The loooooong road to being MF!!

chocoholic_chick

Super excited as I've just made our first overpayment online :j:j:j

Only £100 but still it's a start Have managed to do a survey today so earned another £1 ( had done 2 but the other didn't register for some reason :mad: ) so now have £5.75 in my valued opinions account. Once it gets to £10 I'm going to get an amazon voucher to put towards christmas presents. Hoping to be able to do more surveys between now and christmas to get some more vouchers to use towards presents.

Right not going to babble on like I seem to in other posts so going to go and do my meal plan and shopping list

chocoholic_chick

Quick update, someone asked me to post a SOA, this is the budget spreadsheet I keep myself which will be as of January ( got holidays etc to pay the next few months so wouldn't be an accurate reflection ).

• Our TV package is with sky but once our contracts up we'll be cancelling the TV part so this will be less.
• Food and petrol is what I transfer into a separate account on pay day, don't always spend this much so any leftovers will now be put in our mortgage.
• Savings for bills covers car tax, car insurance, breakdown cover, car service, TV licence, home insurance, MOT and christmas presents.
• Other savings in the past has included holidays, at the moment those savings are to pay off loan 1 early ( loan 2 is off my parents so interest free ).
• Credit card is for hubbys course, on a 0% credit card so no interest to pay on this.
• Hospital costs cannot be avoided or reduced.
• Loan 1 will be paid off in April, loan 2 in October 2013 ( 8 months early ) hubbys course will be paid off in September 2013
• We have no other debts other than those on this budget

I know there are savings we could make, but I want to keep the right balance which I think we're doing?

Mortgage overpayment will vary month by month but we'll always have around the same amount left after bills ( once the loans are paid off I'll be upping the overpayments by £500 ).


Mortgage £700.00
Food £260.00
Petrol £120.00
Council Tax £104.00
Telephone, Internet, TV £51.75
Gas & Electric £77.00
Life & Critical Illness £32.36
Water £36.65
Mobiles £51.50
Hubbys money £100.00
My money £100.00
Savings for Bills £200.00
Other savings £120.00
Pets £35.00
Loan 1 £331.55
Loan 2 £300.00
Naked Wine £20.00
Hospital £85.00
Credit card £37.5
Mortgage Overpayment £100

Total £2,862.31

My Salary £1,797.80
Hubbys Salary £1,503.20

Amount left £438.69

chocoholic_chick

Called Santander to confirm they received the £100 overpayment this morning ( they have )and that I wanted to use it to reduce the term rather than my next months payment. Paperwork to increase my monthly payments hasn't come through yet but apparently this can take 7 - 10 days to come and they've assured me its been sent so just have to wait. Also received my little herb pots this morning ( there was 2 :j ) and they're so cute! Really pleased as they worked out £7.50 each so a bargain really!! Here's hoping I won't kill the plants this time like I seem to do with all the others

Have, however, spent £6 on a groupon voucher this morning for a £12 voucher to spend at this rather yummy artisan bakery. They do pies etc as well though so I'll buy a few pies for the freezer for hubbys dinners. Is it MSE?? I dunno really....

One good point though is my weekly shopping cost less than I had budgeted last night. Thought it would come to around £55 after using my £7.50 off voucher but came in at £44.77. Admittedly this is partly due to the fact that one of the things I needed they didn't have in stock which would have been £5 and I'll have to go back for ( will do 4 meals for us so will not need to get any for next week ), but that should still bring me in just under £50 in the end.

Hopefully that should mean that, even though I already took £30 from our food and petrol pot this month to put towards the overpayment I did, we might still have a little left over at the end of the month which can go towards our next overpayment

Takeaway_Addict

I noticed you had two loans....wouldn't it be more prudent to overpay these as they will most likely be higher interest?

chocoholic_chick

Well one loan is interest free as it's from my parents ( the one we're paying back at £300 per month ). The other we can't just make monthly overpayments without penalty, so I'm saving money each month to pay this loan off early in one lump sum, so according to my spreadsheet we're on schedule to pay that loan off 8 months early.

I know I could be putting all the money I'm currently overpaying on my mortgage towards paying off that particular loan early, but equally important to us is reducing out LTV so we have some mortgage options available as currently we're in negative equity and thats not something you can come out of overnight!!

Takeaway_Addict

chocoholic_chick wrote: »

Well one loan is interest free as it's from my parents ( the one we're paying back at £300 per month ). The other we can't just make monthly overpayments without penalty, so I'm saving money each month to pay this loan off early in one lump sum, so according to my spreadsheet we're on schedule to pay that loan off 8 months early.

I know I could be putting all the money I'm currently overpaying on my mortgage towards paying off that particular loan early, but equally important to us is reducing out LTV so we have some mortgage options available as currently we're in negative equity and thats not something you can come out of overnight!!

Unless u have had that loan (before a certain year which I can't remember) for a while I thought now you could pay back without penatlies after an EU decision?

