Goodbye Mortgage - the beginning of the end!

Beckyy

Chocolate toffee hot cross buns sound amazing :cool:

We received our £15 cashback from the energy switch, have added it into savings with 51p from Q Mee. Doesn't seem like much but we've had over £8 from Q Mee since using it, all adds up!

Have quite a busy day. £28 left off the food budget for the rest of the month, need to be very careful today! Meal plan for the week is done, we got our 2 free pizza vouchers, got one yesterday and will get the other today so those will do 2 meals

Beckyy

£200 OP'd, so total OP of £205 for April so far, although doubt I'll add any more to it.

Car Insurance renewal this month, shaved quite a lot of my renewal figure using comparison sites but getting a ridiculous amount of marketing calls from them now, certain I opted out too. :mad:

Lots of ISA hype at the moment. Need to look at what's on offer tomorrow and go from there. I'm going to read up a little more on S&S ISAs, have always been interested in them but never really looked into them further, time to do some research! :money:

eBay pile is still... uneBayed One day it will make it! I have put my camera battery on charge to take photos... progress!

Not much going on with £co, won't get anything for car ins as current company should price match to save me cancelling/switching.

Pearla*Merle

Argh on the phone calls Are you signed up to TPS? That should hopefully get rid of some of them

Beckyy

I am, but I think there's some tiny T&C on their websites which says they can pester me about the best quote when I get one from their website.

Currently looking at opening a Santander 123 account and a TSB Plus account instead of a new cash ISA at the moment. I just need to make sure opening so many current account won't cause any negatives on credit ratings etc. Mad you can get a better interest rate on a current account than a savings account now...

Pearla*Merle

I was just thinking the same thing, it's really messed up

I need to have a proper look as well and work out the best way forward

Beckyy

I've opened 2 TSBplus accounts with 5% interest on up to £2000. Worth checking out Pearla as they only need £500 to go through the account each month (and paperless statements) to pay the interest, no direct debits or standing orders. I still need to look into the Santander account, think it will take more effort as it needs DDs etc.

Just waiting for £60 £co cashback to come through from pet insurance, has taken months but will go into savings when it does!

Trying to have a frugal month but spending money seems to be so easy. Had to book a haircut and buy a couple of easter cards/eggs, food budget is also getting hammered this month because silly me didn't sign up to the grocery budget - will be back on it next month!

Saw a lovely house that's just come up for sale on RM. Made me realise we need to save a huge amount more if we have any chance of being able to buy our 'forever' home as I've always envisaged it would be. I had a nosey on the mortgage calculators and mostly what I WAS expecting, a couple hinted we may be able to borrow more than I though but we still need a huge deposit boost. Plenty of time for that though!

Made leek and potato soup with the leeks from our veg box, it's delicious and will do us both for a couple of days of lunches.

Also made rhubard crumble muffins which are SO tasty, and seem to be keeping well in an airtight container. Not sure if they'll last 5 days to see how they fare for storing though...

and broccoli and cauliflower cheese with our cauliflower, was looking for a healthier version of cauliflower cheese and it's v.nice!

Beckyy

I'd been putting off phoning about my car insurance renewal but I've just done it so it's out of the way. Armed myself with my new quote and asked them to price match it, they actually did one better and shaved off another £80 for me by rigging up a multicar policy for OH and I.

When his renewal is due they will only charge for part of the year, from his renewal date to the end of the new multicar policy anniversary. Hopefully when his renewal is due they will still work out to be much cheaper, if not it might be a pain to switch as my policy would go back up in price if I went back to an individual one - but for now it's the cheapest option by far! I was very surprised as every time I'd looked at multicar quotes before they were always more expensive and just seemed silly at the time. Happy now though

Been making a big effort to eat more fruit and veg. We managed 7-8 portions yesterday. The veg box we ordered helped a lot and made us try things we wouldn't have normally bought, it hasn't helped the food budget though which has gone for the month! I have meal planned and shopped for the next week though, and have paid for our next veg box which should also do a few meals.

HM leek and potato soup for lunch today then cooking a smaller, veg heavy roast tonight :T

Hoping to get out into the garden today, cut the grass and do some painting that's been waiting to get done for what feels like forever!

julliff

Ohh, those rhubarb crumble muffins look amazing, I am so fgoint to try to make them over the Easter break. I have some rhubarb in my freezer so won't need to buy anything at all for that.

Thank you so much for posting the link. Nom nom nom!! :)

Goldiegirl

A good result on the car insurance front:)

Once of the things I need to get into is soup making, and leek and potato is one of my particular favourites, so I've made a note of your recipe.

I made my first ever soup last month from a chicken carcass, and it was really nice. Ideal for lunch, and I thought it was good for my first attempt!

Beckyy

The crème fraiche seems to make the soup nice and light, and the rhubarb crumble muffins were delicious - they were healthier for us too as we didn't have ice-cream or custard like we would have with a normal crumble!

Our normal monthly payment came out for the mortgage today but still waiting for it to come off the balance online.

I need to get back into the habit of doing adpoints as my nectar balance is next to nothing just now. They all seem so long for such little reward now though, when I first joined they are all 30 seconds long (or less) and were for 4-6 points each. Now most seem a good 2 minutes long for just 3 points, maybe 4.

I'm still waiting for my cashback to track from Iceland bingo on £co. The claim has been raised but no progress yet, very annoying as I did it purely for the cashback so will just have to keep my fingers crossed.

I've got a good to-do list to crack on with today, hopefully I'll get everything ticked off! :cool: