Challenge of a lifetime!

cotswoldaccountant

What a busy day! I had a client meeting this morning which took up most of the day, and I was trying to cram a lot of work into the rest of the small amount of time I had, so am exhausted now! However hard I work, the to do list never seems to get much shorter

DS3's second birthday on Saturday and I am going to spend some time tomorrow making him a nice cake (baking being one of my passions) and organise his presents. He doesn't need much at the age of two with three older siblings, so we have just bought him one main present and I will probably get him a couple of small things too.

Invoicing and expenses for OH's company all done, and just sorting out our bank account now to make sure we have enough money to last the last three days of the month!

CA

PrincessLou

Hi Cotswold accountant - I have been following your diary so far and have subscribed!

Maybe if you did an SOA we could help you in finding ways to save money? :j

cotswoldaccountant

Thanks Princess Lou.

My income and outgoings are pretty variable month on month as both OH and I are self employed, so it would be really difficult for me to create a meaningful SOA. I know the one area I definitely need to cut back on is food, as mentioned before, and just general "stuff". I am pretty happy that I have trimmed most expenses to only necessary ones, but there still seems to be an awful lot of random things to pay out for. Just today, OH had to pay £80 for a subscription to a society he belongs to, and the children's school has sent letters home asking for contributions to a couple of activities totalling £15.50. I don't begrudge this spending at all, as I don't want to get so involved with paying off the mortgage that we don't do nice things any more, but one-off expenses such as these make it really difficult to budget! I quite like the idea of having different "pots" of money, e.g. school activities, clubs etc for the children, entertainment, holidays, groceries etc, but it is difficult to know how much to budget for each when our outgoings are so variable. Every time I think there is nothing more to pay out for a few days, something new comes along - later this week it will be a bill from the plumber to service our boiler, a term's subs for the music group I go to with DS3, payment in advance for my two older sons to go to a school club for a couple of days in half term - the list is endless!

I haven't posted for a few days as life has been very hectic. I had to travel to a conference at the weekend for two days which was good fun and interesting as I met loads of new people and learnt a lot. The conference was free, but I did have to pay for my travel and room. Although when I came to pay the hotel bill, it was half what I expected it to be as I had already paid a £50 deposit ages ago which I had forgotten about! Taxis to and from the station were also less than I expected, so overall it was not as expensive as I had thought it would be.

I've been able to make a couple of mortgage overpayments so far this month, as we have had a couple of bookings for our holiday let, one for the Christmas period which we always charge a bit more for, so that is nice. I still haven't been paid for some of my outstanding accountancy work invoices though, so I need to do a bit of chasing. I do hate chasing up late payers - it makes me feel very awkward. Lodgers money still to come as well this month so hopefully we will be well on track with overpayments by mid-October. Our monthly mortgage payment went out today, so I'll wait a few days for that to show up on the mortgage statement and give the bank a call to check the balance. I should probably do it on the 14th so that it is exactly a month after my last update! Will I break the £400k barrier? Possibly not this month, but maybe in November :j

OH turned the heating on the other day "to check it was working" but we haven't given in to temptation and had it on again yet! Both lodgers have electric heaters in their rooms so I am trying to delay our own heating bills to subsidise theirs... cheaper to heat two rooms than the whole house!

cotswoldaccountant

Yesterday OH and I were chatting about the mortgage at lunchtime, and our eldest (7) asked what we were talking about. So I explained in simple terms what a mortgage is and how we would like to pay the bank back early so we can have some extra money for nice holidays etc when the children are older. They were very interested in this idea, particularly in how we own a little bit more of the house every time we pay a bit of money to the bank! They started discussing which bit of the house they would like to own next, and DS2 (5) offered us £2 from his piggy bank (which of course we turned down, but - how sweet!). Shows it's never too young to learn about financial management.

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi CA, great that you are including the kids in your journey. I've found this approach really helpful and our kids have changed their approach to money as well.

Hope you have some quiet time today, Tilly z

cotswoldaccountant

Away at the moment for a lovely child-free weekend with OH. Staying in a relative's flat (they are away) so it is fairly MSE, although we have been shopping which is not quite so frugal... Looking forward to tomorrow when it will be a month since I first started this diary and I will check our mortgage balance!

Hope everyone has been having a nice weekend.

CA

PrincessLou

Ooh hope you had a lovely weekend. Weekends away with OH are the best :j

Can't wait to see your new mortgage total tomorrow!

shala_moo

cotswoldaccountant wrote: »

They started discussing which bit of the house they would like to own next, and DS2 (5) offered us £2 from his piggy bank (which of course we turned down, but - how sweet!). Shows it's never too young to learn about financial management.

This is so adorable.. xx bless him xx

Hope you had a lovely weekend.

cotswoldaccountant

Lovely weekend away, back to normality now!

Am excited to have been able to update my status, and the outstanding mortgage balance is £401,961, a reduction of £3,092 from last month. Not bad! I think I will break the £400k barrier next month. Target is to get to £395k by 1st January when we move to the new mortgage provider.

Lots of expenses at the moment - children's clubs and house spending which is limiting how much I can OP this month, which I am finding very annoying. Also some of my clients who were late with their bills have negotiated longer payment times for their invoices, so that has reduced my expected OPs this month as well...

Thanks to everyone who is following my diary - it's great to have your support!

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi CA, looking forward to next month when you break through the £400k. Makes such a difference seeing a different number at the front :)

Hope you had a great weekend away, Tilly x