Understand the reasons you don't though

chocoholic_chick

Takeaway_Addict wrote: »

Unless u have had that loan (before a certain year which I can't remember) for a while I thought now you could pay back without penatlies after an EU decision?

Understand the reasons you don't though

Really? I didn't know that, I'll dig the paperwork out tonight to have a look, thanks for the tip! I'll probably just overpay each month if thats the case rather than putting it aside each month

ETA Just checked online ( loan is with sainsburys so easy to check ) and I can make overpayments whenever I want! So now I have another question. I currently have about £1200 in savings which was earmarked for blinds for the conservatory and other finishing touches to it. However, I've also just got a new credit card with 0% on purchases for 15 months with a £4000 limit so do I put the blinds and other bits and bobs on the credit card and put my savings towards the loan, or just continue paying money off the loan as and when and using this savings to pay for what was originally intended

Dunno what to do?!

Takeaway_Addict

chocoholic_chick wrote: »

Really? I didn't know that, I'll dig the paperwork out tonight to have a look, thanks for the tip! I'll probably just overpay each month if thats the case rather than putting it aside each month

ETA Just checked online ( loan is with sainsburys so easy to check ) and I can make overpayments whenever I want! So now I have another question. I currently have about £1200 in savings which was earmarked for blinds for the conservatory and other finishing touches to it. However, I've also just got a new credit card with 0% on purchases for 15 months with a £4000 limit so do I put the blinds and other bits and bobs on the credit card and put my savings towards the loan, or just continue paying money off the loan as and when and using this savings to pay for what was originally intended

Dunno what to do?!

Glad to have helped

Do what you feel is best and you are most comfortable with.

chocoholic_chick

Good morning all. It's FRIIIIIIDAAAAYYYY :j:j

Ok so I admit that I haven't looked into making overpayments on the loan since the other night. I did discuss it with hubby and he said it might be best to wait until we get a price for the blinds we need and go from there so we'll probably do that.

Got the rest of the change with me to pay into the bank today, £46 but it's been spent already! £30 on ( more ) fence stain and need a new chrome light switch for the conservatory ( we've already replaced the sockets etc ). Also bought a heater for the conservatory but thats gone on the 0% credit card and budgeted to pay it off over 12 months ( only works out a few £'s a month ). So we have been spending a fair bit lately, but it's all on house things, not on "luxuries" really. Though I did forget to sort out our lunches for work today so will have to buy lunch, first time in 2 weeks though so not that bad.

Have done a few polls on maximiles over the last few days so got a few hundred points on that but feel like giving up with valued opinions, I'm so frustrated at how many times I've spent 10-15 minutes doing a survey only for it to say half way through that they've reached the number of participants. I think I've started almost a dozen surveys now and had this happen, starting to question whether it's worth me spending so much time trying to do them and getting nothing in return

The weekend is going to be another one spent getting things sorted round the house I think, hubby put the raised bed together the other night but the shed was delivered yesterday so got that to stain and put together as well. Then we can finally clear the stuff from the house that's going in there. So at least it should mean we don't spend much. Might get some more baking done as well, made some of the millies cookies and made the mistake of bringing them in to work so they all went. Seeing as I'm cooking low calorie meals but hubby doesn't need to lose weight I promised I'd start baking more cakes etc for him. Though I couldn't resist the temptation of eating a cookie still warm from the oven. I've told him he'll have to put things in a tub on top of the kitchen units so I can't get to them :rotfl:

chocoholic_chick

Afternoon all!

I've had a bit of a lazy day today really. Pottered about the kitchen a bit this morning, made a big pan of chicken soup from a chicken carcass so half has gone in the fridge for lunches over the next few days and the other half has gone in the freezer. Also made a victoria sponge cake as decided to visit my gran and aunt. I'd normally buy them flowers but decided to bake a cake instead, all I needed to buy was a jar of jam from the shop so 80p spent on that, cheaper than £10 on flowers! Think they appreciated it more as I'd spent time making it, and of course me and hubby got a piece ( or should I say wedge :eek: ) with our cuppa while we were there

Other spends of the day included £2.51 on a bag of sand so hubby could make cement and £1.59 on milk. In for the night now so no more spending!

Dug out the paperwork for my loan, I think we've decided to use our savings to put towards that and put the blinds etc on the 0% credit card and budget to pay the credit card off over 12 months. Hopefully that'll mean the loan will be paid off a little earlier than it would of if we had saved up to pay it off in a lump sum, so it might mean less money in the mortgage overpayment pot for a while. Managed to put another £50 into savings from our food and petrol account as well but this is going towards the loan. So thats a total of £80 taken from this account for mortgage/loan overpayments this month! Don't think I'll be able to do that every month, I think it's because we haven't used a great deal of petrol really because we haven't really been going out. Really had a frugal month for us, but haven't felt like we're missing out or anything.

Started trying to look for blinds for the conservatory but everywhere seems so expensive. We just want roller blinds but some places are £100+ per blind which just seems obscene to me. I don't want to go with the big chains because I think they're overpriced but I haven't a clue what to look for and no-one I know can recommend any