Trying to make my dreams a reality!!

icontinuetodream

I have got through two of the five big expenses I have this month and, so far, have managed to make it within budget :j

I have been speaking to hubby and he has agreed to try to stick to the budget next month too...it will be a lot easier if we are both tracking our spending...we tend to go off the rails if the other one of us does!!:o

We know we need to get our budgets re-done soon; although we did a budget recently, with the changes in our household and some of the things that dh and I have been talking about, I think that we need to have a proper sit down and work out exactly what we want to achieve and how best to do it. I am going to stick to our current budget for the next six months either way....I want at least try to make up for the gaps in this years planned mortgage op's

I have had a busy day today....I am on leave so have cleaned the house (just the floors to do now!) and have sorted some food for the next couple of days....

tonight, we are having haggis, sprouts with chestnuts and red onions alongside red cabbage with apple and port. I am cooking a number of jacket potatoes in the oven when the haggis is in and I intend to scrape them out, use the potato from them to mix with the leftovers from tonight to make bubble & squeak and then will freeze.

I have made roast tomatoes with garlic and basil, chargrilled aubergines spread with pesto, mashed mixed beans, garlic, lemon juice, cooked aubergine and mint and will serve the tomatoes and aubergines tomorrow with the crispy potato skins reserved from tonights potatoes. I do love it when i have a few days food ready made!!

So, the end of next week will be the time that my main expenses of the month will be over, I have enough food in the cupboards to be able to make do with about £40 for the rest of the month and I am going to make some wine at the weekend (one week wine kit, 30 bottles...bought about a year ago and still sitting in my spare room!!:o) to see me through the next couple of weeks!!:D

All is looking good, even if it's not too MSE at the moment!!!

icontinuetodream

Long, rambling post alert!!! Sorry in advance...I am having a rambling thought day!!

So, another two major expenses down this week....only one more to go before I can get totally back on the wagon!!:j

I have had a lovely week...have been on leave and my family came over, so as well as celebrating dh's bday, I have had lots of days doing exactly what makes me happy.... spending time with my family, walking my puppy, drinking wine and having some fabulous food!!

I am desperately trying to get organised ready for getting back on the mfw wagon so I have cleared my fridge out today and made a soup with the cut off ends of some asparagus that I had earlier in the week, an onion, half a fennel bulb, half a red chilli, a glug of white wine, spoonful of stock powder, water, greek basil and chives....

I only have a white cabbage, onion, a beetroot, some potatoes, garlic, root ginger, a bag of mixed baby peppers, lemons and some avocados left now as far as fresh food is concerned.... I will chop the avocados and add them to the soup tonight will make a ginger and lemon risotto tomorrow and serve with a beetroot and potato salad , mini-peppers pan fried with garlic, vegan chorizio and tomatoes with a polenta crust for tuesday and will defrost some ready made tvp mince mix to make cabbage parcels later in the week with a tomato and herb sauce. I have mil coming to stay the latter part of the week so have no idea what we will eat from then on....I think that it is only a four day visit and I am working away for most of it, so dh will sort all of that out!!

We have decided that we will stick to a weekly budget for food...now that my dd has moved out, I will only really be cooking for myself and dh...ds rarely eats at home really, he seems to survive on tuna and pasta, cereal and bacon!! Not ideal but what can I do!!??? :eek: I always cook enough for him though and if he doesn't eat it, dh takes it to work for lunch so a win-win situation regardless!! It will make things a great deal easier now that I know that dd isn't just going to turn up out of the blue asking 'what's for dinner'!!!

I have decided that I am going to do my food shopping on a saturday.....I will do my 'non-food' shopping once a month, but I am not going to use supermarkets for my fresh fruit/veg or meat anymore (I occasionally buy meat for the rest of the family as they are not vegan so like to have the occasional corpse fix ) so will shop at the local farmers shops and saturday will be my 'soup' day to use up any produce I have left over from the previous week It's not necassarily going to be as money saving as supermarket shopping is, but I really don't think that I can cope with any more of the rubbish they have on offer!

I am really lucky that I have lots of farm shops and local people just selling excess stuff around me so I have a really good supply of seasonal ingredients at my doorstep...it will help me to get control of my spending and revive my cooking imagination too, I will be much less likely to throw stuff away if I am only buying what I need for the week and if it is grown locally, I will not be buying things that have no flavour or full of pesticides etc so it suits my environmental desires too!! :T

Anyhoo...other things.....My wonderful sister has offered to buy me a dining table and chairs for my kitchen!!:j:j:jI am totally thrilled...it's one of those things that I really want as we are currently sitting on garden chairs up at a makeshift 'island' in my kitchen, which is lovely but the chairs are too low to actually eat there unless the plate is on your lap and therefore not ideal!!!

