The Crumpet family's journey to Mortgage Freedom:-)

CathT

Not a bad OP at all <goes off to check tcb>

Crumpets

Gosh Friday already, and the last weekend in January :T It has felt like a very long month. Probably because I've been doing dry January and I'm looking forward to having a nice glass of wine :beer:
I don't drink an enormous amount but Its good to have a reset of the system and it helps with losing the excess Christmas lbs

Not much money saving to report since I last posted, but I have discovered that dh and I have been overspending on our grocery budget by a substantial amount each month I still shop at aldi for as much as I can, so I'm not sure where I can cut back. Dh and I are now meat and dairy free mainly so our most expensive regular item is non dairy milk. We have switched to the milkman for the children's milk and juice in a bid to reduce the amount of plastic we buy. It seems that being frugal does not necessarily go hand in hand with saving the planet! :mad: this is something I will be working hard on over the next few months to see if we can get it down slightly.

Both dd's have their birthdays next week so we'll be having a little family tea party on Sunday. I have the food in to do a little buffet plus I will be baking a couple of cakes tomorrow. Apparently it's National chocolate cake day tomorrow so it would be rude not to indulge :rotfl:

Beckyy

Crumpets, I know exactly what you mean! I'm a vegetarian, I have small amounts of organic dairy and will only buy organic meat for OH. It's so difficult to stick to a budget. Oatly Barista is my milk of choice and it's SO expensive Tesco have cartons of Alpro at £1 at the moment though, their cashew milk is nice.

I didn't know about the National Chocolate Cake Day, I might have to indulge too! Is there a National day for all common cakes? :rotfl:

Crumpets

Hi Beckyy,

DH and I absolutely love Oatly barista!it's so bloomin lovely, I don't know how they make it so creamy! It feels a bit like gold dust sometimes so we always stock up when we see it Thanks for the info on the cashew milk, I haven't tried that one. I'm tempted to make my own, it's something that needs looking into a bit more.

Well it has been an extremely expensive week so far! :eek: we had the dd's birthdays this week. dd 1(14) wanted to hangout with her friends and I treated them to ice cream...£41 on 6 ice cream sundaes :cool: It may sound a lot but it's much cheaper than throwing a party and I didn't have to do any of the tidying up afterwards so I'm counting that as a win :rotfl:

The car has also needed £££ spending on it which we were not expecting. Service, MOT plus 4 new tyres, brake pads and bulbs :eek:Plus I need to tax it, at least that is only £20 though The car insurance is due in the next few days too so I need to shop around for a quote. Will hopefully be able to save a few £ and maybe get some cashback too :money:

We have finally had someone get back to us about the asbestos roof removal, it's going to spendy. Just over £1k but it is a big job and it's not something we can do ourselves. We've booked in to have the work done in April which gives us a bit more saving time plus time to empty the old garage. Most of the stuff in there was left here by the previous owners of the house :mad:

Well the mortgage went out today and it now stands at just under £92K :T The regular OP isn't showing yet so I will update when I have the correct amount. I don't think we'll manage any more OP's this month unless something unexpected and miraculous happens :rotfl:

Crumpets

It's been a busy weekend, ok on the spending front but not great, is how I would describe it The children all had gift vouchers for a toy shop for their birthdays so we let them go and spend those yesterday. The excitement on their faces when they knew they could choose what to spend their vouchers on! it was brilliant, plus of course, it cost dh and I absolutely nothing :T

Today we have been to a well known chocolate factory...all in the name of research for dd's homework on the Cadbury family I'm sure that in the past you could use tesco vouchers for entry...typically the one time I want to do this, it is now not an option. Of course I'd already mentioned to the dc that we could go, so I had to stump up the cash...£57.95 for a family of 5 :eek: They all had a great time though and we got more chocolate given to us than I was expecting (20 bars, plus a liquid chocolate tasting pot :EasterBun) the money from this will come out of the holiday fund.

We do have some clubcard vouchers to use up though before the end of Feb. We're hoping to have a trip down to London in half term to visit our new niece or nephew when they arrive, so I'll probably exchange them for some sight seeing activities.

I've worked out last months grocery budget and we were £15 over, which is better than I was expecting. I managed to get by on a £25 shop last week but the cupboards are quite bare now so I will probably spend the full budget this week stocking the cupboards. DH and I have done pretty well using up what we have, and we've just had a lovely soup for lunch made up with a random selection of veg.

Well my car insurance runs out today so I'm hoping to save quite a bit on the renewal quote, I only have a couple of years of no claims bonus though unfortunately best got on with getting some quotes.:money:

Crumpets

Update on the car insurance - I got a quote that was £200 cheaper than my renewal quote! I'm obviously thrilled to save that much but how can the quotes differ so much?! Oh well, at least that's sorted for another 12 months :T

greent

Renewal quotes make me so cross!!! I changed my car insurance last year (for a cheaper one, obv) and when I phoned my previous insurer to cancel they said they could match it - well flippin' give me the best price in the first place, then! Grrrrr!!! (Same happened with house insurance) Loyalty does not pay.......
x

michelle09

It annoys me beyond belief that you have to phone and kick up a fuss and threaten to leave in order to get the deal they give to new customers. Where's the reward for loyalty?

Crumpets

Oh my goodness, well the insurance saga continues! I was just checking my online banking and I notice that my new insurance company (admir@l) have taken out two payments! one for the correct amount for the policy and one for £228.48 which is what I was originally quoted and tried to pay for online, but it wouldn't go through so I had to phone up and pay :mad: so now I have to go through the hassle of trying to get this back tomorrow. Honestly it feels like everything is a real struggle at the moment

On a positive note I got given an enormous bag of hand me down clothes for dd2 :T this will keep her stocked up for the foreseeable future. luckily she is still young enough to find this very exciting and has no problem wearing pre loved clothes. In turn this forced me to sort out the clothes she has and I managed to fill a bag of clothes to pass onto another friend. This happens a lot in our village and we all love seeing the clothes be passed down from child to child. I love seeing things that they used to wear still being worn now by little ones :heartsmil

Crumpets

Well after a lot of time hanging around on the phone this morning, I should be receiving a refund of £228.48 from Admir@l.