2 of elec in two days (this is since we started being obsessive about switching everything off and sitting in the dark!) and £31.30 worth of gas in 12 days (so about 8 days of regular usage followed by 4 days of skimping). Not counting the standing charge. I think if we stick to our new skimping habits we should be ok for elec but the gas debit is very high and we will need *some* heating over the winter. Prices are so high these days.

No other spends though – 7 working days to go this month and I have brought in my lunch everyday so far. Looking forward to the end of the month so I can tot up things and see how we did.

P.S. - 10 p worth of surveys on Onepoll today - am now up to £21. Watch this space...

MoneyMission

Hey Mouche. Loving the diary. And I second the indoor winter picnic area idea. Wouldn't it be great?
MM
x

tootoo

you're doing really well!
i'm inputting my meter readings into my account once a week or fortnight now. It tells me how much I've used. This is a big motivator for me. I think slowly DH is getting the idea too.