Diary of a home owner wannabe (my 6 year journey)

gallygirl

pennyforthepot wrote: »

Words of wisdom Gallygirl - eb@y is the way to go - unfortunately I can only post 10 items a month at the moment (have filled that max this month) and I suspect that the clutter would end up merging back into the kids wardrobe:( DH has mentioned getting a pro account so need to look into that

PFTP x

Can't you open one in DH's name? And the dog etc .

pennyforthepot

Morning all,

Good idea about opening other account Gally GIrl DH has an account that he is going to use to sell some of the bigger stuff we no longer need as we are downsizing and maybe the gold fish could have one too:rotfl:

Well the lounge is now spotless though I still need to fill some holes and polish the wooden floor but that can wait till we are closer to moving.

Did my £50 shop yesterday which came in at just over £52 (I use the calculator on my phone to make sure I don't go too much over. Got my 5p off petrol and 15p coupon for next time - bring it on The meat for this month has been bought, now I need to do some batch cooking - 101 ways with mince. I went round to dinner at a friends the other day and we ended up discussing all the different things you could make out of mince rather than the usual lasagne, bolognaise, chilli and cottage pie. It was quite a long list by the end of a wine fueled evening. We know how to party:rotfl:

I have been trying to get my shop down below £400 per month but I do struggle. With 5 people in the house, 3 of them hungry teenagers, all of them big meat eaters and one of them gluten intolerant I find it really hard.

I typically do a six monthly shop where I bulk buy as much of the store cupboard stuff and household things as I can. I do it when there is a £5 off a £40 shop at Mr T and only spend £40 a time. It's quite time consuming as it takes around two weeks to get the most out of the vouchers but worth it as last time I had £120 worth of vouchers to use, which obviously went into my savings pot:). I rarely pay full price for the things I need (unless its the basics like rice, pasta, tins etc where I buy the value version) and I then allocate the spend over the 6 month period. So last time I took £50 off my monthly budget for the next 6 months - I find this keeps me on track and stops me over spending each month. The only problem is that every time you open a cupboard anywhere in the house it is brimming with tins, cereal boxes and loo rolls. I recently bought 18 big boxes of home brand wheat biscuits which were buy two and get the third free - saving myself around £20 :rotfl: I then do a monthly shop for all the ingredients I need for my monthly food plan that I don't already have and finally a weekly shop for fresh food that won't keep. It takes a lot of planning but I find it saves me a lot of money. I do have to lock certain things in the filing cabinet as I discovered 5 empty jars of chocolate spread under my DSS2's bed the other day when I was cleaning his room:eek:

I am going to keep a spreadsheet for the cost of the house move so I can offset it against the money that we are saving on the rent - I suspect it will come close to £1000 with removals, admin fees and loss of any deposit (carpets are quite stained - despite cleaning them).

Phoned the alarm company yesterday and discovered to my horror that it could cost as much as £800 to fix the alarm as she thinks we may need a new alarm panel:eek::eek::eek:. Having spoken to DH we have decided to get them in just to put the wires back that we pulled out - still a cost of around £200. But as we had no choice having been given no codes or contact details for the alarm and we even rang the landlady (at 2am) and she had no details I think this is the right thing to do.

We had some great news yesterday - DSS2 got his GCSE results:4 A*s and 5As :T so he's got into grammar school. Shame I can't say he has my genes

Right - tasks for the day:

Bathrooms - declutter and deep clean (needs some heavy duty limescale remover)
Admin fee to letting agent (didn't get round to doing it yesterday)
Feed friend's cat whilst she is on holiday.
Start to take out kitchen stuff that I know we won't need for the next month (ie the 100 cups that we seem to have acquired :eek:

Have a good MS day everyone

Pennyforthepot x

gallygirl

pennyforthepot wrote: »

Morning all,

Good idea about opening other account Gally GIrl DH has an account that he is going to use to sell some of the bigger stuff we no longer need as we are downsizing and maybe the gold fish could have one too:rotfl:

Only if he can type fast. Otherwise he'd be - well, like a fish out of water .

pennyforthepot wrote: »

The only problem is that every time you open a cupboard anywhere in the house it is brimming with tins, cereal boxes and loo rolls. I recently bought 18 big boxes of home brand wheat biscuits which were buy two and get the third free - saving myself around £20 :rotfl:

See Tilly's thread - you need a double garage .

pennyforthepot

gallygirl wrote: »

See Tilly's thread - you need a double garage .

Got one - that's where I store my wine :beer: - talking of wine I do believe it's wine o'clock - it is the weekend after all :rotfl:

Have a great weekend

PFTP x

pennyforthepot

Officially bored with de-cluttering and deep cleaning only managed to do two and a half bathrooms and have ended up with prune like hands. I also had to dig the revolting 1970s curtains which came with the house that I threw into the back of the cupboard under the stairs, iron them and put them back up in the downstairs toilet - not pretty!

DH still hasn't been able to fix excel on my laptop which means I'm a couple of days out on my budgeting spreadsheets, I get withdrawal symptoms if I don't update them every day. I like to know exactly where I am with my money. Will need to grab the pc in the office if I can get DH off the screen.

LSD - today £5.17 at Mr T. As its only me and DH at home at the mo I haven't done a menu plan, but go into Mr T each day whilst I'm in GX and see what's in their bargain bin. Chicken and chorizo risotto me thinks, if I can find my white wine ice cubes

Pennyforthepot x

pennyforthepot

FashionNE wrote: »

nice story, looking forward to hearing more x

Thank you FashionNE. I'm fnding it really useful to write things down here - it really helps my mind to focus on what needs to be done, especially my daily to do list and everyone is so supportive

PFTP x

pennyforthepot

Morning All,

Up with the birds this morning. I'm an early riser anyway but recently my mind has been working overtime and I find myself laying in bed just running through everything that I need to get done so I might as well get up and start to do it.

Plans for the weekend:
As part of my sister's wedding present I said that I would pick her and her hubby up from the airport and take them back home. So tonight at 11pm I shall be at the airport (past my bedtime:() and then tomorrow do the 200 mile round trip to take them home - cost of around £50 in my clunky old old jeep - thank you Mr T for the petrol vouchers, but I do get to have my SD's lovely Sunday roast and catch up with the family :j

I need to finish off the bathroom today, possibly start on the kitchen cupboards.

My main aim today is to update my spreadsheets so that I'm on top of my budgets and sit down and write some lists of what needs to be done next week in relation to the move (need to get a quote for removals -I think it cost us around £600 to move here and that was with us taking all the furniture apart and moving all the boxes ourselves:eek:

I also need to estimate all my costs for the next month as I know they are going to be outrageously high.
Moving costs
alarm fixed
DSS2 bday (I would also like to give him some money for doing so well in his exams - £100?)
School uniform purchases (I have got most of this and it does come out of the kids budget but I have nearly used it up for the year and still need to get all of DS2's uniform for his new school.
Travel cost - I need to find out how much the bus is going to be for DS2's journey to his new school (a new cost which has no budget)
Kids activities for the upcoming term. DD belongs to a gym club, DSS2 a rugby club and DS wants to do a computer course which I would really like him to do as he's quite talented and has a real interest in it and as he isnt sporty it's good that he has found something he enjoys but the downside is it costs £2000 for the year :eek:, X will pay half but I need to find the other and this would take up half of my kids budget for the whole of next year
Driving lessons and car insurance forDSS2 - I need to talk to DH about this and get him to ask his X for some more money. Not that I'm bitter but she pays us a measly amount of maintenance a month and refuses to pay us anymore, depsite the fact that she chose her career over looking after her son and that she swans up to pick him up in her new soft top porche (bought for her by her jetsetting OH) and I'm the one who is left to pay for everything out of the maintenance I get that should be for my kids- see I'm not bitter :mad::mad:

The list goes on but I'll leave it there otherwise I'll be here all day.

Have a great weekend

Pennyforthepot x

muddywhitechicken

Welcome & good luck!

MWC

iquit

Welcome, welcome. What a highly motivated and focused lady - all the best with your plans. I've enjoyed your thread so much, so I've subscribed and look forward to reading more.

pennyforthepot

iquit wrote: »

Welcome, welcome. What a highly motivated and focused lady - all the best with your plans. I've enjoyed your thread so much, so I've subscribed and look forward to reading more.

Thank you so much iquit I am very touched - you'd best batten down the hatches and hold on tight - it's gona be a long and rocky journey ahead of us

Just made £15.11 on Eb@y - whoop! Whoop! - hold on to your stuff kids :rotfl:

Which reminds me of the time last year when I sold DS2's video recorder (that I'd bought him for xmas the year before). He never used it so in my eyes it meant it had to go:o A couple of months ago he needed to make a video for a school project - how strange, we hunted high and low but just couldn't find it. However, luckily for me, my friend had bought the same one for her son and so I was able to borrow that and pretend I'd found the one that belonged to DS. Just hope he doesn't need it again soon - perhaps it will have to get lost in the move Won't be doing that again as not only did I feel like a bad mum (which I deserved) the thought of buying a new one didn't appeal to me :eek:

DH just came up with a good idea for DSS2's exam results. We are going to pay to MOT the car that we have for him to learn to drive in - killing two birds with one stone (I bought the car off DSS1 when he moved to London two years ago as he couldn't afford to run it and didn't really need it so the kids could learn to drive. Then they can use it to run all the errands that we normally run without needing to use ours :rotfl: just hope he gets lots of money off his mum as he needs to help pay for the extortionate insurance :eek:)

PFTP x