The loooooong road to being MF!!

chocoholic_chick

lulabelle I had a look at that one but we've decided to go with Kwik Fit Breakdown, £28.85 for the same level cover we currently have, just £50 less than our renewal!! Plus you get 15.15% cashback too :money:

Had a nice day out, lovely autumnal day so we went out to a natural trust place to use our card and had a walk round the grounds and forest. We were going to have lunch out but by the time we got back to the tea room at the entrance the only hot food they had left was soup so decided against it. However, there was a little farmers market there so I did spend £2.50 on a jar of rhubarb and ginger jam and £4 on a bottle of ginger wine. I just can't help myself at these things, but it's helping out small local businesses so thats ok right????

After that we popped for our shopping, went to Aldi first and spent £33.83 in there then went to Tescos for the other bits that were cheaper or that I couldn't get in Aldi and spent £14.26 in there so total spends were £48.09. A little on the high side but it included £5 on a bottle of wine for tonight and had to buy things like loo roll and shampoo that isnt a weekly buy. Tomorrow I'm going to work out how much I've saved by shopping at Aldi :money:

Ooh bought some basil ham from there for sarnies for lunch, can highly recommend it, very tasty!

Right off to watch strictly now

chocoholic_chick

Morning all!!

Got our mortgage broker coming round tomorrow to fill out the application to change our mortgage over to skipton. It's going to be touch and go whether we get the valuation we need though and if we don't we're just going to have to stay with our current provider for maybe another 12 months then look again and try to keep overpaying what we can in that time. The things we have to provide and fill out seem excessive to me though, I don't think I had to do anything this extensive when we bought the house! We have to list every single thing we pay out including clothes etc and also try to accurately predict what we'll be paying out in the future?! How am I meant to know how much my council tax or water rates is going to increase by :huh: Anyways its fee free apart from I think £50 we have to pay and if we do get accepted we'll be saving about £35 a month so worth doing I think and if we lose the £50 then it's just the saving on the breakdown cover we've lost.

Went out for a meal on Monday for a friends birthday so now we are seriously skint. I have £17 left in my purse to last until pay day ( still have £70 left for food and petrol in a seperate account so at least we won't starve! ) got a feeling the window cleaners due before pay day though so we might have to hide from him until we're paid

Actually we had £90 odd in food and petrol but I've topped up our little mortgage overpayment pot to £30 but won't OP that until closer to payday just incase something crops up and I need it.

chocoholic_chick

Had in laws round for sunday lunch today which was nice, had a few bottles of vino with dinner and over the afternoon as well which had got me in the mood to have a drink but have work tomorrow booooo.

Spends this month on food have been pretty high but it's included entertaining and cooking a meal twice so not too bad. The credit cards been paid off in full, I've just managed to send another OP to the mortgage for £33 ( not much but better than nothing! ) and haven't gone overdrawn so overall I'm happy, I was expecting it to be alot worse. We have no money left really but we get paid Wednesday, all our bills are paid ( including the window cleaner who turned up on Friday! ) and we have enough food in the house and petrol in the car so I think I've done well. Next month I'm not sure what to budget for things really as we're away on holiday for a week ( in the UK and self catering ) so I've set us a budget of £220 for food for the month while we're home, £40 less than normal and any food bought that week will come out of a seperate budget I've got for our holiday spends ( a hopefully generous budget of £650 that we should have money left over from ).

Hit my target of OP for 2012 which I set only a month ago I think it was so really happy with that, going to carry on OP as and when I can but not sure I want to increase my target incase I don't hit it lol it was a modest target of £200 to the end of the year but considering I thought that would be a stretch I'm amazed how quickly we've managed it without having to cut back too much.

Sooooo behind reading everyones diaries, been so busy lately so hoping to get some time this week to sit down with a cuppa and have a read through to see how all you lovely people have been doing as well.

chocoholic_chick

Still haven't had a chance to catch up on my reading!!!

Went out for a lovely 3 course meal last night and best of all it was free as we used vouchers we got from the tesco clubcard exchange :j

Got an email from our mortgage broker to say she's now submitted the application so we should be getting a call in the next few days from the valuer to set up an appointment. I'm so nervous about it!

Hubbys away with work on Thursday and is driving so it'll mean we'll get a little bit more money from the mileage for that, I think it's going to work out about £80 less say £40 in petrol so an extra £40 ish which we'll put towards the £50 fee for changing mortgage.

Not much else to report. Still doing really well with not buying lunches at work, I can't actually remember the last time I did, it must be a few weeks now and we were probably spending £20 a week beforehand, though I have bought a few bottles of wine and had a few too many takeaways this month so any savings I made on lunches have now been spent on that

ammonite

Well done for your packed lunches and as long as you enjoyed the takeaways don't worry We had a month like that last month but it's back to frugal non-takeaway living now

chocoholic_chick

Been a few days since I've been on here again!

Still waiting for the call from the valuer, I hope they call in the next few days as we're away Wednesday for a night then we're on holiday for a week from Saturday so it probably means it's going to be a couple of weeks before they can come out to do the valuation. Cannot wait until our holiday now though, we've been so busy lately it's going to be nice to have a week off to just chill and go out for walks ( if the weathers nice, it's a UK break so as long as it's dry I'm happy! ) find some nice cosy pubs to have a drink in etc Really looking forward to it!!

