Here we go...a new MFW!

feelingfestive

Oops! Slightly late mortgage update! The start of term is always manic and this is the first chance I've had to update the mortgage. With OP's and normal payments the mortgage now stands at a total of £202707.13! :T It's still very much a :eek: amount but every month I can really see it decreasing whereas with normal payments it doesn't seem to drop a huge amount at all. Just got to keep going now!

LauraJo

Hi
Congrats on paying off the family loan and decreasing the mortgage as well. Just noticied your receipe for fly spray - it does look potent!
I use apple cider vinegar in mine and end up smelling like a chip shop
Looks like we wont need anymore tho this year

feelingfestive

Thanks for popping by LauraJo! It is indeed potent stuff. I've still got a few flies kicking around though! they must be stubborn in the far South so I've just been using it around his ears and eyes to stop them annoying him.


So we've been having a little think about the future and what we want to achieve from the house. We have decided that we really need £20000 in the bank in order to make a significant start on all of the changes that we want to make to the house. This is about £17000 more than we currently have sat in the bank :rotfl:! So we are going to refocus our efforts slightly and really concentrate on saving. We think that with some clever money saving tips such as batch cooking, reducing our meat consumption, making more things like bread, cake and biscuits from scratch that we should be able to save £1000 a month. This means that OP's will dry up to token gestures for the next couple of months but our December payment will drop by £171 as one part of our mortgage falls to the base rate. I'm going to set it up so that this money still comes out of the account so there will be a standard OP of £171 per month and then any token gestures we may or may not be able to afford. This should then give us the money we need in 20 months to be able to really start on the house in the way that we want to. So, here goes to saving! :j

To start off the saving journey I have brought lunch to school today, I made a cake last night to stop me buying a little sweet treat, I've planned meals for the week and today is a NSD. I'm also planning on going into town tonight to get my phone contract changed to save money that way.

Alchemilla

Well done on the weightloss. X

feelingfestive

Thought I'd update on the saving situation so far! We now have £3600 in the savings account! :j This is pretty good but we reckon we should be able to save at least £800 per month if we are really careful. BUT (always a BUT) we've had to have an engineer out to sort out the central heating as the electrics have gone. Whilst this is on mate's rates (thank GOD!) it's so far taken 3 evenings to sort so we don't anticipate saving much this month at all. We are going to try and be really frugal and keep going to see how much we can save rather than fritter it away because we've decided that we won't save any!
So that's how things stand at the moment" Hopefully it'll be more optimistic next month!

feelingfestive

Finding it very hard to stay motivated at the moment. School is so absurdly busy that I never know if I'm coming or going. This has resulted in really quick meals and lunches. They've mostly been using things from the cupboard and freezer because I haven't had time to shop but they've been pretty bad for me and this is getting me down. I've been back at SW for a while but due to time I just haven't been following it brilliantly. It seems like I'm wasting money being at SW but I don't want to be fat anymore either . They say the trick is planning meals and having it prepared in advance but there just isn't enough time in the week or weekends to do this. I'm just struggling with how to get motivated again. I don't think it helps that I'm absolutely knackered at the moment and I'm struggling to just tread water with all of the things that I need to do.
Sorry for a very moany post! On the upside I haven't spent much extra money! I don't think we will save much money this month as we've bought heating oil and we had to have a heating engineer to fix the electrics on the boiler. But lots of NSD's this week is helping things.
I'm also sad that we haven't been able to OP much recently and so the mortgage seems to be going back up due to the interest! This makes me really sad as we seemed to be doing well. I think it just seems that no matter what we are doing at the moment it is never enough!
feeling rubbish rather than festive! :(:(:(

Alchemilla

Can you bulk cook some free pasta type stuff And freeze for microwaving at school?
Feeling your pain. Xxx

feelingfestive

Woo! I've made it to half term! Thank goodness for that! :j Absolutely shattered so enjoyed a lovely morning at the stables riding and faffing about. Was lovely!
Savings have reached £3780.08 this month. I'm pleased with this as we had to pay out for heating oil and an engineer as it wasn't working but it's all sorted now.
We now need to pay for a few more bits but I'm hoping we will have reached £5000 by the end of the year. I've also got a new job at school as Senco which is a very hard job but a nice pay rise so I'm hoping this will help get us towards our target and also maybe help us do a few OP's too!
On the SW front I have lost 3lb this month. Not masses but it's a start. I'm on a countdown to lose a stone by Christmas.

feelingfestive

So, I'm feeling a lot more positive since my previous posts. Things have been going well at school. I've enjoyed tackling the information required to complete my new post. Savings things have been ticking along nicely. We set ourselves the challenge of eating out of the freezer this month as it was packed and we kept buying more things to put in it every week. So far, since the 25th October we have only bought frozen peas, everything else has been using up what's there. It's been really good as I've found portions of ready cooked food which I made and hadn't realised was in there so I've had some really tasty meals with minimum effort!
Savings are now up to £4000 exactly. It should be more but we spent a weekend in Cardiff as we were exhausted and needed a break. We really need to focus now but the freezer thing has cut our bills by quite a lot so far this month.
Mortgage now stands at £202132.62 and a little bit :eek:. Not sure we will reach our aim of having it sub 201 by the end of the year but hopefully it won't be long into 2014 before it's there.

On a pony related note, I'm fed up of winter already! No riding, constant rain and mud everywhere already! And they've only been in 2 weeks! Yuck!

LauraJo

Morning!
Glad things are feeling a bit better! You are doing v well on the savings front and thats a great food spend in Oct
I know what you mean about pony stuff. Where I am at the moment, there is already soooo much mud - takes an hr to clean him before I do anything else!! Got a lesson today tho - although have had to take a half day of leave because its the only time I could do it in the daylight!!