The long road to being mortgage free!

ammonite

Evening all, good news to report, a small loan lent to a friend has been repaid in full and I have £600 to do with what I please. Feel like I've won the lottery as I had forgotten it was due to come back to me

Going to aim to get to the next £50 on DY by the end of September so I'll have to put my mind to it a bit.

Have majorly stocked up on bread and crisps as spotted them on offer, we end up spending a fair bit on crisps sometimes so I decided to stock pile them. Slowly re-stocking the cupboards but making sure we eat what is in there too. It is quite lovely to have a bit of space to manouvre in the freezer. Hopefully just a very low spend on Sunday at the shops.

THEN PAYDAY wahoo! I was starting to feel a bit stressed about how much we have to spend in the next few weeks with birthdays, xmas, house stuff etc. but that extra cash coming back in has really helped and who knows..we may even manage a teeny saving next month!

Heating status: no heating on. Determined to get to October before it goes on. Luckily the house is quite warm for some reason.

Dried 80% of the washing on the line or maiden this week so only had the dryer on for a short time to save some pennies.

It was a 99p spend day for me, a snack at lunch - very naughty.

That's all folks - have you all had a good day? What has been your best moneysaving thing you've done this week?

ammonite

Ooh I feel rich! My DY, ciao and Quidco payments all came in... £157 Not going to put it into the overpay account or anything until payday and I've figured out what I need to pay out for. It is all good though as it means I have to take less money out of my savings to pay all these extra things

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

That's fab news :)

You re so diligent in doing all these things

Tilly

ammonite

In truth, the payments spur me on. Getting it into my morning routine helps too...unless I'm feeling a bit lazy

Looking forward to Payday.

janineh1982

ammonite wrote: »

Ooh I feel rich! My DY, ciao and Quidco payments all came in... £157 Not going to put it into the overpay account or anything until payday and I've figured out what I need to pay out for. It is all good though as it means I have to take less money out of my savings to pay all these extra things

Fantastic! Well done Ammonite :T
I have just received my first ever payment from Quidco (after only joining last month) for £87.26.....i go so very excited about receiving 'free' money - actually made me LOL at how excited i was

Mortgage_Reduction_Novice

Well done on all your hard work on DY/Ciao.

I'm aiming for at least October for the heating turn on too.

ammonite

Ooh I was SOOO close to putting the heating on today as I am at home and was quite cold but put an extra cardigan on and it seemed to work OK.

Did a bit of batch cooking for the freezer, tuna and pasta bake and sausage casseroles. About 5 portions of each All with ingredients I had in the freezer/cupboards. Also making a 3-4 portion chilli tomorrow for the freezer.


I did a meal plan for this week from meals already cooked in the freezer and we need lunch meat, salad, bananas and milk so hopefully a very small spend this week. We are stocked up on crisps, bread and choccy bars for lunches so should be OK.

Thanks for the good wishes about DY and Ciao...getting the payment reminds me of why I do it when it seems the most boring task in the world sometimes!!

Great news about your Quidco Janine. I joined there in 2006 and can't bear to shop online without checking Quidco or looking for a voucher code!

chocoholic_chick

It has been sooo cold lately hasn't it! But I find if I'm busy baking/cooking the house soon warms up Sounds as though you've had a very productive day! I plan on having a baking day sunday, can't wait!

ammonite

I agree - I batch cook so don't have the oven on every day but the oven does certainly do a dual job!

Right so I took the gas bull by the horns today and tried to sort it out. I'm not sure quite what happened but we paid £60 per month for gas when we hardly use it for anything in my opinion. We batch cook, rarely heat as we are out all day at work etc.

Used moneysupermarket and rang nPower back and negotiated my way to a £39 per month bill. In real terms its a saving of about £92 per year which I'm very pleased about. I'm going to put that in the overpay fund as we would quite happily have stayed on the Standard tariff.

That £92 plus the £108 per year we have saved on Sky line rental is going in the savings now (well on payday), so effectively saved £200 over the year from two phone calls (using 0800 numbers of course ).

Another thing...the penny dropped on whilst I was on the phone to nPower......we run three or four baths per day (for 2 people...I know we are very clean but nuts!). I regularly let the hot water run for ages, then have to let it out so that I can get in, then put the cold in to cool it down etc. etc. ...............it has never clicked that the boiler (aka the gas!) provides the hot water. I'm on a one woman mission to reduce hot water waste in the house from today.

As I'll be at home more from next year the gas consumption will go up I'm sure but I'll try and do everything to reduce our waste. If you see a mad couple in the garden having a shower via hosepipe in mid-Winter....well you know I've taken it too far


Very pleased....next stop...the electricity!

ammonite

Payday arrived early wahoo! We did manage to put some money in the savings this month and we now have 9.56% of the mortgage is savings :j

I put the aforementioned £200 savings in there (see previous post)

The more I can build up in there, the happier I'll be when the annual overpayment month comes (April) and hopefully I won't mind parting with the money (£2100) so much....?! I know it is the right thing to do but it is still hard to see that sort of money vanish into thin air and effectively you see nothing for it (except 12 months knocked off the mortgage on the calculator which is good I suppose!).

I batch cooked Chilli, Tuna and Pasta Bake and Sausage Casserole using ingredients we had so the freezer is now looking quite healthy again. Need to go out for salad and fruit so a low spend on groceries this week.

Do however need to get petrol for both cars so the monthly fuel budget is about to be blown. Luckily I'm off work quite a bit in the next few weeks so that will save about £5 per day and make the tank of fuel stretch out.