The long road to being mortgage free!

ammonite

£70 into baby fund from eBay. No change on the mortgage savings. Hoping to go easy on the food and petrol this month - mind you I say that every month to no avail. That is about the only place I can make savings this month I think.

Is it 6 months outgoings or 6 months wages you are advised to have saved up? Think we will manage 6 months outgoings if we continue to save at the current rate by Christmas which will also be the big 10% of the mortgage saved.

shala_moo

I think it's 6 months outgoings.. as long as you can cover your bills then the rest would just be extra spends..

ammonite

Thanks Shala

I think we are at around 63% of saving 6 months worth of outgoings. Fairly generous outgoings too, could definitely reign it in with petrol and food as if one of us didn't have a job we wouldn't have to pay petrol.

Don't think we are going to make the full 6 months of outgoings despite what I said earlier but we can darned well try and get close. Probably about 90% which is good enough for me

Just had £25 cashback so that has gone into the pot, savings are now 7.1% of total mortgage. Also got about £2.61 interest and can't bear figures that aren't round so just topped it up to £5 Amazing how these things add up.

ammonite

Did some listing on eBay yesterday.

Bought my AA breakdown cover for £30 and got £21 cashback very pleased.

Also got some more baby bargains which is always useful!

Fell out of the DooYoo habit, will try and get back onto it today!

ammonite

Hi All,
Had another check of the finances and decided all my eBay money will go towards Christmas presents rather than the £30 per month I usually put away.

Had £100 saved so I've popped that into the overpay fund. 7.23% of the mortgage in there now.

The £30 that I usually save will be added to the overpayment of £200 that I usually put away and rounded up to £250. I'm sure I won't miss the extra £20. As of July payday, £250 officially will go in the overpay (plus any more that appears!).


Just checked my first post back in April (only 2 months ago) and am astonished at how well we have saved. There has been a bit of money shuffling, a few sacrifices (no holiday) and lots of reviewing/eBaying but we've managed to save up a fair few thousand in that short time. It won't be that much in the next few months but anything we can manage will be a bonus.

newgirly

Hi ammonite, I've just read your diary from the start, its very inspiring. You are doing lots of things I used to do but I've become lazy and stopped lots of them like surveys.

I shall keep popping in in the hope all your hard work will rub off on me.:D

ammonite

Thanks for the message newgirly - I think sometimes it is easy to fall out of routine with surveys etc. but seeing how the points mount up really helps me and of course the payouts Good luck getting back to it


Got lots of yellow stickers in A's last night was just in the right place at the right time. I have set myself a budget of £700 for food from now until December. Find it hard sticking to a monthly budget as sometimes I need more stuff than others and I often buy things on offer so this way it might help me stick to it a bit better? Who knows ! I can try! The tin cupboard is full as is the freezer. Not much uncooked meat left in there but plenty of frozen home made meals, enough until September at least.

ammonite

Have a few more things to put on eBay this weekend. It won't make me a fortune but it will help the cause

Have had to pay off my credit card which had more on it than I thought so no overpayments other than if my Chow pennies come through - it has been well over a month now so I'm getting frustrated with them.

Now the boring wait until pay day 2.5 weeks to go

quintwins

It didn't take me as long to read that as I'd expected, your doing really well, one small point have u get aside extra in your budget for winter? In a few months your gonna have a baby and as easy as it is for you o put a jumper on kids tend to need the heat on more, I never useded so much oil til I had kids.

I'm subscribing to see how you get on, just out of interest even tho it's now saving did you reach your £2100 target yet?

ammonite

Hi Quintwins thanks for popping in

Yes well passed this target now but this is now:

- emergency funds if anything breaks in the house (it shouldn't as most things are fairly new...famous last words of course and you can never be sure!)

- a hardship fund for when my pay goes down next year (even though we should be OK - you never know i.e. the gas bill as you say)

- our savings for a rainy day.

Managed to jiggle some pennies around due to not going on holiday etc. but also through cashback, eBay, surveys and just generally saving hard. Just had a £9.40 pay from cashback but that would mess up my numbers so rounded it up to £10 - I decided to add another tenner to round it up to a nice number. I do this quite often, I don't miss the tenner here and there and the figure grows quite nicely.

However, I'm still confident that by April next year we should have at least the magic £2100 left to overpay the mortgage with. I just don't want to do it yet 'in case' we need the money for next year. In my mind that £2100 is the banks, it isn't ours but if the worst happened we could use it and not overpay whereas if I overpay now I have no access to it and don't want to be in a financial pickle.