Had some friends round last night for a few drinks and some food. Luckily realised that Tescos had the exchange on for frozen food so got £20's worth of vouchers and bought a few pizzas and snacky things in and made a big pan of chilli then we sat round chatting and playing board games, was really nice to have a catch up. Haven't totted up how many bottles of wine we went through yet though But food wise the only thing I had to pay for was the mince which was £4, every thing else I either used the vouchers for or had in so was quite pleased with that as it's not uncommon for me to somehow spend £50 on "nibbles" ( I can't do nibbles, I say I'm going to but feel the need to feed people so always end up with a table of food for everyone ).

Overpaid the loan by £100 today and the mortgage by £17. They keep reducing the following months mortgage payment when I overpay, even though every time I ask them not to, so I paid across £50 which was £33 to top the payment up to what it should have been and an extra £17 as I thought £50 was a nice round number lol

Bit of an expensive month, have had to order 2 new tyres for the car which has cost £168 as I'm paying the extra to get the wheels aligned, we didn't last time and I'm sure thats why the tyres have worn so quickly. Really need to start getting sorted with my christmas shopping too, bought a couple of things but for the most part haven't even thought about it and really dont know what to get people if I'm honest, hate shopping without a clue what I'm getting.

So might go and have a browse on the internet to see if I'm inspired as to what to get people for Christmas!!

nattypants

Oh no, has that not been a full week you have been kept waiting for the house valuation? I'll keep everything crossed that it values up to where you need it to be:)
That's great you're going on holiday, it'll be so nice to just relax and not have to think about work or household chores - fantastic!

Your night in with friends sounds just perfect....can't beat good company/food/wine/boardgames combined and well done on being so:money:

Boo to the tyres, but at least you know you have decent tyres especially coming into the winter months. I have finally started my Christmas shopping, mostly all on-line thankfully:D

ammonite

I think its not too hard to spend £50 on nibbles - I always end up doing this because I love the look of the cute nibbly stuff. M&S at Christmas always lures me in with nibbles

Its hard to know what to get people I agree - I ended up asking most of them and if they have ideas then great, no suprises for them when they open it but at least something they want/need (I hope!)

chocoholic_chick

Gosh it's been a while since I've posted an update on here!!

So whats happened since I was last on. Well we got the valuation we needed to on the house for the remortgage to go through so I think it means we'll be saving £40 a month on our repayment. The bad news is the conveyancers Skipton use are rubbish ( scanned documents to them which they said was fine but after ringing to find out what the hold up was told scanned copies aren't fine but no-one bothered to tell me! ) so we still have no idea when it's going to complete almost 7 weeks later!! As a result I haven't bothered making any overpayments on the mortgage as we'll just end up getting it back in a cheque when we transfer over because the amount we requested isn't the amount we need anymore.

Nearly sorted with all my Christmas presents now, just a couple more things to get so feeling much more calm about it all now ( had a moment a few weeks ago when I panicked and realised it was only a few weeks away and I was completely unprepared.

Have also decided to get the windows replaced in the house. It was on our to do list and the guy we used to fit our conservatory a few months ago is doing an offer at the moment where he's knocking 20% off if we get the work done before the end of May. We were extremely impressed with what he's done on the conservatory and he's honest ( we wanted our fascias done on the front as we thought they needed doing, he said not to bother, he'd just clean the ones we have to save us money etc ). He's quoted us £1770 for the 3 bedroom windows, 1 small bathroom window and the bay window which is 3 panels. All our windows are shot and we get mould around the windows so they really needed doing, especially as we're hoping to start a family next year and I wouldn't have been happy with a baby sleeping in the room we want to use for him/her as the window in that room in particular was awful. Obviously this isn't really something we had budgeted for but with a bit of juggling we can get the money together over the next few months, it just means overpayments on the mortgage and loan will have to stop, but only by 3 months so not too bad. I might have to rethink what I had planned on overpaying the mortgage next year as a result as I really think I'll struggle to do that and I'll also have to start thinking about saving up for when I'm on maternity leave, whenever that might be.

Car is due it's MOT next Friday ( isn't it lovely timing, just before Christmas! ) I don't *think* it'll need anything doing *touch wood* but have budgeted £350 which I have saved just incase. If it doesn't then any spare cash will go towards the windows. Also due a refund of a credit balance from Npower, anyone know how long it takes for them to refund this?? Haven't had the final bill yet which I'm sure they do on purpose as a delaying tactic but my last proper bill was the beginning of October and at the time I had a credit balance of £260 so I would hope to get at least £150 from them as we moved to our new supplier at the end of November. Might chase them as this will also come in useful towards the windows.

Hope everyone is well!

nattypants

choc chick it's so lovely to hear from you again, and great news that your house valued up so well done on the saving:T

That's great your getting your windows replaced, I know it's a large expense but will be so worth it especially before the arrival of a choc-chickette:D

Can't believe it's almost Christmas - when I last posted in your diary I had barely started the present shopping!

Take care X