Mortgage freedom..Shala_moo's attempt at a diary..

shala_moo

Jan Monthly figures
Outstanding Mortgage £149,452.55
LTV rate - 66.42% (need this below 65%)
Family Loan £3,700 (OH will pay this each month)
Daily interest £16.34
Offset Savings £12,583.80

Total Debt as present moment £140,568.75(-1,840.09):j

Health goals 7.5lb lost :j and 2 mile walk done this morning



Other money saving :

• ordered £20 Debs vouchers from CP (will use for work clothes and put the money in a pot for Xmas savings)
• currently making ricotta, with a cheese kit the sister bought me for xmas (money saving? milk cost 89p, ricotta cost £1.09 so not a great saving but it's a bit of fun!)
• cooked a chicken in the slowpot on Sunday, it made - 2 x chicken dinner, 3 portions of Butterbean and Chicken soup and 2 portions of chicken and ham pie made. (the butterbeans had been in the cupboard for years:rotfl: sshhhh don't tell OH)
• made 4 portions of baked oatmeal this morning - total cost 57p - so that's 4 breakfasts ready prepared for me :T

Money Spending this week:

• car is currently in the garage awaiting an MOT, dreading how much that will cost :eek: budgeted £100 in previous years, but it's now over 8 years old so I expect more repairs will need to be done - failed, not sure of cost yet, but needs bulb replaced, brake discs replaced and handbrake cable tightening :eek:
• cat needs to go for his booster - [STRIKE]£30??[/STRIKE]it was £48 little b*gger
• 2 lots of collections at work

shala_moo

Grrrrr I've just lost two long posts.. I don't know what I'm pressing but it just keeps going back a page!

Try again!

We've just been to pick up the car from the garage, OH decided to play a trick on me and told me it was £470 for the repairs :eek::eek::eek:

After he stopped laughing he told me the real price - £126 :T £100 budgeted for so I've only got to find an extra £26 :j I'd left £400 in my current account to cover any major repairs, so this can now be moved into the unofficial offset account :T



Second money shuffle can be done today as OH has got paid a week early..

• £150 paid off family loan
• £100 transferred from bills a/c to pay for MOT & repairs
• £400 put into unofficial offset pot

Some other money saving also done today

• walked home from the garage this morning - 2miles - saves petrol and better for fitness
• will be walking up to my dad's shortly, 1.5 miles (ish) saves petrol
• fakeaway tonight - Chinese curry type affair
• resealed the bath ourselves - saves paying a handy man - now got to see if it works :rotfl:we're not the best at DIY
• ordered an online shop with Waitrose - struggled to get to the £50 minimum spend now we don't drink coke/pepsi so I might stop using online shopping now except for my big orders
• ordered a free Gr*ze box

Peonie

Hi Shala,

Well done walking. Is your unofficial off-set account for the mortgage and is it in your normal account?

When you resealed the bath did you fill it with water first?

shala_moo

Hi Peonie, hope you're well,

The unofficial offset is just money that I have stashed in a few different accounts - a couple of ISA's and a normal savings account. I'm hoping to get a proper offset mortgage in Sept so I'll just leave them where they are for now, then move them when it's all set up.

Don't laugh, but the :money:in me didn't want to waste money filling up the bath with water (we're on a meter) so we came up with a different solution - OH's has an amp which weighs 400lb so we stuck that in the bath instead :rotfl:I figure it's got to be heavier than water would have been! Hopefully it won't get wet :eek:

I was impressed with us actually, it looks really neat and we didn't have an argument over it at all

I've also currently got the showerhead soaking in white vinegar to clean the limescale off it :money:

shala_moo

I've been experimenting today

In the winter OH's breakfast of choice is Oatss*simple, and at £2.40-ish for a box I find it a little expensive, especially because my porridge (normal oats) costs less than 10p, sooo....

I googled it!

Turns out you can make your own - and I found this fab website that's showed me how (Link here)

I've worked out the cost difference of the basic mix :

Oatss*simple + milk = 0.35p a portion (215 cals)
Oatsnotsosimple + water = 0.08p* per portion (185 cals)
(My Recipe was very basic version of the bloggers - 1/3c oats, 2tsp oatbran, 2tsp milk powder, 1.5tsp sugar and a pinch of salt)

A saving of 27p per day per portion!


And the best thing is, OH thinks they're brilliant so is happy to swap onto these instead :j:j

Can't wait to try the flavoured ones, although this will up the cost and calories somewhat.

Just off to clean the kitchen now, there's oats everywhere! :rotfl:

*this experimental batch is completely free as I had everything in the cupboard already - just don't tell OH the milk powder BBE date was Nov 12 and we'll be fine :rotfl:

BlueMoo

I too made a version of Oatso simple using powdered milk and belnded oats.

Unfortunately my OH did not take to it at all - he ate the batch I had prepared but was def not keen to switch!

I even tried tempting him with cinnamon and nutmeg, but no.

Glad to see it has gone well for you though.

shala_moo

Hi Bluemoo.. I used normal oats, just value ones from Tesc0, maybe that would make a difference as it's not as mushy as blended oats.

I didn't think my OH would go for them either to be honest, I underestimated him!



On a separate but kind of related note I've figured out that giving up daily Coke, daily crisps and OH changing his breakfast will save us around £450 a year and help maintain better health :j it's a win win!!

moneycurious

Well done on breaking the £150000 barrier!!!! I am aining for the £130 barrier by march , it feels like a mission!! x

shala_moo

Hi MC, thanks for visting - what a great achievement to get to by March - good luck with it!! I'll pop and find your diary

shala_moo

Hi all.. bit of a quiet week this week really, OH usually gets paid today but as he was paid last week instead, it's means no more money shuffling for 3 weeks..

I did, however, order my first Waitr0se shop on Sunday and got to say I'm a bit disappointed in them..

My order was missing an item and my bread was crushed so I emailed them to get a refund and it's took them until today to get back to me :mad: now they've refunded £5.90 for bread and apples! They weren't apples made of gold!!

I guess it's disappointing because, with their reputation, you expect a better level of customer service than the other supermarkets. Maybe thinking I'd get at least a 24 hour turn around on queries was expecting too much.

I did feel a bit petty asking for a refund after they've given me a bottle of champagne for free but the delivery driver didn't do his job properly either really and I had to fill out a survey for it, so best to be honest so they can improve their Customer Service.


Money savings this week

• couple of hours overtime today (25.5 hours racked up this month)
• no grocery shop for the week, just need milk and tinfoil
• 2 days petrol free as didn't go to work due to lurgy
• 2 free (to me) magazines - xmas present subscriptions :T

Money spending this week

• £30 on alarm man to come out and reset the alarm - it had gone into panic mode or something and we didn't know the code to reset it
• £1 to lottery syndicate at work - didn't win

Have a good weekend xxx