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

mouche · 23 October 2013 at 1:32PM

Hi MM and tootoo…thanks for dropping by and your kind words. Sometimes it’s hard to keep motivated when there is no spare cash to toss at anything and it really helps to get a hello from people who know what it feels like! I will try to put my readings online as well tootoo. Glad your hubby is starting to come round.

Edit: I just did this and realised that we provided the wrong reading for the night rate electric meter last time. I have asked OH to email customer services with the correct reading. Hopefully they will accept it or send an engineer out to check. Thanks for mentioning it tootoo :T or I wouldn’t have noticed the error.

In other news, OH has made a massive bulgar wheat and mince sauce thing for my work lunches. He’s got about 7 portions out of it which is really economical as the mince was £2.50 and the bulghar wheat was AP stuff that has been lying unused in the cupboard for god knows how long. Thank you GreyingPilgrim for inspiring me to [STRIKE]nag[/STRIKE] encourage OH into using it. So I’m sorted for work lunches till well into November.

I’ve also bitten the bullet and bought an annual travelcard for £2,072 :eek:. I’ve always bought monthly ones before convincing myself that by working at home on strategic days, I could save more money. But the truth is I can’t. With an annual card I will save £26 per month and I can think of lots of ways to use that money! I will pay off the CC bill with savings and then replenish the savings every month with my monthly Travelcard budget.

Had a quick shop last night as we were out of milk. Ended up spending £23 – all of it useful but this random shopping has got to stop! OH has agreed that we will buy nothing else till the end of the month other than milk, yogurt, fruit and bread if needed. Let’s hope we can stick to it.

OH has called to tell me that he has just posted the ISA Transfer form and the can-we-have-our-deposit-back form to the nursery we didn't send LO to. He has also finally donated the charity books to charity and has collected the vacuum cleaner. So some progress there.

I have made a Tilly Tidy of 21p. OnePoll has given me 25p today. And that folks, is it.

mouche · 25 October 2013 at 2:52PM

Not much to report but couldn’t let the week close without an update!

The cheap curtain hooks have been used and are no worse than the ones we inherited from the previous owner so am happy with that purchase.

Have activated my new mobile contract and my old number should move over today. The Portugal ‘move’ meant for a time I had two mobile contracts and was paying for both. Have now got a third, moved the first number to it and moved the second to PAYG. Should now have to pay just £12 pm so quite a bit saved. Once it starts working that is – it still won’t let me make any calls!

Today is OH last day at LOs nursery. Really hope he finds another job soon though I hope he doesn’t find one that makes him work evenings and weekends too much (he’s a chef so I have little hope of that!).

Builder came and fixed garage roof yesterday - £290 :eek: – though budgeted for.

No other MS to report really. Just a few more days till the end of the month when I can tot things up. Need to keep tighter record of spending next month.

Oh, oh oh…sold a book on the bay of e! It went for £9.99, which after fees, postage etc. will come down to just over £5. But it only cost me £4.99 last year so job well done methinks. Need to get more stuff on there – LOs playpen (unused – nobody puts Baby in a pen!), almost new posh winter boots and coat – and those are just the valuable ones I can think of. There’s lots of [STRIKE]junk[/STRIKE] treasure sitting about as well.

Can I just vent a little here? I am very sorry for OH who is excellent at what he does and is a workaholic who hates sitting at home. But I would *kill* for a few months to sit at home and get the house sorted. There is so much to do in terms of tidying, sorting, decluttering, cleaning and I never have time to do it all or do it properly what with looking after LO and working full time. And yet, OH does next to nothing! It just makes me so mad but I’ve tried asking, nagging, begging, persuading, yelling and nothing works. He spends all his time applying for jobs (fair enough), Facebook, football news, watching TV, watching movies and sleeping. He does do the cooking and the dishes to be fair but there is so much else to be done and he has time on his hands. Why doesn’t he do it???? He has been off work for nearly three months now. THREE MONTHS. And the house is almost as much of a tip as it was at the beginning of that time. The only relatively clean place is the kitchen and that’s because I took two days off work to help him clean and declutter it so he’s been motivated to keep it that way. What about the rest of the house???????

tootoo · 26 October 2013 at 7:51AM

Good news on edf!

Im beginning to learn that you have to spell it out. Can you do x and y please? I think they just don't see things! I've been tempted to not do dh laundry on occasion as he seems to think a fairy comes in to do it.
I struggle with balance as im part time so seem to do 95% of all housework.
I get v annoyed that when he gets an extra few days off he will sit on fb twitter sky sports etc. Whens my day off?! I contribue half to finances too so I don't feel its v fair on me, but I blame his mum and me for letting it get that way.