I had seen it on the internet, sis asked to have a look so I went on to show her and she told me to order it!! Being totally grown up and unimpulsive, I told her that I wanted to have a proper look at it in the shop and try out the chairs so we decided to go there a couple of hours later...got there, price advertised on the internet had apparently been changed that morning and it is now £100 more expensive!!!:eek::eek::eek: So, despite having advertising the dining set at the cheaper price less than three hours earlier, salesman is having none of it and won't even consider letting me have it at the sale price or just above it :mad::mad::mad::mad:....upshot is, I left shop and will not have my set until it is back in a sale

Back to work tomorrow regardless of how lucky I am with my job and my employers, I still hate having to go back to work after my hols....at least when I go back this time, my house is clean, laundry up to date, food organised and only a week and a half to payday!!!! :j

I am slowly cutting down the smoking...alcohol is not going quite as well due to spending the week on holiday but it will get better next week....I still haven't made my wine but will hopefully do it this weekend instead (I could do it now if I am honest, but really can't be bothered at the moment!!) and then will keep the drinking to weekends only....I don't want to eliminate it completely, sitting in my garden, listening to the birds, glass of wine in one hand and a good book in the other is one of life's pleasures which is not worth compromising on!!:dance::D

I have worked out that I have about £300 on my cc which I want to clear for next month....I have a busy week ahead of me so will put my expenses in next monday which will hopefully clear at least a third of that and when I get paid, I have to find a way to clear the rest of it...I want to get to July payday with no cc debt and a clear run at the mortgage ops....

I am totally determined to get to the mortgage target for this year....regardless of the fact that the first six months of this year have been fraught with setbacks financially, a lot of them are of my own making or at least have not been handled well by me which means that I know I can do better....if I spend the next six months working as hard at acheiving it as I do at procrastinating, I reckon that I could actually beat it!!:o:o:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

In some ways, I think that the lessons I have learnt over the past six months about my spending habits, mental attitude and understanding of what my triggers are by completley screwing things up will probably do me the biggest favour in the long run....I have learnt a great deal about myself and highlighted a lot of the failings that I have undertaking this mfw journey and I have to say, that I think its actually making me a better person in a lot of ways.....its a definate unexpected bonus of trying to pay off the mortgage!!!:rotfl::D

icontinuetodream

Woohoo!! Major expenses all done with now and pay day coming next Friday!!

I have a hectic week ahead of me at work so expect that dh will be feeding himself with what is left over from mil being here....he managed to cook for the five thousand while I was away but there are plenty of things now in the freezer to keep him going this week!! I am really looking forward to starting the weekly shopping and shaving money off our grocery budget...

I am hoping that we can really put everything we have into the mortgage this pay month...I still have to clear the cc but other than that, I am ahead with all payments/budgets etc so pretty proud of myself at the moment its a rare occurrence indeed!! :rotfl: I overestimate all payments in my budget- sometimes only by a few pence, sometimes a few pounds- and am going to pay the excess off the mortgage immediately this time so that it doesn't get 'lost in the system' so to speak!! It will mean some very small op's but I am convinced that it is the best way to keep my motivation up....every day that I pay a little more off will feel like an achievement

Not doing so well on the MFiT- T3 challenge I am over 2k behind my target, but at least I know that I still have another 2 submissions to make before the end of this year and another 10 before the end, so there is hope for me yet!!:rotfl:I am disappointed in some ways, but am trying to keep the attitude that anything I pay off is a bonus and I have made an op every month without fail...even if it has been a lot less than intended, it has still happened and I can't be disappointed with that It is going to be interesting to see how well I can do in the next month though...it seems to have been a long time since I was totally focused on mfw and I am curious as to how much I can actually achieve with my full attention upon it...:)

icontinuetodream

have had an interesting week...thought the car had decided to take a step closer to slipping the mortal coil but a trip to the garage sorted it and it has only cost £50 extraordinarily happy about that to be honest, but it did make me think that I really have to start a few budget funds for things I know that are coming - I do have the day to day maintenance funds for a variety of things, but big and bulk purchases haven't really been catered for.....

with that (and this weeks events in mind ) I have to start a car fund sooner rather than later... once the cc is paid off, the money that I currently put towards it will have to go to the car fund..its annoying as I wanted it to be an extra payment towards the mortgage, but I have to be realistic..poor car won't last forever - especially the way I drive!!:D

I have sorted the menu out for the week - I have to buy only soya milk, cow juice, salad and vegan yoghurt to cover every meal for the week so am looking at a very small grocery budget this week - what I save will go into a 'bulk purchase' fund until it reaches £150 and then I will put everything over and above that to the mortgage pot.... need to add the bulk purchase pot total to my sig and then I can use a 'non accessible' jar to save it in!

