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

tootoo

well done on the bonus!
Always nice to get a 'surprise'.

x

mouche

Thank you all. Am really happy about it though with OH out of work, it will have to go on the household budget instead of on OPs or 'fun' savings. Still, it's taken some pressure off us and that's a relief.

Was finally filling out my health cashplan form for my osteopathic treatment when I noticed that it covers optical costs as well. Just before OH went to Portugal for his fabulous job, I got a new pair of glasses and a pair of prescription sunglasses (to deal with all the sun in Portugal!) - spent £301, which didn't seem too bad at the time as my old pair were falling to bits and had lasted 3 years (and of course we were going to be rich with OHs new job!). Didn't know my cash plan might cover it at the time and didn't care. BUT am still within the 6 month cutoff period AND by some miracle I still have the receipt so will be sending it off together with my osteopathic claim and then keeping fingers and toes crossed that new glasses are covered in my plan.

Even if they do cover it, I won't get the whole amount back but even if it's £100 that's money I hadn't thought of getting! Am really loving being back in the MSE mode - little things (and big things) seem so much more exciting when I know I can share them with likeminded people here!

Another piece of potential good news - a friend who stayed with us a lot when doing business in London has asked if a friend of his can rent our spare room for a month as he has an internship in London. It's a fab room if I say so myself so if he's willing to share the house with a slobby couple and a teething toddler, there might be a few hundred coming in from there. Fingers crossed.

Also, Tilly-tidied 1.37 into the mortgage account today. Don't know if it counts as a TT as don't do it everyday but felt happy after a long time so wanted to celebrate!

mouche

Couldn't resist ringing and asking - I will get £140 back on the glasses! On the downside I can only claim for 2 more osteopathy sessions till next July. Will have to save them up for the really bad times.

tootoo

yay - good news about the glasses
Hope you manage without need the osteo though. It that a long term thing?

mouche

Thanks tootoo...am doing ok despite cancelling the osteo. I have very weak core muscles + hypermobility which means my (non existent) muscles have to compensate for my overstretchy ligaments. Result = very bad back. Apparently Pilates will help but where is the time (or the money for that matter)?

Lots to update ! We have had some good MSE wins this week and am quite pleased about it.

1. Car insurance – renewal date has come and Directline was quoting £481. Went through confused.com which said cheapest is RAC at £421. For curiosity added myself onto the policy (am currently learning to drive) and the quote went down to £351. Came home and went through Quidco to RAC and it said £521. Was very confused and tired so said what the hell I’ll just renew with Directline. Rang them, asked them how much to put me on it and they said £581. Paid £581 on debit card and went to bed. Woke up next day to the email from confused.com saying £351 and quote is valid for 7 days. Logged in to see if I could work out why RAC direct was so much more expensive. Realised that confused.com quote was based on 3 years NCB and RAC direct was based on 5 years NCB. Further confused – I though more NCB = lower price not higher! OH rang RAC and spoke to monkey who said take it or leave it; that’s what the system says. So we took it. In theory we lost 2 years NCB but a fat lot of good it was doing us anyway! Cancelled Drectline; paid for RAC so are now both insured for £230 less than we though it was going to cost. Very chuffed. A bit more in the pot to get our elderly car serviced on Tuesday.
2. Nursery – Nursery has been waiting for their Ofsted registration to come though so they could officially open. It came on Saturday and they said on Facebook that it would be open from Monday. OH took LO in on Monday for a prebooked play session and LO stayed for a little longer than previous play sessions. Following day OH was given invoice for 1 session more than we expected for the month. Realised they were charging for the play session. Sent OH in to query and they eventually agreed to take one session off - £29 saved!
3. Finally managed to post my health insurance claim – they are usually quite quick so hopefully will have that money in the bank by the end of the month.
4. Spotted the Argos 3 for 2 on toys offer on the Grabbit board and got three Xmas gifts sorted for under £20.

From Monday LO will go to nursery full time so OH will have time to clean and declutter the house and I am also planning to take a day or two off to help him. I know we have loads of clothes we don’t wear plus LO baby equipment we don’t need – surely we can make some money of those on ebay?

mouche

Lovely to see you PBR - was wondering where you had got to. Hope everything is going ok for you - no updates on your diary for a while.

