Mortgage free by 50

Mortgagefreeby50

Mortgagefreeby50 wrote: »

£10 grocery challenge:

Monday: £30
Tuesday: NSD
Wednesday £18
Thursday: NSD

Friday: £16

£64/£70

We have everything we need for Sunday tea, might just need to get some milk and bread on Sunday. Fingers crossed we can do it within budget!

Used the 5p off a litre at Tesco and saved £1.40 woo hoo!

Updated MOC total.

Mortgagefreeby50

Received £40.32 expenses for the interview, paid that into the overpayments account.
The builders came and fixed the roof on Weds, which was just in time for this vile weather we're having! It's so bad that I can't convince my DH to go on a chocolate run (weekly points!).

Off for a spa day tomorrow with friends, should be lovely! I'm looking forward to not having to be on call for Mini-MSE. Will get a healthy lunch as part of the package, so should be ok for weight watchers.

Mortgagefreeby50

Mortgagefreeby50 wrote: »

£10 grocery challenge:

Monday: £30
Tuesday: NSD
Wednesday £18
Thursday NSD
Friday: £16

Saturday: £6. Very pleased with myself as I have bought the week's food in on budget, by getting reduced milk, bread, sausages and bacon. So we shouldn't need to buy anything tomorrow.
I sat down and worked out our finances to see how long we can afford for me to have off work. We should be able to manage a year, will be pretty tight, but worth it

Mortgagefreeby50

£10 grocery challenge:

Mon: £19.73
Tues:
Weds:
Thurs:
Fri:
Sat:
Sun:

I have planned meals for the rest of the week (first time ever!), so shouldn't need to buy much more, apart from bread. There is a possibility that the meal plan will last longer than the week as most meals will probably be more than two portions, so can be recycled the next day in a slightly different guise.

Yesterday we had one of my bargainous brisket joints in a casserole, it has reappeared today in a pie with mash and veg, and there is still half of the pie left. We shall have it tomorrow with chips and mushy peas. So that joint cost £2.90 and has done 6 portions of food :xmassmile

Mini-MSE had a letter from :santa2: today but I don't know where it came from! I might have ordered it, but for the life of me can't remember doing so!:snow_grin

***********************:xmastree:**************************

Mortgagefreeby50

I couldn't wait any longer, so here is my summary for 2012:

Mortgagefreeby50 wrote: »

1) Save £6000 for maternity leave. I have already set up a standing order to achieve this. It's vital I do it as we will really miss my salary if I go off to have a baby and the company I work for only offers SMP package. The £6k should cover our monthly essential outgoings. I suppose challenge 1a) is to get pregnant! We're working on that...:kisses3:
Challenge 1a) was achieved and Mini-MSE arrived on 20th August, 4 and a half weeks earlier than her due date of 20th September. Yep, you guessed it that we didn't hang around much longer than Christmas! I saved up £5k ready for maternity leave, as I was one payday less than I had anticipated. Just waiting to see if this is enough.

2) Get healthy by going to WW and the gym. By get healthy, I would like to lose 4lb a month, which would be 3 stone over the year. This will get my body into shape for pregnancy and stop us eating ridiculous amounts of chocolate and huge portions.
This has been started later than anticipated thanks to spending most of the year being preggers. I have lost 18lb so far, after 8 weeks of WW.

3) Overpay mortgage by £255 a month This will be achieved by the standing order of £150 and finding an extra £105 by mse methods. I think I will save £2 a day at least by not eating chocolate all of the time. So really, I only need to find £45 extra a month!:dance:
We decided to save the overpayments in an ISA rather than pay them straight off the mortgage. We need an emergency fund, so the overrpayments will double up as the fund.

We managed to save £4675 by using the standing order and also putting away any MSE related savings. £4507 has gone towards the MFW2012 challenge, and the rest will go into my January payment for MFW2013, and towards the MFiTt3 challenge.

We have had various work done in the house- new front door, loft boarded and hatch installed, hall stripped and wood sanded, new carpets on stairs, landing and bedrooms, sorted garden out, and installed dishwasher and washer.

AIMS FOR 2013:

1) To stay off work until 19th August 2013. This will be a bit of a struggle financially, but I really would hate to go back to work sooner than necessary just because we had wasted money.

2) To spend no more than £10 a day on grocery shopping.

3) To save/overpay £3060 off the mortgage. This would keep us on track for MFby50. Obviously it would be a bonus to save more than this but the priority is to survive without my wages until August, so I don't want to be overpaying and going back to work early. We are already 50% there with this if we count the extra that we managed to save in 2012.

It will be tough to not overpay as regularly as we have done this year, but hopefully my daily grocery challenge and the challenge of making our limited funds stretch until August will keep me motivated and keep my diary ticking along.

Mortgagefreeby50

Mortgagefreeby50 wrote: »

£10 grocery challenge:

Mon: £19.73
Tues: NSD
Weds:
Thurs:
Fri:
Sat:
Sun:

I am now allowed to upgrade my phone and have selected a blackberry curve, they are fetching a decent price on ebay and amazon. So I have renewed my £5 a month contract for another two years, and am using a cheapo PAYG £15 handset for my personal phone as my work phone is an iphone.
Just going to wait for it to arrive and then list it on the place with the least fees.

The amazon £4.76 has arrived, so have transferred to overpayments account and updated sig.

The ceiling is getting fixed tomorrow and Thursday, yay!

Mortgagefreeby50

Just joined Consumer Pulse thanks to a link on the 'all the small things' thread from Katsu. Also did some more adpoints, I'm on 230 points now, it's a struggle this week to get to the 250!

So that's two weekly activities that I've got, adpoints and CP!

I'll check in later as to whether today was an NSD. The builders are here, so I'm housebound for the afternoon.

Feeling Christmassy though:

:xmassmile:xmassign::xmastree::snow_laug:snow_grin:rudolf::santa2:

Mortgagefreeby50

Mortgagefreeby50 wrote: »

£10 grocery challenge:

Mon: £19.73
Tues: NSD
Weds: £3.49
Thurs:
Fri:
Sat:
Sun:

Doing well so far, we've got £46.78 to last the rest of the week, with all meals planned, so no massive expenditure needed.

I agree with another poster (can't remember who, sorry!!) that instead of overpaying if I come in under budget I will save it for another week when perhaps we haven't done so well.

Mortgagefreeby50

Spent £3.50 on a chippy (I had enough points!) and 89p on some milk.

The meal plans have gone out of the window as I had to go round to my friend's for tea, but I had already taken the meat out of the freezer, so will have to cook it and refreeze it, hope it will be ok!

Got a wedding tomorrow so NSD there, I'm hoping my dress will fit, better try it on today to avoid panic in the morning!

Mon: £19.73
Tuesday: NSD
Weds: £3.79
Thurs: £4.39

Mortgagefreeby50

Mortgagefreeby50 wrote: »

Mon: £19.73
Tuesday: NSD
Weds: £3.79
Thurs: £4.39
Fri: 65p

Tomorrow should be an NSD as I'm at the wedding all day, so that means we have £41.44 left for Sunday- yay!

I cooked the two meals that I haven't made this week and froze them as the meat was going to go off.