The long road to being mortgage free!

ammonite

Thanks Quintwins - can't believe its taken a while but I'm finally doing OK with the groceries and being sensible. We have soo much food in the house yet had double when I started thinking all this through back in April!

quintwins

Your preaching to the crowd there, saying that i'm also doing very well.

I just read elsewhere that your suffering from morning sickness, a bottle of fizzy water and gingernuts beside your bed to nibble on and sip before you get up always helped me a wee bit,saying that i was still hospitalised but it did help lol.

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi Ammonite, you are doing brilliantly and your savings are growing consistently which has to be key.

Controlling the food bills is tough, but I think our menu plans seem to work well and your YS items must be shaving money off too. Do you put the into the savings, that yo save by buying Ys stuff - I always mean to but then forget

Best wishes Tilly x x

ammonite

No Tilly I guess I should do that but I don't. For example I wanted 8 pittas last night which are about 70p usually. I found YS pittas and bought 12 pittas for 42p (14p per pack) - but usually I wouldn't have bought 12 if they weren't on offer so I'm never 100% sure quite what the savings are if you get what I mean. I bought 16p courgettes last week but that wasn't really a saving as I didn't go out to buy them, I only bought them because they were 16p...so is it a saving?! Not sure :cool: but definitely helps!

Quintwins - Thanks for the MS advice - I should be well past this now as approaching third trimester but still sick about once per week, could be worse!

Menu plans have worked really well this week, we really do have enough food to last until mid-October I'm convinced of this fact!

We've managed to save almost triple the amount of money I thought we could between now and April - between one thing and another. The savings won't continue to be that high in the next few months but it all helps! It is very addictive! :money:

quintwins

Aww bless you that you think morning sickness goes away in the third trimester. sorry to be the barer of bad new but if you still getting it now your likely to have it right to the end, i know i did it's so hard and tbh the last thing you care about is saving money, when i was sick in my last pregnancy the only thing i could stomach was a kebab but i have pancretisis so it made me sick and sore anyway, there really was no winning.

I know you weren't asking me tilly, but i also don't add my ys savings to my savings, i just spend less money so i have more to send over when i'm cutting my bank down to my £100 buffer the next payday.

gallygirl

I just had a hypothetical quandry - if I pay for shopping with a £25 voucher I got for free, but also use a £3 MOC, do I overpay £25 or £28? (The answer it would appear is £28 :rotfl:).

You are doing really well, all these little steps WILL add up. Promise .

quintwins

gallygirl wrote: »

I just had a hypothetical quandry - if I pay for shopping with a £25 voucher I got for free, but also use a £3 MOC, do I overpay £25 or £28? (The answer it would appear is £28 :rotfl:).

You are doing really well, all these little steps WILL add up. Promise .

If you lived in my house it would prob be £28 because thats the excess you would have at the end of the month(or on my case week which is so much better to see it adding up week on week) assuming you bought items you needed and the moc wasn't for something you didn't need (at £3 i'm assuming it's a conditional spend).

ammonite

Gally - I'd say £28 as well but if you lived in my house I couldn't cope with the odd number so I'd have to overpay £30

Thanks for the encouragement both

Quinny - I've been quite lucky I think, my Mum was sick every day for the whole 9 months so that's what I was expecting, so I guess I can cope with once a week its just annoying lol! Hopefully today will be better!

Really looking forward to payday as for once I don't have extra bits of my credit card to pay off like normal. Working at home has seriously saved on the petrol costs this month and the sensible grocery shopping has really worked too. Balance on both is £0 whereas usually I need to rob Peter to pay Paul on payday (i.e. catch up on last month). We do have a number of things to buy for the house this month so savings won't be huge but it's nice to start off with a full wage

The other major change this month was the loose social budget and getting that out in cash for both of us to use. That worked better than random £20's coming out of the bank or going onto the credit card and not knowing how much Mr Ammonite has been spending and me forgetting I'd put things on my card. We will be doing that again this month as I can take £100 out and know that'll probably be more than enough for a couple of weeks.

quintwins

I was sick up to 8 times a day, in the end i tore my stomach lining and started bring up blood, now to be fair there was twins in there, but i was also really sick with my youngest aswell everyday just not as often and some days just feeling sick not acually being sick. I've decided my body doesn't like being preg and i should follow it's lead (i also had really bad spd last time and was advised to not have naymore anyway) so no more babys for us, 3's more than enough anyway

I always look foward to payday, and since it's weekly i never have long to wait, i paid my creditcard yesterday and it was around half of what it normally is and it had bits of school stuff on it aswell was nice paying £124 rather than the usual £300 odd lol. I'm struggling with my spending budget, problem is i set £30 mainly so i can do things with the youngest when the kids are at school and take them all swimming ect, but at the moment i have 3 to pay for i spent £40 in the soft play area on tue so if i'd been sticking to that budget it would be all gone in one day, but since it's summer i'm not sticking to it.

Hope you feeling better today.

ammonite

Feeling much better thanks

I think the spending budget is probably the 10% of the time when you aren't as frugal as you want to be and as I said above, I always feel if I'm OK 90% of the time, the other 10% of the time is for enjoying life and spending a bit of money. Some of my best memories are from days out as a child

Good news about your credit card too. I wish I got paid weekly!

I've just bought new cushions for the house, been looking for some for ages as the old ones had faded to death (2 zips broken) and when I saw these I decided to get them, had 20% voucher so only paid £28 for four (was going to buy five then realised four was more than enough). I have been looking for material for AGES for them and not found a thing as I was going to be cheap and make my own but I've been looking for the right colour and style since before Christmas so decided it was probably OK to buy the cushions for £28! Although I do feel a bit guilty about it!