Sweetdaisy's aim to be mortgage-free

sweetdaisy

:rudolf:Hope that everyone had a good Christmas :xmassmile.

I worked yesterday evening (and this morning!), but had a great day with the children yesterday - who were very excited. We had dinner in our house - just the 4 of us and it was lovely and spent the afternoon visiting both of our families before I headed off to work.

Monthly interest has been added to the mortgage: £175, which is £35 less than last month (thanks to DH's redundancy money which is sitting in the offset savings account ) and it's nice too see the monthly interest fall below £200.

Mortgage balance is now £76,649 and mortgage overpayment 'pot' stands at £311. I may make an overpayment of £49 to start the New Year with the mortgage balance rounded down to £76,600.

I am quite indecisive about the best/quickest way to reduce the mortgage term, so any extra money we have will firstly be put into Savings and then the remainder will be used on a 50/50 basis of directly overpaying and increasing the mortgage overpayment 'pot'. I am sure that I will change my mind in a few weeks though :rotfl:.

Also - my new healthy regime starts tomorrow! I just want to tone up a little and exercising gives me more energy, so I am not going to restrict any treats - just have things I like in moderation. I have decided not to wait until 1st January, as I feel motivated to do it now, so it's Turkey salad and pickles for lunch in work tomorrow followed by a cross-trainer workout when I come home from work.

southerndave

Wow! Going for it Daisy, especially with the diet! I too need to lose a few pounds round the middle but looking at the mountain of 'goodies' we have been given this year, it's going to be a struggle! Thankfully many things have long shelf life so I am hoping it will help with our No Spend challenge and keep the weekly shopping bill low for the next few weeks anyway.

Glad you had a great Christmas and may I wish you all the best for 2013!

sweetdaisy

Thanks Southerndave - I hope that you do well with your 'No Spend' plan. I am hoping to reduce my weekly shopping bill by planning my weekly meals a bit better. I was really good at doing this when I was on Maternity Leave, but since being back in work full-time I have let it slip a little. I have lots in the freezer so am going to use up the food so that I can defrost it and then start planning meals.

sweetdaisy

£49 overpayment made, so I will start the New Year with a mortgage balance of £76,600. I have some money to redeem from survey/cashback sites but am not going to do this until the New Year because I want to start afresh with my spreadsheets for 2013.

sweetdaisy

Weekly food shop done today and was £25 under budget, so money transferred between accounts. Underspend has been divided between savings and mortgage overpayment 'pot'. I have also planned our meals for the week, including work lunches.

The mortgage overpayment 'pot' balance is now £313. The money is still being offset against the mortgage but as it is separate from our 'Rainy Day Savings' I am aiming to build this up and use it as a lump sum.

Also, the amount of chocolate we have been given as gifts this Christmas is verging on the ridiculous. So having checked the expiry dates, some of them don't have to be eaten until 2014, so I have bagged some of them up and put them in the wardrobe - if I have enough willpower maybe they will be kept until next Christmas .

sweetdaisy

_party_ Happy New Year _party_

The Christmas decorations are down (I am not superstitious!), the house has been cleaned top-to-bottom and I feel happier that the house has returned to normal.

Did a 25 minute walk yesterday (it was pouring with rain so only a short walk) and a 1 hour walk today. You can tell it's the New Year as I saw lots more people than usual walking/jogging on my route.

Received a payout from a survey site yesterday, so money has been divided between Savings and Mortgage Overpayment 'pot'. I made a direct overpayment on the mortgage of £47 and Mortgage Overpayment 'pot' balance is now £337. Also, redeemed from TopCashback, so that might take a few weeks to be paid.

As a reminder to myself - financial aims for 2013:
1) increase 'Rainy Day' savings
2) increase my Mortgage Overpayment 'pot'
3) get mortgage balance down to £69,999 by 31st December

slowlyfading

Good luck with your aims I shall be subscribing!

sweetdaisy

Had a busy weekend - took the children swimming, been to the park, done lots of walking, plus lots of washing and ironing!

This week I received £42 from TopCashback and I also underspent by £16 on the weekly food shop and £17 on our weekly spend money. So, I have increased our savings, added to the mortgage 'pot' which now has a balance of £367 and made a mortgage overpayment this week of £77.

Using my excel spreadsheet, I have divided my main Savings account into different pots, including:
1) Rainy Day Savings - that I mustn't touch
2) Mortgage Overpayment 'pot'
3) Treats/Fun Stuff/Spending - made up from 50% of weekly underspend and to be used for children's activities/days out/meals/clothes etc)

The remaining savings balance will be used to pay for car and house insurances, household goods etc.

DH started in his new temp job on 2nd January and says that the job is Ok and his work colleagues are nice. He has been told to go in tomorrow - as it looks like there is work for him all of next week and having spoken to his agency colleagues (some of which have worked for the agency for years), the agency is one of the best in the area and have a good reputation, so hopefully there will be enough work for DH.

slowlyfading

All sounding good

southerndave

Well done Daisy! Regarding the dinner planning.... we struggled with this for a while, so what we did was have a family meeting and all write down the meals we like, the meals we can and do cook and then drew up a five week menu plan. Each week has its own mix of meat and vegitarian dishes, quick cooks and more in depth meals, and pre-cooked frozen dinners (our own). This also in turn makes for a fairly fixed shopping list give or take for each week.

We are not rigid with the meals, life doesn't fit a timetable, so if we are late in on Monday and the meal should have been one involving prep, we can just grab the easy meal and eat it and swap the days about to suit. Sometimes we swap a day's meal out and have a takeaway or we swap for somehting else in the freezer or cupboard. All of the meals can be prepared in different ways, so it is at once planned and flexible and suits our lifestyle.

Five weeks seems long enough for us to forget the 1st weeks meals by the last and so far it has not become boring - most folk eat the same few meals anyway. We had used a couple of try-me dishes originally and these have not worked, so we keep these as 'try out' days and if recipes catch our eye, we will plan for these on those weeks. If something is really nice, it earns it place!

Not sure if this will work for you, but there you go!