The long road to being mortgage free!

Mortgage_Reduction_Novice

I hope you reach your DY target soon. If you enjoy writing textbroker.co.uk is much more lucrative than DY!

ammonite

Thanks MRN if you have a referral for Textbroker feel free to PM me

Today I saved £3.12 using a petrol coupon and £7 x 2 for washing the car ourselves. Not sure how I persuaded Mr A into that but very pleased! Will overpay £20

BookWorm

Hi there. I'm a newbie working my way around the site. The MFW area has particularly caught my interest and I have enjoyed reading your story so far. Thanks for sharing and I wish you luck for the future

ammonite

Hi BookWorm, thanks for reading. I was inspired by lots of diaries and started my own...be aware - it is addictive this MFW lark! Are you going to start your own diary? Good luck


In other news...I think today may be the day where I hit £50 on DY! With yesterday's little overpay we have 9.629% of the mortgage as savings.

Had a bit of a play with the spreadsheet and by my reckoning our LTV will be less than 50% by the end of the year and we should hit 10% of the mortgage as savings (maybe even 11% but that would be hard) by the end of the year.

nattypants

Gooooooood Morning Ammonite

I used to do DY back in the day, however have never cashed in (from memory I didn't complete enough) however will check this one out later today.

50% LTV is FANTASTIC and 10% savings to boot! Your focussed approach is paying off:T

NP:D

ammonite

Hi Natty - thanks :money: I want our LTV as low as possible for next year when we renew our mortgage deal. We bought our house when prices had dropped but when interest rates were still quite high so ended up in a 5 year fix which is quite high anyway, without a crystal ball who could have predicted the base rate for all these years! Hopefully the interest rates won't rise before we get a better deal!

As for DY - if you haven't cashed out, you probably don't want to look. Miles "expire" after so long, I found this out the hard way with £17 worth It was very sad!!!!

BookWorm

ammonite wrote: »

Hi BookWorm, thanks for reading. I was inspired by lots of diaries and started my own...be aware - it is addictive this MFW lark! Are you going to start your own diary? Good luck

Hi Ammonite - I'm not sure yet re: the diary. Still 'learning the ropes' here and feel like I have too many questions (re: my own personal circumstances) to commit to one just yet. I'm enjoying this forum immensley as I feel that it's ok to be interested in saving and reducing debts, etc. Most of my friends don't get it at all.

Have a wonderful day

chocoholic_chick

Morning Ammonite Good luck with getting to your target on DY

Bookworm everyones friendly on here and will give you all the help you want when you decide to take the plunge. I'm just learning as I go along and will make mistakes along the way but as long as I'm heading in the right direction I'm happy

ammonite

Good luck if you decide to start a diary Book Worm

Thanks for the encouragement choc_chick! I have just hit £50 on DY wahooo! Might now go for £20's in vouchers as the thought of trying to get to £50 again for cash at the moment is too much! (wimp!).

Also just made 50p on Onepoll...£3.30 off a payout....probably take me until NEXT Christmas but I'll keep going!

Didn't have a very MSE weekend (meal out x 2, chinese oops, grocery shopping twice, petrol and baby buying stuff!) but as these weekends occur once in a blue moon I'm willing to let it go!

None of the credit cards/bank balances have been updated so no money shuffling today. I do love a good money shuffle.

Apart from small bits and bobs of savings and money from surveys/Quidco I'm not sure we'll be able to save much more this month but we put away £400 more than I expected so with that in mind I'm quite pleased!

Feeling like I'm stagnating at the moment as I have tried to work hard on different areas of spending and can't see really how we can cut it down more without impacting hugely on our lifestyle (i.e. we could get rid of Sky but as that is literally our only entertainment budget I'm reluctant).

I've tried meal planning and grocery challenges which have worked well, I've cut the DD on gas and Sky/phone/broadband, tried to keep the gas off where possible, walk if I can instead of drive, do reviews and some surveys and got the cheapest deals for all insurances so I'm not certain how to save pennies anywhere else really?

I'd be glad if some of you reading could make some suggestions for me, I'd be very grateful

quintwins

I wish my weekends like that only came once in awhile

i think being stagnant is ok, ok theres no major cut backs but you are saving steadily every month, and you can't get rid of all luxurys, you only get one life it's not worth living off beans and toast sat in the dark freezing for the sake of saving money