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

ljaneyr

Hi Mouche!

I'm glad things are starting to return to normal for you :T It sounds like you have been quite sensible about what to spend more money on, and what to save on. Those items will last you for years. We had an expensive M&S dining set for Christmas and OH has so far broken one bowl and one side plate :mad: :rotfl: We will be getting a cheap set next time

Janey x

mouche

Thanks for the vote of confidence ljaney - I do worry we are spending too much on 'stuff' again but you are right, it's stuff that will last for years and will make either OH or me happy so I shouldn't worry.

Quick update to say I found a second hand car seat on netmums for £15 so that's our holiday car seat done and dusted.

Also after much money shuffling, I have just managed to cover our cc bill+expenses till the 20th with salary+loose savings and so have not had to touch the ISAs! Yay!!!! We have precious little leftover so will have to be very very frugal now until the insurance money comes in. Couldn't have done it without the kindness of LOs nursery which has agreed we can pay half now and half later in the month.

Oh...forgot the cleaning invoice. Think I can just manage that as well but then we *will* really have nothing left. Still, only a couple of weeks till the insurance money comes in hopefully. Got to grin and bear it till then.

mouche

Great news! The final cheque from the insurers arrived on Saturday so we are not skint anymore. All the jiggling of savings I did on Friday can be unjiggled and we will not have to survive on love and fresh air on holiday after all! This is such an enormous relief to me - I cannot express what a weight is off my shoulders now. I have to appreciate the insurers – the whole process has been relatively smooth and the quibbled very little on the costs. The insurers are LV and the loss adjustors are Davies – both have bad reviews so I thought I should redress the balance a bit with my good experience.

The bad news is that our car is starting to cause problems again. She is almost 12 years old now and though never unreliable as such, she is starting to show her age. I save £250 per month towards car expenses (insurance, tax, servicing etc.) so it has been building up for 5 years towards a new car. We could afford another Ford Fiesta or even a Ford Focus but OH has his heart set on a Ford Kuga (or similar). Our car fund simply will not stretch to one at the moment so I have asked OH to take our old faithful to the garage to see if they can keep her going till the end of the year. If they can – well OH has his 40th in November, and I was thinking of giving him a cheque for a new (used) car for his birthday. If I can make the cheque big enough for a Kuga, I know he will be over the moon. By the time his birthday comes around, we will only be £2,500 off target in the car fund and I can borrow that much from other ‘pots’ and pay them back over the next year. I don’t really like doing this as the pots are there for a reason, but hopefully it won’t be as much as £2,500. I will try to save some money from our India trip budget by using air miles to buy tickets. And if I get a bonus this year, it will be in September so that will help. Finally, once I’ve redone all the accounts with the insurers cheque, I suspect there might be some spare cash though not a huge amount. I know I tend to pander to OHs expensive tastes but he spends very little on himself day to day so when he wants a monster fridge or the latest telly, I feel guilty if I can’t squeeze the money out from somewhere.

I have started tracking our expenses through toshl again so will be trying to stick to the budget this month. And once we get back from holiday, I will ring the mortgage people and ask them to add a regular OP onto our DD – even if it’s only 1%, it will make me feel like I’m doing something.

Can I confess to something a bit silly - we went to a party the other day and OH and I were discussing our hosts later. We knew the husband but met the wife for the first time and when I said I really liked her, OH said ‘Yes, she carries herself very well and is very independent and elegant’. All things that I very definitely am not. Now, I know OH loves me and was most definitely not trying to put me down - but I think maybe I have been heaping a lot of expectations on him without doing anything much to make sure his needs are met. He never says anything to me but I think maybe he would like it if I made a bit of an effort with my appearance. I have never been a smart clothes and makeup person but perhaps it isn’t necessary to be quite so bag lady. Therefore I have decided that once I have the house back in order, I will start ebaying my clothes. I have so many I don’t wear and I can never find anything nice to wear when I need to. With the money I raise, I will try to put together a capsule wardrobe so that I always have something decent to wear. I will set myself a rough date for when I would like to do this and will try to lose a little weight before then as well. Perhaps his 40th is a good target for that as well? This personal target is going to be behind the ‘do Pilates’ and ‘learn to drive’ goals but I want to do it for OH as well as myself. If I can achieve all three, perhaps I will also be a bit more independent and elegant.

mouche

Yesterday was a mad rush around Bluewater picking up a map I had ordered for our holiday and then a visit to Boots for LOs medicines, mosquito repellent etc. I had guessed £25 for Boots spending and loaded the prepaid card accordingly (cost me £22.50 to put £25 on it!) – total cost came to £25.56. Hehe.