I have paid another £580 towards the mortgage, once it clears, I should be sub 50k...somewhat later than planned but I will be really impressed when I get there...when I first started thinking about paying my mortgage off more quickly it was at around 78k :eek: - that was only about three years ago and psychologically, its a major milestone for me being sub 50k...

the really big one for me (other than the zero balance obviously!!;)) is sub 36k....that's how much my original mortgage was before I had my stupid financial time and had consolidation loans etc added and everything else that financially crippled me happened, so that is really my magic number - and knowing that I could be below that reasonably soon is really spurring me on!!:D:D:D It's a big thing for both of us and I think that once we get to that number, paying this mortgage off may turn into a scary obsession!!

Not likely to have any additional op's this month, but I do think that July could be a really positive one for us....hope it is for you all too!

icontinuetodream

managed to squeeze an additional £25 from the budget today so have paid it off the mortgage

spent a lot of yesterday working out how long it will take us to get our mortgage down to the magic sub 36k and have discovered that if we keep to what we currently put aside for OP's, we should be there by june 2014!!!!:j:j:j of course, it is likely that something random will happen and we won't reach it, but I am really hoping that we get close....dh is suddenly very keen to hit that target (and I intend to ride the wave while I can!!;)) so the motivation appears to be back with him and if I can just reign in his shopping spending, I think I could be onto a winner!!:D

Sold a book on Amazon the other day so that will be another £10 to the op pot when that clears, hopefully I will be able to sell some more and keep drip-feeding the mortgage that way too!!

icontinuetodream

Had an amazing couple of days....hubby has finally, really, had his lightbulb moment!!!:idea::idea::idea::j:j:j:money::money::money:

We have hit sub 50k!!! :j All enthused and excited, we used one of the calculators from this site and looked at how long paying our mortgage off will take with the overpayments we currently make and what we intend to snowball when the kitchen loan is paid off in two years ... result being that we have 37 more payments before we are done:eek::eek::eek::D:D:D

DH has finally admitted that although he really wanted to pay off the mortgage, it always seemed a bit of a pipedream to him due to his perceived enormity of it - he viewed it as scrabbling around, trying to find money we don't have and living a life of poverty for the unforeseeable future and didn't want to commit to that (understandably-lets face it, who would??!! ).

Now that he has seen what will happen if we just keep going the way we are, he's totally turned the corner.... he has come round to the theory that every penny we don't spend can be thrown at the mortgage and it will be less than 37 months if that's what we do Finally, the penny has dropped!

I can't begin to tell you what a relief this is...it's been far too easy for me to excuse unnecessary spending because of his lack of commitment and when we are talking about it now, he doesn't get that glazed look in his eyes while his brains switches off!!!:o It really good to have both of us pulling in the same direction at last

ds paid his rent yesterday, so I paid it straight off the mortgage..no chance of spending it that way!! Plus a couple of bills were paid and as I always overestimate in my budget (even if its only by a few pence) I transferred the surplus £3 to it too!!!;) Its nice to make a payment as often as possible..keeps the motivation up!!

Peonie

Well done. To have DH on board and to be so close to the end must be a wonderful feeling.

How much to you usually OP each month?

icontinuetodream

Peonie wrote: »

Well done. To have DH on board and to be so close to the end must be a wonderful feeling.

How much to you usually OP each month?

we are currently op'ing one and a half times our usual mortgage payment!!:eek: when we get closer to mf day we will be able to do more than that as we will finish a couple of other things off and roll them on to the op....so it will seem like a reasonably slow start but should fly past at the end!!;)

We now have the chart displayed in the kitchen that dh made with the mortgage countdown on it hopefully by the end of the month, I should be able to knock off a couple of more squares :T its a really good motivator....we are doing it by the thousand and don't knock the number off until we are far enough below it to negate any impact added interest will have...we were going to have it in months, but it seems more inspiring to be able to sometimes cross two out at a time!!

