Finally a MFW! :D

KolaKube

Todays jobs:

1) Pick up dry cleaning
2) Visit friend with new baby after lunch
3) Meal plan / grocery shop if needed
4) Laundry Laundry Laundry lol

It's payday today for OH - normally would be for me, however this is the start of my 3 months unpaid :eek: I normally earn the bigger wage, however being on maternity this year it has got less and less and now stopped entirely lol. Worth it for the time with LO though, couldn't put a price on that

The little back pay that OH was due was very little indeed, however it cleared the bit that we were into the overdraft from overspends last month so we're thankful for that at least.

Sitting down with my budget spreadsheet now to see if we can manage to live on whats left without dipping into savings (using savings was always the plan, but it would be nice to minimise this as we don't have a huge fund).

Tried to log into my internet bank there and all the accounts have disappeared!!! I presume this is a glitch and will be fixed later hopefully... I have a rough idea of the figures as I logged in to the app early this morning when LO was up in the night but there's something satisfying about moving cash round all my little online pots with a cuppa on payday lol

We have car tax to pay at the end of this month so I'll need to budget for that, even if its only 6 months worth.

We have plenty of nappies and milk for LO for the month, some wipes but also a large stash of cotton wool from when he was born that I plan to use up first. Any extra spends for him will have to come from the grocery budget.

Looks like the sheet just about balances if we are careful with petrol (ie limit myself to one tank in the family car and encourage OH to take the bus to work as much as possible) and grocery spends... but any actual 'spending' / fun money will have to come out of savings. There's no wiggle room in that though :eek: so will have to look at ways of making a little extra cash (ebay anybody? I haven't ebayed anything in a good while now but might be a good avenue to explore).

MUST NOT LET IT ALL GO TO POT WHEN WE MOVE!

Kola xx

KolaKube

Meal plan for this week:

Egg & chips
Pork chops, spuds and green veg
Falafel, pitta & salad
Roast salmon & veg (leftover salmon made into fishcakes for LO)
Tomato & Bacon pasta
Bean burgers and chips
Chilli and rice (using up some pre-frozen spag bol and 'adapted' into chilli lol)

Lunches:
Broccoli soup
Sandwiches
Leftover pasta
Quiche
Baked spuds for OH

Baking:
Flapjacks
Lemon tart

So thats 3 vege and 4 meat nights, OH raised that he'd like to have more vege food on the menu so that works for me, we both love vege food!

Have done a virtual shopping list online (will go and get it to save the delivery fee) that comes to £19.89 for everything we need including some cleaning bits, treats and lunchbox stuff, our normal weekly budget is £50 so I'm pleased with that xx

KolaKube

Woohoo we are in contract! Completion on Monday :j

Happier_Me

Yay, that's great news KolaKube:j

Do you have a moving date?

KolaKube

We have to give a months notice here (given yesterday) so we have a while to move at our leisure lol. It's literally 2 mins away on the other side of the area we live in, so shouldn't be too much hassle...

I would aim to be out by next weekend, clean this place next weekend and hand back our keys early (they've said we can do that whenever to get our deposit back early)

Was lovely cancelling the rent standing order this morning :beer: No more money down the drain!

I have woken up today with my industrious head on (which is unusual seeing as poor LO was up all night with his wee cough:()

Not sticking with the meal plan rigidly now as a lot of it is time consuming so I suspect it will all go to pot next week... Just gonna use up what we have ad hoc in and top up milk / bread / fruit.

Dough in the machine for a pizza tonight. Spent the morning clearing up all the laundry / housework while LO played - just having a cuppa and a wee catch up on the diaries now before project clear out and clear up the cupboards begins in force lol.

No idea where to start, might have to pick a room out of a hat lol

Kola xx

KolaKube

Hi all Hope you are having a nice weekend.

Not a huge amount of sorting out done here...

However, we have been very good this weekend and resisted spending... We mended the cupboards in the back bedroom so we don't get charged when we move out (the mirrors had come off (4 long mirrors) as the built in furniture is cheap and shoddy - OH remembered he had the materials needed in his tool box, so we didn't need to buy more

We've not eaten out or had any takeaways. Vege day today and we are having HM broccoli quiche... although we are both severely tempted by a takeaway pizza :rotfl:

Just ordered our net/TV/phone for the new house - we went with virgin. Currently we pay ridiculous amounts for phone / net here through BT (not even fancy TV!), it works out much cheaper with virgin and we get fancy TV as well, so we're happy about that. Half price for the first 6 months and £161 cashback through quidco as well :T Seems extravagant to be having fancy TV however we do have to live a *little*, and with LO we are in the house a LOT in the evenings these days.

Anyway, fingers crossed we complete tomorrow as planned and get our keys... :rotfl:

Downton at 9 and a nice cold beer from the fridge (normally I have a wee glass of wine, but there's beer in so I'll have that instead)

Anybody joining me? xx

SmlSave

Enjoy Downton and I look forward to hearing the jingle of your new keys

KolaKube

Thanks Smlsave!

Well if I ever needed inspiration to be a mfw its logging into my internet bank this morning to check my accounts and stuck on the bottom is the mortgage!

- £101160.59 is the start balance....

Can OP by 10% annually without charge.

I'm already tempted to send over the £60.59 to tidy it up lol but we'll wait and see what happens with that first big mortgage payment...! No idea when that'll be?

Nationwide mortgage people - how do you make you overpayments? Do you just transfer them online? Do you need to ring them to warn them first / tell them to reduce the term rather than the repayments?

Excited!!!

KolaKube

Just did a wee calculation - if we were to continue to live in this flat (which is far too small anyway, we'd have to upsize our rented accommodation) for the next 25 years it would cost £144000 in rent alone and we'd own nothing at the end. (That's without any price increases / interest etc!). Scary!

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi Kola, that's a real eye opener isn't it.

Good luck with all your plans

Tilly x