Lulabelle's MFW Diary

lulabelle1

Monday morning and a start to a new week....
Reflected on last weeks spending, it was better but still has some room for improvement.
Purchased some tickets last night for a Christmas pantomime with the kids. We've never been before so not sure what to expect. It's just a local production in our town so not to extravagant, £46 including the booking fee for the 4 of us. Will take this money from the Christmas savings account so that it doesn't effect my other money. A tad indulgent and unplanned spending, but I think it's important to enjoy the kids and make the most of these kind of things.....
Still very much thinking about the BTL idea, in fact its on my mind all of the time, just can't decide whether to do it now or hold off for 6-12 months. Also, it's going to break my heart to withdraw circa £20k of overpayments from my mortgage account, but in theory it should be an investment for the future. Decisions decisions.....
Also, another thing I can't decide on is whether to go for the typical 2 up 2 down terraced house which aren't to my liking at all, but I can see the rental potential etc or whether to go for a 2 bed apartment with allocated parking. I've seen one which is across the road from the local hospital and so should in theory be of appeal to Dr's/nurses who are here on a 1 or 2 year contract. But, will it have the same potential in 15/20 years in regards to potential increases in sale value.
It's all just going round in my head constantly and driving me nuts!!!

lulabelle1

Was hoping for a cheap week but just had to fill up both cars, £100, ouch!

lulabelle1

Spent most of the day in the car today, round trip to see colleagues, totalling 5 hours and 250 miles.... Avoided Starbucks on the M1 and both DH and myself almost had a spending free day - just some free range eggs from the farm shop down the road.

Hoping to make some reasonable o/p's this month and next month, fingers crossed.

lulabelle1

Weekly shop time again tonight, have done the meal plan and shopping list and hopefully we should find that it works out less than last week. £120 is the goal to beat and I'm pretty sure that we should be able to do this.
DS1 needs some new school jumpers, one went missing at school and has never been found since, so this one definitely needs to be replaced. No idea how he manages it, but every day he comes home filthy.
DS2 is growing quick, so he will need some new clothes too - before rushing to the shops, I'm going to go in the loft and see if we can find some of DS1's old clothes - I remember just keeping the decent stuff so in theory we should be able to kit him out without having to spend any money. Fingers crossed.
Purchased a few quick Christmas presents this morning, had an email from Play and they have loads of stuff for £5, so ordered 2 items. Nearly finished for Christmas presents now, just a few more bits and pieces to buy, finish the wrapping and thats me sorted.
DH is saving money for a new bike, so I will just give him some money and a little gift from the boys.
I was looking at his photos with DS2 (on his iPhone) the other day and he had taken a picture of a handbag that I'd told him was my dream bag....... Bit of background, before deciding to my MF dream seriously, I was a sucker for designer handbags, I have 6 of them plus various accessories. Anyways, I'd found my dream bag and was going to save for it, I'd shown a picture of it to DH and he must have remembered as he had a picture of it on his phone. Anyways, I made a point of telling him I was no longer interested in buying/having any more fancy bags and that I really want to work on paying the mortgage. The last thing I want to happen is for DH to purchase the £1200 (ouch!!) handbag for me for Christmas.
Well, I need to get some work done now, a couple of clients need to be chased to pay for bills, need to exceed the budget if I want to make a bonus and make some more o/p's!! Plus, need to generate some more new business, so I'd best get on the phone and get myself organised and focused.
enjoy your day folks, L

lulabelle1

Oh, and I've decided to set myself a MF date, it will be 31 December 2018 - 7 years time. Bearing in mind that when we took this mortgage 5 years ago, it was for 30 years, then if we can achieve this, I will be over the moon. Hopefully this target will allow us to have lots of fun along the way too.......
I shall add to my signature

lulabelle1

I'm sure it will drive my bank nuts but in order to keep my spending under control a bit more, I have opened lots of savings accounts and will transfer money in each month as follows:
Christmas - 75
Birthdays - 75
Holiday - 100
Cars - 200 (covers everything apart from fuel)
These are all fixed and i know I can't really reduce them any further.

The next ones are a starting point only and I may be able to reduce them in a couple of months when i get better at all of this!!
Clothes - 100 (4 of us but have great tips from Tilly to reduce this amount)
Eating Out - 100 - still need a monthly treat
Entertainment/Activities - 75
My treats - 50
DH treats - 50
kids treats - 50

Will only leave the following in my flex account each month:
250 - fuel
500 food - may be able to reduce this a little bit too

Which means that after bills, anything else can be overpaid

lulabelle1

Have also decided that if I find the right property, I will invest in a B2L, so it could be that my nice little overpayment fund is reduced dramatically at some point in the near future. This will be a wrench but I will still continue to o/p as much as I can. I need to remember that even if the amount is withdrawn, so long as house prices don't crash, the money will simply sit as equity in my B2L investment and hopefully lead to bigger gains 20 years down the line... bit of a risk but it's a balanced risk so hopefully it should work out in the long run.

Still a while to go with this idea anyways as I still have a lot of homework to do before I take the plunge.

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi L, I will follow your B2L journey as we are planning on this also but not until current mortgage is down to around £100k.

Good luck

lulabelle1

Right, well this may turn out to be a mistake but I have just cancelled my pension contributions....

Thinking behind this is as follows......

I currently have an o/p fund of around £20k. This will need to be withdrawn in order to pay the B2L deposit. If I withdrawn this then I need to make up the shortfall if I'm going to keep with my 7 year MF date. Therefore, I need to pay an additional £250 per month to stick with this goal.

So, if I use my pension contribution to make this overpayment then it all seems to make sense. I suppose one way of looking at it is that my pension contribution will be funding the first B2L, which I guess is an investment.

I'm sure it's all a bit more complicated than that but it seems to make some sort of sense to me today. Plus, pension payment can be reinstated at any time should I change my mind.

L

lulabelle1

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS wrote: »

Hi L, I will follow your B2L journey as we are planning on this also but not until current mortgage is down to around £100k.

Good luck

Thanks Tilly, following yours too. Still need to do some more homework on the B2L and I'm a little bit nervous, but hopefully it's a balanced risk and will work out well. Assuming I take the plunge that is!!