Flutteringby's Adventures - MFW & SAHM

Flutteringby

Hello fellow MFW's

I've come to join you on your MFW adventures and share my own journey. We own our forever home with a £64k mortgage, luckily we have a significant amount of equity in the house. I am a SAHM of one toddler, and we are trying for another baby. Our income isn't huge due to me not working, but it is enough. We just need to make sure we use it wisely! I have a few income making avenues which I need to focus on more in order to increase the payments we can make to the mortgage.

We have a One Account for our mortgage, current account and all savings. This allows me to play around with the numbers and I've decided to split off £5k of the mortgage which will be my first challenge pot. We have an aim to pay it off by the end of the year (which may be a tall order, but we like a challenge!).

I'll keep tabs on how much we are saving and how in this diary. I love reading other peoples diaries and getting inspiration, and who knows, maybe someone will end up reading this!!

My current payments total £452.21, leaving £4547.79 to go. Payments so far have been earned from Quidco payments, a few odd bits of work and sales from Ebay and Facebook selling groups. I'll be back with some updates soon :T

Lois_E

Hello Flutteringby and welcome. :wave:
I love your name BTW.

I'll be following your journey with interest, because my situation isn't very different. I too have quite a lot of equity in my forever home, and a mortgage have just a bit more than you to pay off, and am doing it on one income, so plenty of similarity.

Everyone's very friendly and supportive in here. So good luck for the journey ahead, and remember to enjoy it as you go along.

Flutteringby

Thanks Lois, its nice to find others on a similar journey. I've been catching up on some of your diary and enjoying reading it!

I've been decluttering like a mad woman lately. We had numerous boxes still packed from our move (7 months ago!) and a few from the move before that (6 years!!) Been through it all and sorted lots to go. We don't have a Garage here, so that has focussed the mind as I don't want to store grubby garage type stuff in the house. So lots of it has gone. Some to charity, some on Freecyle and some was only fit for the tip! Some is also worth selling. Yesterday I sold some lego for £20, which is now moved to the mortgage pot.

So that puts us at £472.21 saved. £4,527.79 to go!

This morning went to the library for Bounce and Rhyme which was a nice free mornings entertainment. We swapped over our library books while we were there so more free fun! On the down side, our car is in the garage after a warning light came on yesterday. Hoping the bill won't be too bad but will know more later.

ixia

Hi Flutteringby

I have just started a diary too, good luck with your journey!

TwinnyD

Welcome Flutteringby and good luck with your MFW journey, great start

Flutteringby

Oops where did that couple of weeks go? Its been busy here and then we were away last week in Butlins, so April kind of slid away from me. But lots to update....

First of all, another £13.10 transferred to the mortage today from a Quidco payment while we were away so thats £485.31 / £5k

Sold a few bits and pieces on the local selling pages too. That cash is sat in a box in the sideboard and I won't count it until its paid in and moved across to the mortgage. But its another £20 or so which is great :j

While we were away we had a big talk about money and how to manage it and came to the conclusion that we would try having a weekly budget for everything other than DDs. So food, diesel, spending, entertainment, clothes etc will all come out of £140 per week which we have as cash. I've taken out this weeks cash and managed to only spend £29 at Tesco this morning - so far so good! Our weeks run Monday to Sunday so the plan is to spend as little as possible all week so we can have a bit more fun on the weekends. Will be interesting to see how we get on.

Oh and another piece of news is that we are getting a new car. We have an estate and a medium car at the moment but are trading the medium car in for a small city car which will be perfect for whoever doesn't have the toddler to drive! We will need to pay £140 per month for 2.5 years to pay for the balance of the car (this is a loan to ourselves, a perk of the One Account, not finance). The car will be much cheaper to insure, tax and run so should be a good thing in the long run.

This meant I needed to rejig the budget a little but it still seems to balance on paper. Will have to make it work in real life too!

Mrs_Toast

Good luck Flutteringby. Will subscribe with interest.

We are planning on paying £5000 off our mortgage in the next year as well but we aren't in our forever house yet. I am a SAHM as well and I think that helps as you've more time to plan budgets, make proper meals etc.

Flutteringby

Mrs_Toast wrote: »

Good luck Flutteringby. Will subscribe with interest.

We are planning on paying £5000 off our mortgage in the next year as well but we aren't in our forever house yet. I am a SAHM as well and I think that helps as you've more time to plan budgets, make proper meals etc.

Thanks for visiting Mrs Toast

I think you are right, and thats was a big factor when I decided to leave my job to be a SAHM. Although my income is lower I can afford the time to shop around, cook from scratch and do jobs myself that I would otherwise have to.

Had a lovely day today at the beach with a friend and her toddler. We just saw the gorgeous weather and decided to go for it. Took a picnic so it was a fairly cheap day. Just had to pay for parking and an icecream :T

Flutteringby

Well the cash only challenge is certainly proving interesting. I hadn't realised how much I was spending when I could chuck things on the debit card and take cash out without thinking! Of our £140 for the week I put £60 into a food purse. I know some people will think this sounds a lot and I would like to reduce it but previously we were spending a lot more (plus takeaways and meals out) so don't want to go too far too soon.

Our supermarket has added the self scan thing where you go around with a handset and scan your items. This is fab as it means I can see exactly what I'm spending. I've shopped twice this week and spent £52 so should be fine for the week. Took me forever to shop as I was looking at prices all the time, but really happy with the result! Also think that shopping twice a week is working well as I didn't end up buying lots of things just in case or to stock up!

I popped into town this morning to meet a friend for coffee (£2.35 - no cake :rotfl:) and needed to get a couple of bits. I ended up walking all over town comparing prices before committing to buying anything and saved a few quid. All helps! Treated myself to a bowl of grapes on the veg stall for £1 so feeling very virtuous!

Flutteringby

Couple more updates today. Just paid the nursery bill for this month and as we have 2 Bank Holidays this month the bill was £50 less than budgeted so this has been moved straight over to the mortgage. Also the Council Tax payment was £5 less than budgeted so that has gone across too. Total now stands at £4450.21/£5k to go (going to start reporting it as how far to go as that's how it shows on Internet Banking! Also had an offer for a big bundle of baby clothes which should go on Friday for £20 so thats good news. Will count the money when I pay it in as usual :j

Flutteringby

Things are going well here on the money saving front but we have come to a decision to change our focus for a while. We moved into our house last August and found over the winter that the house gets very cold, especially the large lounge/playroom. We spent a lot on heating bills over the winter but still felt cold! This isn't great, especially for our 2 year old and a hopeful future baby.

Our plan is to get new curtains (we have a huge bay window and three other large windows in the room) and install an inset fire into the fireplace (thinking electric as its much easier to install and they seem a lot more efficient than they used to be). Will also make some draught excluders for the doors and check the windows are all sealed properly. Not sure what the total cost will be for this yet but we will be focussing on saving for this before we add anything else to the mortgage pot. Want to get all this done before the winter so now is the time to start thinking about it!

On Saturday we had a stall at a nearly new kids sale in the next town. We made £160 getting rid of clothes, toys and equipment that we didn't need any more. Very pleased with that. Will put it towards the curtain/fire pot!