Unfortunately saving money on delivery for the map meant we spent money on OH having dinner as he was starving. Still we managed with £6 on his meal and LO and I just had ice cream from the clown so not as expensive as it could have been.

Also, OH had bought LO some shoes 3 months ago – expensive ones with lights on them. The lights have stopped working so OH took them back to the shop and came out with new ones in exchange. This is the second time he has blagged new shoes from that shop! Both times the previous shoes got damaged much sooner than one would expect but even so I would never have had the guts to go in and request a replacement. I’m glad OH has no such compunctions!

As a reward, I got OH a sun hat for the holiday. He will need one anyway and I told him it was for Father’s Day.

So an expensive evening but some bargains as well. All we need to buy now is some snacks for LO for while we are away. We will get those this evening and then Operation Packing begins.

Our EHIC cards have arrived and our bank has confirmed our travel insurance (free with our bank account). My holiday credit card PIN has arrived but not the card. Hopefully today.

Goldiegirl

That's excellent news that the insurance money has come through. The real test of an insurance company is 'do they pay out with no hassle', and if they do, I think they are worth sticking with.


We are probably going to Bluewater tomorrow, with the sole intention of getting toiletries from Boots. We both have Boots loyalty cards and have various vouchers that need to be used by 10th June, so we are going to use as many vouchers as possible. I like Bluewater during the week, as it is quieter.


Hope you have a great holiday - after everything that has happened it'll be fantastic to go away and relax

ljaneyr

mouche wrote: »

Great news! The final cheque from the insurers arrived on Saturday so we are not skint anymore. All the jiggling of savings I did on Friday can be unjiggled and we will not have to survive on love and fresh air on holiday after all! This is such an enormous relief to me - I cannot express what a weight is off my shoulders now. I have to appreciate the insurers – the whole process has been relatively smooth and the quibbled very little on the costs. The insurers are LV and the loss adjustors are Davies – both have bad reviews so I thought I should redress the balance a bit with my good experience.

The bad news is that our car is starting to cause problems again. She is almost 12 years old now and though never unreliable as such, she is starting to show her age. I save £250 per month towards car expenses (insurance, tax, servicing etc.) so it has been building up for 5 years towards a new car. We could afford another Ford Fiesta or even a Ford Focus but OH has his heart set on a Ford Kuga (or similar). Our car fund simply will not stretch to one at the moment so I have asked OH to take our old faithful to the garage to see if they can keep her going till the end of the year. If they can – well OH has his 40th in November, and I was thinking of giving him a cheque for a new (used) car for his birthday. If I can make the cheque big enough for a Kuga, I know he will be over the moon. By the time his birthday comes around, we will only be £2,500 off target in the car fund and I can borrow that much from other ‘pots’ and pay them back over the next year. I don’t really like doing this as the pots are there for a reason, but hopefully it won’t be as much as £2,500. I will try to save some money from our India trip budget by using air miles to buy tickets. And if I get a bonus this year, it will be in September so that will help. Finally, once I’ve redone all the accounts with the insurers cheque, I suspect there might be some spare cash though not a huge amount. I know I tend to pander to OHs expensive tastes but he spends very little on himself day to day so when he wants a monster fridge or the latest telly, I feel guilty if I can’t squeeze the money out from somewhere.

I have started tracking our expenses through toshl again so will be trying to stick to the budget this month. And once we get back from holiday, I will ring the mortgage people and ask them to add a regular OP onto our DD – even if it’s only 1%, it will make me feel like I’m doing something.

Can I confess to something a bit silly - we went to a party the other day and OH and I were discussing our hosts later. We knew the husband but met the wife for the first time and when I said I really liked her, OH said ‘Yes, she carries herself very well and is very independent and elegant’. All things that I very definitely am not. Now, I know OH loves me and was most definitely not trying to put me down - but I think maybe I have been heaping a lot of expectations on him without doing anything much to make sure his needs are met. He never says anything to me but I think maybe he would like it if I made a bit of an effort with my appearance. I have never been a smart clothes and makeup person but perhaps it isn’t necessary to be quite so bag lady. Therefore I have decided that once I have the house back in order, I will start ebaying my clothes. I have so many I don’t wear and I can never find anything nice to wear when I need to. With the money I raise, I will try to put together a capsule wardrobe so that I always have something decent to wear. I will set myself a rough date for when I would like to do this and will try to lose a little weight before then as well. Perhaps his 40th is a good target for that as well? This personal target is going to be behind the ‘do Pilates’ and ‘learn to drive’ goals but I want to do it for OH as well as myself. If I can achieve all three, perhaps I will also be a bit more independent and elegant.

What a relief to have that money at last! Now you can relax and enjoy your holiday :T

Welshlassie

Enjoy your holiday safe in the knowledge insurance has paid out Well deserved it'll do you all good to have some down time

MoneyMission

Hey Mouche.

Fab news on the insurance paying out. A relief all round.

MM
x

PS. Elegance sucks. I tried it once and fell off my high heels! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: I prefer to stick to flat shoes these days!

ljaneyr

I forgot to say yesterday - if you find out how to appear elegant, independent and smart please let me know! Same goes for the capsule wardrobe :eek:

mouche

Hello everyone! Thank you for all your lovely comments. We got back from a lovely holiday in Tuscany on Thursday but stayed in holiday mode till yesterday. Now we are back at work and we all feel like LO who said this morning ‘My don’t want go nursery. My want more holiday.’ Ah well…

The holiday was brilliant largely thanks to OH who drove a manual car on the wrong side of the road for the first time (we had booked an automatic but it was much too small so OH decided to brave a manual one after all). Not only did he do that, the roads in question were in Italy (mad drivers) and mostly mountainous and barely wide enough for one car. He is a hero!

Back home, all the accounts have been sorted except for OHs new Nationwide account which I had opened just before the fire and now can’t find the paperwork for and consequently can’t access. I am not very sure how much was in there but with all the mess at home, I simply cannot find the paperwork. It will emerge eventually I am sure but I wish I could find it.

We spent the weekend clearing out the garage to some extent. Several bags sorted out for charity and several more to ebay. Spends included £6.50 on a toy off ebay for LO – he played with it all weekend so it’s a winner in my book! Also £9.99 + an old £10 voucher for some storage boxes for the garage. Some of the bin bags had been gnawed so needed rat-proof storage! Quite good progress made in the garage though the scale of work is so huge, OH and I are trying to take a blinkered approach and just ignore the big picture or we will just get overwhelmed.

OH took the car into the garage this morning as she wasn’t gaining power properly and the garage just rung him to say they felt sorry for the car there was so much wrong with it. They will give us a quote to fix her but given she is 12 years old, I think the cost to fix will be more than she is worth. Therefore I have told OH about his 40th birthday gift surprise and he is now happily looking for a car of his choice within the scarily high budget I have given him. I will have to scare up the money by robbing all our other pots and then spend the next 2 years paying them back. But he doesn’t ask for much and it is a special birthday so …

OH will be working late and weekends for the next 2 months so it will be me and LO – he has started toilet training as of today. How do other people manage transportation while toilet training? I can accept accidents in the car but we will be travelling by bus and taxi. Should I put him in a nappy on the way home and put his pants back on when we get home? And then nappy again for bed?

Jobs for this week
Monday: Collect ironing from drycleaners (couldn’t cope with the huge amount generated by 3 solid days of laundry!); clean and rehouse one box of books
Tuesday: Clean and rehouse one box of books
Wednesday: Laundry and ironing; do dishwasher load of smoke-covered kitchen stuff and rehome (assuming dishwasher has been fitted)
Thursday: Clean and rehouse one box of books
Friday: Grocery shopping
Saturday: Put pictures up if OH is around; laundry and ironing; more dishwasher loads of stuff
Sunday: OH working so day off with LO


So much more to say but no time. Till next time amigos!