Boarding the Bus of Positivity (for 24 months of travels!)

debtfreesomeday

Dinner last night was a baked risotto, made with leftover roast chicken from Sunday, there was also one portion of leftover leftover risotto for a lunch. I find it so gratifying, making a lovely meal from leftovers.
Dinner tonight will be something easy and egg-based - omelettes or poached eggs. DS will have (hopefully) eaten at nursery and DH is home late tonight.

I've chased estate agent, new house developer and solicitor this morning. Hopefully they will all move a bit quicker to get their parts of the job(s) done.

debtfreesomeday

Another £150 paid out on Wednesday, to the solicitor this time. This house buying business is expensive - even before we're anywhere near the front door!
Our savings have dwindled massively now and there's only an 'emergency' £200 left. Hopefully, most things that we have to pay for up front have been paid for now though.

We are doing really well in using up the food in our freezer(s), fridge and storecupboard. A). because we don't want to move it all and . because we're trying to save money.
Last night we had a chilli-bolognaise - it wasn't meant to end up that way, just sort of 'evolved'... it was very tatsy though and there were two portions leftover to freeze for lunches.

I have spent £2.70 already today; £2 to sponsor a colleague's son for a leukaemia charity and 70p on a can of diet coke from the rather overpriced 'food van man' that comes to our building. In fact, this is my third purchase of diet coke this week, no more next week. I'm feeling tired, so cravings something sweet all the time and fruit just isn't doing it!

We've sold some more furniture that we don't intend to take with us to the new house, so that will be an extra £25 in our hands tonight.

We don't have any real plans for the weekend, other than someone coming to view the house, but we shall be making it as cheap as possible. Hubby has offered to buy us a takeaway Saturday night from some of the winnings he has left over, so that will be a lovely treat!

Have a good weekend all

DFSD
x

debtfreesomeday

A very short and sweet round up for now, will update more as soon as I can.

Loan paid off - woohoo! :j
Credit cards down to £3.5k, but hoping to pay off completely by the end of May.
Exchanged on new house today.
Sold present house last week.

All positives, but had a really worrying and stressful week due to my mum being ill again.
Hubby also been poorly with the norovirus, hoping we don't all go down with it again.

Will update properly soon x

Dfsd

debtfreesomeday

Another £534 paid off credit cards today sees balance now at £3k.

Mum out of hospital but secondary problem still existing and she's still in pain.

Hubby better, but sleeping all the time, it's knocked him for six.

Parents going home tomorrow = one sad dfsd and one distraught Ds no doubt.

Chocforever

Wow, I go away for Easter, come back and you have exchanged on the new place and sold your current house! That's amazing . I'm so pleased this, touch wood, has all got sorted so quickly.

Are you moving at the end of the month?

Enjoy today with your parents. It is horrible saying goodbye to family at any age .

debtfreesomeday

Yep, it's all moving quickly Chocs, but seems to be taking forever in the midst of it all, plus everything else that's going on. Hopefully moving at the end of the month/beginning of next month.

Wasn't nice seeing my folks go home, Ds was upset too and sad most of the day. Turns out my Mum now has shingles, which goes a long way to explain the pain she was getting last week.

Back to money saving/making, and I've sold two items this week, for a total of £15 which I should receive by Wednesday. That'll go towards paying the remainder of the credit card balance off.

I did advertise a couple more of Ds's 'too small toys', but decided to give them to his nursery instead to clear the space and let them go to a good home. I was advertising them for £12.50 combined, but happy to see them go there instead.

The decluttering has continued with lots more stuff gone to the charity shop; more of Ds's small clothes have a new home with a friend; and some unwanted storage furniture/curtains etc gone to family. I'm trying to only move what we want, need or love, to our new house.

Today I've enquired about some quotes for life assurance (but forgot to bring our mortgage details with me to work today, so will do that tomorrow); as well as a few quotes for a local removal company we've used before vs van hire. We'll see what comes back at the best value.

DFSD

debtfreesomeday

We have been looking at our new budget tonight and if our estimates for council tax and new bills are correct, then it shall be more or less the same as we have been working with whilst paying our loan off these past years. The only difference is that we will be debt free (except the mortgage, obviously) and there is no way we can allow ourselves to become overdrawn. In fact, I intend phoning the back and reducing our agreed overdraft facility to £200 so we don't have a huge buffer which becomes too easy to slip into when money is tight.

As I said, we will be debt free, although I am struggling to think of it that way due to the new mortgage we shall have. The credit cards will be paid off in a few weeks and we will then have around £1200 in a savings account for emergencies.

This morning I had a lovely time browsing one of my favourite home stores and buying a couple of duvet covers, for free, with a gift card I have kindly been given got a recent birthday. There is £160 left on this card so I shall save it in case we suddenly need anything after we've moved. If we don't, I look forward to spending it on lovely shiny new things!!! I can browse in that store for hours...

debtfreesomeday

We've made another £100 today on some furniture we're not taking with us. Although we had to buy Ds a new car seat today too which cost us £144, but I did manage to get 10% off, 7% CB and £16 worth of boots points with it :0)

Hopefully another item we currently have advertised, will sell very soon for around £150-£200. Also, it is a very heavy and bulky piece of furniture that we really don't want to have to shift to the new house!

The meal planning is going rather well, and am just buying the odd thing we need here and there. It's imperative we keep this up both now and after we move as this is the one area where we can save lots of money if we are careful and in control.

I've sold a couple more craft bits lately via my little business. I'm really hoping the festive season brings us as much, if not more, orders as last year. We could really do with the extra cash and I loved being so busy and making lovely things for a living!

debtfreesomeday

I've just looked into mortgage term life assurance and it's half the price I guesstimated it at when looking at our new budget, so that'll be £10 extra a month in our budget. If the council tax is cheaper than estimated that would be brilliant!

We also have two pesky mobile contracts which we don't use anymore but don't expire until december. They are costing us a combined total of £52 per month. They won't let us downgrade or cancel without charges, so I think I may just pay them off whilst we have the cash spare and be £50 a month better off. It means they'll be less in our savings, but they'll be over £1k in there which should be ok for now.

Nikky2003

Hello DFSD, have read all of this diary and now subscribed!

You have done so well and should be very proud of yourself.

Wishing you loads of luck Nikky xx