Could you write a list?
Big hug. Don't worry too much about the house. Have you read the dust can wait poem?:) x

mouche · 28 October 2013 at 4:34PM

No news today other than the storm has got me working at home so OH was able to use my Travelcard to go into London for interviews. We weren't organised about a packed lunch today though so he will have bought some lunch. He may also end up spending money on a taxi depending on what time he gets back as it might be touch and go with LOs picking up time. Still at least he saved the cost of a Travelcard.

Posted the ebay book over the weekend and also bought fruit at the local market. Sunday we stayed in all day so was thrifty in that sense. LO obliged us by taking a long afternoon nap.

We also did some baking though the results seem to have disappeared! The idea was to bake some cake so I could take in a few slices to work as I have eaten all this month's quota of muesli (I like an expensive brand so have a self imposed quota of 1 box a month). The cake was meant to be my breakfast. And I have managed to clingfilm three slices and hide it (from myself more than anything!). The rest, as my LO said very sadly, is 'goon'.

Have been paid but our month runs from 1st-31st so am sitting on my hands and not looking at it.

mouche · 30 October 2013 at 12:51PM

tootoo wrote: »

Good news on edf!

Im beginning to learn that you have to spell it out. Can you do x and y please? I think they just don't see things! I've been tempted to not do dh laundry on occasion as he seems to think a fairy comes in to do it.
I struggle with balance as im part time so seem to do 95% of all housework.
I get v annoyed that when he gets an extra few days off he will sit on fb twitter sky sports etc. Whens my day off?! I contribue half to finances too so I don't feel its v fair on me, but I blame his mum and me for letting it get that way.

Could you write a list?
Big hug. Don't worry too much about the house. Have you read the dust can wait poem?:) x

Thanks tootoo...somehow missed your message last time I logged on. OH has improved over the past two days - perhaps he's been reading this diary? :eek: I came home yesterday to find that he has vacuumed the upstairs carpets. He has *never* done that before! Long may it last.

mouche · 30 October 2013 at 12:52PM

I couldn’t wait till the end of the month! I did all the accounts yesterday and closed the books for October. We seem to have overspent on the grocery budget by £43 but underspent on our personal budgets so it’s come out positive in the end. In fact we may not have overspent on the grocery budget as I have lots of cash in my purse and about £44 of it is not assigned to any particular fund. So I will consider that a successful month.

We will need milk before Thursday but OH has been instructed to use coins from the loose change pot for that. Also, I went out with a friend (first social outing in 3 months!) last night – meal and taxi home cost £22 – more than I expected but I had enough in personal funds so that was ok as well. Except for the hangover today.

I also did a TT for £12.21 from personal funds – will do another one once all the bills and other things have come out from my personal account.

I’ve just calculated that by overpaying £2,701.48 in two years, we have saved £4,111.60 in interest over the life of the mortgage. Isn’t that something?!

mouche · 31 October 2013 at 2:57PM

You know what it’s like when you really want to do something more towards becoming MSE but you don’t have anything more you can do? I’ve even taken the money from the book I sold out of Paypal and split it between the four major funds – so a £2 OP from there. But there’s nothing more I can do at the moment. Also, I calculated yesterday that if I do want to send LO to private school, it will cost me about £12,000 per year in fees – which is what I pay for nursery at the moment so that’s fine. But it will also cost in the region of £8000 a year in before and after school fees + holiday care. So now I have to think of ways in which I can earn/ save an extra £8000 a year or £666 a month. We can maybe do it if OH gets a job that pays at least 1/3 more than his old one – but we would still have to be ultra-tight in order to get there. I think I’m going to give it a go at trying to save that up in 2014. Then I’ll know if it’s possible in advance of LO getting to school age. If I find we can’t do it, at least we’ll have some extra savings to put towards the mortgage.

(£20,000 a year! If I put that towards my mortgage, it would be gone in 10 years.)

mouche · 1 November 2013 at 2:11PM

OH got a job! It's the one he was hoping for - a much bigger hotel than he's handled before so will help towards improving his CV. And the salary is 12K more than he was getting previously so will make a massive difference to us financially as well. It is such a relief.

I am slightly worried about the nursery run as from Monday it will be my responsibility to pick LO up and bring him home on the bus (40 mins) but rather that than OH being free (and jobless) to do it! I guess in practice life will get physically harder for me but financially easier. Oh well - I'm an MSE - you know which one I prefer!