SF's road to mortgage freedom!

slowlyfading

Karmacat wrote: »

Any chance of insurance money helping, even if just for the roof? I had fence damage a few years ago, and they said fences weren't covered, but roofs .... maybe!

I don't think so we've had the roof fixed this week, cost us £150 in total so at least it's done...

slowlyfading

Well, December is turning out to be one expensive month when the people came to do the roof tiles, they found out that there were more missing than the first thought - we had a whole section missing on one part, which the man could put his hand in :eek: it cost us £150 in total for them to replace all the missing tiles.

We're having the fence re-done too; we did briefly discuss trying to do it ourselves and saving some money, but we need it doing quickly and both me and DH don't really know how to do that. Plus finding the time at the moment would be tricky, so we've just bitten the bullet and we're paying someone else to do it. It'll cost us in the region of £1,200 for everything, including having all of the old fencing taken away. It's such a lot of money! The fence in the garden did need doing and it was on our to-do list for later on in 2016; this has pushed it forward a lot but it'll look good once all done.

That, combined with Christmas and various family birthdays (including mine!) means that we've spent quite a bit more than we'd intended already this month. I'm only on statutory maternity pay now so I think it'll be a No Spend Year until I go back to work.... I'm going to try my best to get some side income coming in, whether that's through the blog, writing for other blogs, selling on £bay or anything else I can think of. Anyone got any other ideas? I'd love it if anyone who reads my blog would follow me on twitter/facebook/instagram/pinterest

The weather here is absolutely awful; I had to walk to the post office this morning with DS to post an £bay parcel, and whilst DS was all wrapped up warm and covered so he was nice and snug, I got absolutely drenched. It only takes me about 5 minutes to walk to the post office! It's now been snowing for the last couple of hours, though it's so wet outside that there's no chance of it laying. We're supposed to be going to my parents tonight, though it's an hours drive away so I think we'll have to see what the weather is like a bit later on.

DS had his last lot of injections yesterday, and I didn't cry! It is awful though he gave the nurse the most beautiful smile and then he had three injections in quick succession. Needless to say he wasn't smiling after that... he is finding his own voice at the moment so lots of lovely noises and gurgles are appearing. It seems to take him by surprise sometimes, which is quite funny He's just starting to wear 3-6 month clothes, even though he's 4 months, and I've got him some lovely things for Christmas, including some stag leggings from Fred and Noah we've only got him clothes as he doesn't really need anything else. Both sets of grandparents have got him a toy each, so he'll have plenty to look at on Christmas day!

Right, I'm going to try and have a sneaky cuppa whilst DS is still asleep.... watch him wake up as soon as I've made it :rotfl:

CathT

slowlyfading wrote: »

Right, I'm going to try and have a sneaky cuppa whilst DS is still asleep.... watch him wake up as soon as I've made it :rotfl:

Both my children would wake when the kettle boiled! Hope you got your cuppa, a hot drink is a real treat when you have a baby!

slowlyfading

CathT wrote: »

Both my children would wake when the kettle boiled! Hope you got your cuppa, a hot drink is a real treat when you have a baby!

I managed! I think it was the first time in weeks I managed to get a hot cup of tea :rotfl: babies, eh?

slowlyfading

I've been thinking a lot about what kind of aims I want to set myself/us for 2016. I think that it'll be hard to top the year we've had in 2015, but I want to give myself some good aims. I think the most useful thing will be to work out where I'd like us to be by the end of 2016 and work backwards from there.

The weather is awful today; it's so foggy that I can't even see the garden out of the window! Taking DS swimming later but not venturing far apart from that. He's just having a nap as he didn't sleep well at all last night - he didn't go to sleep until after midnight and then woke up ever hour after that _pale_ hopefully this is just a delayed reaction to his injections and he'll go back to sleeping through asap as I'm feeling it today

We've got the Christmas decorations up now, and DS keeps staring at the tree, transfixed :xmastree:he's got a handmade stocking hung up, curtesy of my mum, which has nothing in it :rotfl: he also likes looking at the lights in the window; think the brightness of them catches his eye. I'm getting all excited about Christmas - I know he won't really understand that it's any different from any other day, but I'll know

Has anybody been watching The Bridge on BBC4? I absolutely love it I'm going to watch another episode on catch up now; it doesn't matter if DS wakes up and is noisy as it's all subtitled

Karmacat

Sounds lovely!

My first memory is of lights - admittedly city lights, when my grandad took me to buy a replacement teddy when mine got lost during a house move. I loved my grandad dearly, and I was ecstatic at being with him on my own, and I think that got transferred to the bright lights

slowlyfading

That's a lovely memory, Karmacat

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Happy New Year everyone

beanielou

Have a fantastic 2016 sf

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I don't know what happens to the time at the moment; I keep meaning to update this diary, but time seems to fly away.

I'm struggling a bit at the moment. DS has taken to waking up every hour and a half or so at night, for about 20 minutes at a time. He also needs to be holding my hand to fall asleep, which I don't quite understand how that happened. He's now in his cot, still in our bedroom, as he has outgrown his Moses basket, so perhaps that's it? He's never been a fantastic sleeper, but it's definitely taking it's toll at the moment. I'm so tired all of the time, that I don't want to do anything. I nap during the day when DS has his longer nap on an afternoon, just so I get a bit more rest.

I'm also in a bit of a muddle with our early retirement goals. I have spoken a lot about this on the blog, but as I'm on maternity pay, we get further and further behind our target and where we should be to stay on track. I mean, I can't save what we physically don't earn at the moment. We're hardly spending anything other than the necessities, plus a couple of things for DS (we've got him a jumperoo which he loves!) so we're doing okay with money, but we're never going to be able to retire at 50 if it continues like this. But, I don't have the time or energy at the moment to be putting in the time I need to into my blog; money is trickling in from that, but if I want to make it really succeed, I need to spend more time on it. But, I don't have the energy at the moment to be doing what I want to with it.

We've put mortgage overpayments on the back burner for the time being; I am doing minimal overpayments just to keep it going, but the amounts are nothing to write home about.

Think I'm just in a bit of a grump today