It's funny how being below three years now seems to make the whole thing feel more real....we sat down the other night and started to put our 'bucket' list together....we even looked at the prices of some things we want to do as it seemed good to get a ball park figure now that it isn't a million miles away!!:D

We have had numerous blips this month...most of them entirely avoidable but I think that it was good for dh to have this month as a practice run...he seems clearer now on how he has to manage the money to make this work so I have high hopes for next month

Anyhoo....best I get on with sorting the laundry...must remember to get on here at least a couple of times a week too..it helps my focus!!:D

Peonie

icontinuetodream wrote: »

we are currently op'ing one and a half times our usual mortgage payment!!:eek: when we get closer to mf day we will be able to do more than that as we will finish a couple of other things off and roll them on to the op....so it will seem like a reasonably slow start but should fly past at the end!!;)

We now have the chart displayed in the kitchen that dh made with the mortgage countdown on it hopefully by the end of the month, I should be able to knock off a couple of more squares :T

It's funny how being below three years now seems to make the whole thing feel more real....we sat down the other night and started to put our 'bucket' list together....we even looked at the prices of some things we want to do as it seemed good to get a ball park figure now that it isn't a million miles away!!:D

One and a half times is amazing. You'll have it paid off in no time... or 3 years.

I've made a chart as well. You reminded me to update it. Mine's really boring; just a few cells on a spreadsheet.

The bucket list sounds great. I'm on my second 101 in 1001 list. This time I've included the financial changes I want to make. And now I need to update the list.

icontinuetodream

another £4 paid off from my overbudgeting brings the total for July to £670 this month with more to go on before the end of it!!! :T

I was meant to be going to a friends birthday next Friday but have decided that it will end up costing me far too much money and as I have my bday, ds's bday and dd's bf's bday within three days of each other at the beginning of next month, I really can't afford it at the moment I will have to bow out carefully as I don't want to let her down, but I know that it just isn't worth the juggling....I will invite her over for a food and voddy night instead which will work out much better financially!!;)

I am pretty pleased with how things are going at the moment...despite it being a bit of a rollercoaster month financially, I still have a couple of quid in the bank until I get paid, the house is in a reasonable condition, I have caught up with everything at work and I am going to have a really relaxing weekend as we have nothing planned and I am looking forward to doing very little!!!:D

Now that the financial plans and the house are sorted, I have spent the last couple of days thinking about my lack of progress towards getting myself sorted physically....I have been counselling a client this week about taking responsibility for their life, actions and thought patterns etc, when pot, kettle and black sprung to mind!!!:eek: ......I have failed to do anything about my physical state for so long (despite all my futile intentions!!:o) and I am incredibly embarrassed about my lack of willpower and my shameful declarations of determination that I just haven't pulled off.....:whistle:

So, I am going to do something about it....I can no longer bury my head in the sand and pretend that I am going to be fit and healthy without any effort at all.... you'd think that I would be old enough and bright enough to have worked that out already but what can I say....I'm challenged!!! :wall:

Truth is, I am 45 in a few weeks time and other than being pregnant and a period where I didn't smoke for a number of years, I have smoked since I was nine years old!! :eek: Recently, I have started to notice that I am finding it harder to do things and I am out of breath a lot quicker than I used to be....I am so scarily unfit which is awful really as I used to be very healthy and strong....now I am a middle-aged physical wreck and I don't want to be unable to spend my later years enjoying myself because of ill-health. All that taken into consideration..I am quitting smoking tomorrow...really!!

I know that I have said it a million times before (and done it too...it's just the 'not re-starting' I seem to have the major issue with!!) but I have never actually acknowledged that I am suffering any physical effects from my bad habits until very recently - I think that it has given me 'very much needed' wake up call.....especially as I see so many people who are just 'existing' due to long-term illnesses. I don't want to be like that...I want to do my 'bucket' list and enjoy it!!

It's not just the smoking....my diet is poo really, I eat really erratically as I only eat when I am hungry and swing from not eating anything for a few days to eating none stop for several days....it used to suit me really well...I always felt great on it but I know that it is starting to effect me now as I am having huge energy crashes and feel pretty tired a lot of the time....my difficulty is definitely eating when I am not hungry...the only time I have really pulled it off was when I went on a month's detox a number of years ago so I am seriously considering doing another one soon...it will get me into a habit of eating and eating well Think I may start that on Saturday...give myself a couple of days off the smokes before I start!!:D

So, that's my month ahead really.....getting me and my diet right, keeping up with the mf plan and kicking myself up the a**e!!!! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: