Vala's frugal journey to be MF!!

Vala-Mal-Doran

Hello all!

It's my birthday today so no NSD to report I'm afraid as we had a trip to Birmingham and was treated to a sushi lunch and some rather expensive make up for my wedding - cant have someone else in doing it, iv not liked a single trial iv had at any counter!- and also a trip to ikea where I bought the 6 glasses at 50p each, so £3 planned spend - then a further £32 on 2 cushions, a teapot (?), some suit bags, a candle (again) and a coffee table!! The coffee table IS nice and was a bargain at £16 but it was a bit of an impulse buy hopefully a good one!
Not long got home to a thorntons cake-complete with candles, my pressies of 2 Nigel Slater dvd's, a slow cooker book, a personalised 'likes' mug and a home made wooden planter box that OH remembered me wanting to buy a battered one from a garden centre and they wouldn't sell it to me! Definately one of my favourite ever presents just because of the thought and effort to make it!

Feeling like a very lucky girl today

V

Froggy-G

Happy birthday!! :j:j

megela

Happy Birthday for yesterday:bdaycake:

edinburgher

It sounds like you had a lovely birthday, with some very thoughtful gifts.

We also had sushi on my birthday last week - one of the few types of food that's delicious but also really tasty

Vala-Mal-Doran

Hi all,
Sorry Iv not been posting recently, iv been so busy I havent had much chance to get online to anything not wedding related!
I have 10 mins before I need to get a wiggle on and clean the house ready for the big day (This saturday! :j )
Happy to say I have kept my mse head on throughout the planning process - especially when it came to the dreaded chaircovers!! - I never have understood them, if the chairs are clean why are you trying to charge me £250 for 80 covers for them!?? :mad:
We've been very kindly helped out with the balance for the wedding so I have plans post honey moon to swindle some of the money saved into the mortgage once we are back on a normal routine!

I hope everyone is keeping well and happy

VMD x

megela

Good luck and best wishes for Saturday - hope the sun shines for you!

Vala-Mal-Doran

Thanks Megela however Staffordshire is looking distinctly rainy all day Saturday :rotfl: oh well what can you do!

Vala-Mal-Doran

Hello All,

Im back and beginning my journey afresh as a married woman! :j

The wedding went great, only the odd mishap like the extravagant cake topper birdcage my aunt had made falling off and smashing into a million pieces. :eek: And it hammering down all morning which to be honest was pretty funny after a while. Im also pleased to say that we came in more than £1200 under our original budget! :j:j:j
I had lots of compliments on all the homemade decorations like the bunting and 'Mr and Mrs's even by the men which is saying something!! I only have a couple of pics but they are on here - http://www.tumblr.com/blog/coffeebeanx if you want to look.

Ok Down to the serious stuff....

The Mortgage currently stands at £103595.60

Our short term aim is to have it under £100000.00 by April 2014, so paying of £3595.60 this may be a big leap but we have had some very generous wedding gifts off our families and we are able to put a chunk of it into the mortgage ~(suggested from Mr VMD so Im running with it :T )~ so we should be able to take £1500 off as soon as I change my name on the joint a/c and get the cheques paid in. That would leave us with £102095.60.

I will continue paying the difference between our old 'fixed rate' and our current rate which is £132 a month and thats it for the definite overpayments. But I will be tidying etc along the way

We just received our Edf statement and appear to have used a MASSIVE amount over this winter - I know its a combination of price hikes and it being a bad winter but they have put our DD up quite a lot so I wont be able to take from there any more.On the plus side it has kicked Mr VMD into energy saving mode - so no more running the hot tap for the duration of the washing up!! :T (iv been trying to stop that for years!)

I am working with paper and pencil for my plan right now but hopefully will get on one of these spreadsheets soon. I have a lot of spare time now the wedding is done

Hope everyone is well! :j
xxx

Vala-Mal-Doran

Im back again...I found a spreadsheet at the end of wimbledon and have been number crunching ever since!!

My original end date for the mortgage was March 2040 and now I have overpaid the £1500 wedding fund it is now July 2039!! :j And it seems we will be able to meet our short term target of 99,999 by March 2014 easily! Maybe I should move it to December 2013...:cool:

Now im new to these spreadsheet things so if you see a glaring error in my posts please,please tell me so I dont get myself too excited

Also Tilly Tidy of 18p today :j and I persevered with the £2 BBQ this evening as I refused to succumb and use the gas cooker for the sausages! That edf statement has scared me!! I have double checked our monthly outgoings today and we are still within our budget so it should be fine - part of me just wants to show them that they shouldnt have put our DD up! Cheeky beggars!

VMD x

Vala-Mal-Doran

Evening All,

A NSD day today :j Also a 'see whats in the cupboards' dinner of chicken and veg kebabs with some rather old tinned pineapple and one of those golden vegetable rice sachets that mum maybe donated a while back (meaning thats probably well over the date too :rotfl: )

Went to the bank at lunch to get my surname changed so we could pay in the gift cheques we have received and ended up witting with the lady doing one of these 'see if we can sell you anything' chats and iv ended up making an appointment to see the mortgage people next week regarding getting fixed as she says they have just had some new 'competitive' rates in and it may be worth it.
The meetings not until next tuesday and i dont have to make any decisions or anything its just a chat but can anyone suggest anything to look our for or to ask? Im only doing it as she suggested I could get a better rate having paid off some of it now, that and the MSE email that came through suggesting rates may rise soon scared me a little!

Thanks for any help...