Yes, was very pleased with the nursery and the car insurance. And last night picked up an old letter with Nectar point vouchers from the floor in order to bin it. Opened it on the off chance there was anything usable. All the vouchers had expired except one - 2,500 points if you get a car serviced at a Ford service station before 13th October. This year OH decided to change from our regular Mazda service station (odd location so taxi needed to get back after dropping off car) to the Ford place down the road (he can walk it) and our car is booked in for a service next week. All this was done weeks ago so nothing to do with finding the voucher. Talk about the universe conspiring to save us money (or give us Nectar points anyway!)

mouche

Well, it’s the first of the month and new month of housekeeping begins. I did all the bank accounts yesterday and thanks to my parent’s help, we had £296 leftover from last month’s housekeeping. When you consider that the budget was £400, you can see how much they helped. Mum even gave me £30 for this week’s shopping so we can get the Mr. M Payday bonus. Thank you mum and dad! This month however, we are on our own (apart from the fridge and freezer that they filled for us). I have worked out that if we save the bare minimum (towards annual bills), I can pay for everything out of my salary other than childcare. I’ve managed this month’s nursery payments from designated savings (OHs old company gave him 12 month’s worth of backdated childcare vouchers when he applied initially; the month he received them, he got no salary so we had a tight month that month and then free childcare for a couple of months; the money in the budget for childcare was diligently saved towards childcare emergencies – I’d intended to use it for babysitting when the childminder was sick but it’s come in handy now!) We should be able to pay all November’s fees with vouchers (they aren’t set up to accept them this month) and probably most of December’s. So we should scrape by on my salary till Christmas at any rate. Hopefully OH will get a job by then or at least some temp work. He refuses to apply for benefits (not sure if he’s eligible but he won’t even check) because he doesn’t want to be a ‘benefit-scrounging immigrant’. I have to agree with him. We’re British citizens now but we are originally from overseas and we don’t want to be lumped with the kind of people in the Daily Mail – even in our own heads.

So anyway, clean sheet and we’ve got our heads above water for now. I even managed a sneaky £96 OP from the leftover housekeeping. That pushes me into the ‘Striving for Silver’ category in my OPs.

Bought some YS brioche at Mr. M last week and it was horrible so OH has said he will make bread and butter pudding with it tonight. We have all the ingredients so will be a NS treat. In the interest of saving gas, we also decided he should make a lasagne at the same time. He said he would use two boxes of mince – I soon got him down to one – I will be the one eating it so what I say rules! He then said we didn’t have any lasagne sheets. I was sure we did so started hunting and found every possible shape of pasta except lasagne. Persisted and finally found some in the spice drawer (long expired but who cares!) So that’s another few NS meals done. I think we should do pretty well on the grocery budget this month because we seem to have every possible ingredient somewhere in the kitchen – it’s a matter of tracking it down!

I sorted some of the huge pile of post this morning and found a voucher for the Chocolate Tasting Club from which I had ordered a £1 box of trial chocolates last year and then promptly cancelled the membership (courtesy one of the MSE emails). They were offering a £27 box of chocolate for £6.75. I put it in my ‘think about’ pile and then when I was putting everything away, I PUT IT IN THE BIN! Success – wasn’t tempted by overpriced chocolate pretending to be on offer!

That makes me feel better about confessing that I ignored a 5p roadkill today. In my defence it was lying in front of the security guard at my very posh office and I felt too embarrassed to pick it up and pocket it in front of him.

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi Mouche, any news on the possible lodger?

Best wishes Tilly x

mouche

Hi Tilly,

Thanks for popping in! No that potential lodger has decided to live in Central London so he can walk to work and save on travel costs. Don't think that really works out as presume he's paying a much higher rent but heigh ho. OH and I are planning to do a big declutter/ clean and then put the room up on spareroom or couchsurfing. Hope for the best!

mouche

Well a big shock has hit the mouche household. Our beloved car went in for servicing yesterday and they found a list of problems a mile long. She is 11 years old now (we've had her for four) but has only done 36,500 and we are the second owners so we were hoping she would last a few more years. OH says she is struggling a bit nowadays but she has never broken down.

Apparently fixing the critical problems will cost £2,500. EEEEEK! She only cost us £4,000 to start with. Now we do have the £2,500 in the car fund but really that was meant to go towards a new car. Even if we have her repaired now, it will take us another 5 years at least to save that amount again and will she make it that long?

Or should we just cut our losses and buy a new one now? By new I mean secondhand of course but perhaps one under 5 years old this time. A quick look at autotrader last night revealed that cars we like the look of are currently around the £6,000 mark. We have £3,000 in the car fund (a bit more actually but want to keep that to cover related costs - insurance, tax etc.) and £10,000 in the do-not-touch-emergency-fund. Should we 'borrow' £3,000 from it and then pay ourselves back. Normally, that's what I would do - and indeed what I did when we bought the current car - BUT it's a hefty amount this time and with no job for OH, there is no prospect of paying it back immediately.

I suppose I'd better post a list of recommended repairs on the auto forum and ask more knowledgable members which of them are critical and see if that helps. Everything always happens at once doesn't it?