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

pennyforthepot

Still here - busy decorating my SIL (ex) house most days - no wifi, no kettle, no hot water, no nothing. Physical labour is not good for me I've decided. Trying to remember to take a flask and sandwiches with me otherwise it will end up costing me more than I make - Its a 50 mile round trip so I have to do as much as I can whist I'm there - cream crackered. Lovely DH ran me a bath with candles and is making mushroom risotto for dinner

PFTP x

pennyforthepot

Had a lovely day yesterday - we went to a car boot sale - just for browsing (only came away with some candles for the bathroom - which DH bought) and then went on to a pub for a lovely lunch. I have nothing left in the entertainment budget for the rest of the month but it was worth it as we really appreciate the times when we do go out to eat now.

Home today and then off decoratiing for the next few days. Fuel budget will soon be in overspend and I think for the first time this year I won't manage an underspend on my food budget. A shame but not unexpected as the kids are home for two and a half weeks.

Daily food budget £4.46 :eek:

Gas spend is down dramatically this month but electricity doesn't seem to be dropping - again I think its because the kids are home.

Have a lovely day everyone
PFTP x

Pearla*Merle

Well done on your epic redecoration shenanigans, at least it'll put you off doing anything in your own place for a while so has some rather MSE side effects :money: :rotfl:

Pub lunches and car boot sales, can't get much better! :T

pennyforthepot

Pearla*Merle wrote: »

Well done on your epic redecoration shenanigans, at least it'll put you off doing anything in your own place for a while so has some rather MSE side effects :money: :rotfl:

Pub lunches and car boot sales, can't get much better! :T

Thanks Pearla*Merle - Have finished off the first room - back breaking work but I'm pleased with the results.

Happy Easter - hope you got lots of eggs to scoff

PFTP x

pennyforthepot

Happy Easter everyone - nom nom nom!

Well I'm glad that week is over. I have completed one room and now have 3 more to go. It's a really old house and the state of the skirting boards and walls means that most of the work involves sanding down and other prep work. SIL is coming back tomorrow so she will have a nice bedroom to move into. I'm hoping to do the rest of the work at a slightly more leisurely pace as I have been too exhausted to do anything once I got back home.

The down side to being out so much is that I have lost track a little of all things MS. Ive spent this morning trying to catch up. I had a bit of a major blow out of Friday evening when DSS1 came over with a bottle of gin for me to say thanks for sorting out his flat and DH insisting on us all going up the pub. £50 later and a severe dangling over the toilet bowl for me was the result. Followed up by a day of decorating and the consumption of vast quantities of carbs added another tenner to the spend. I may never drink again!!

I'm about £100 short on my savings target so far this month - (£50 of which went down the toilet!) but all things considered with the kids off school is not so bad. I have my dad and his wife coming over from Cyrpus next weekend so no doubt I will be overspent on my food budget too.

Gas and electric not too bad although I have put the heating on today. I'm hoping to be £50 under my dd by the end of the month for gas which will take a small slice off my over spend.

Daily food budget stands at: £7.10

Off to read a book and munch on an egg or two


PFTP x

pennyforthepot

Last day of the Easter holidays for the kids and what a miserable day it is. DS is making the most of it and staying in bed!

£20 interest from my santander sole 123 came in today plus another £40 from various other accounts. Not too bad but won't be retiring on it.

Desperately trying to do some bulk buying at Mr T when I see something on offer so I can pump my fuel discount up to 20p for the end of the month. Have found some half price non brand toothbrush replacements for all our electric toothbrushes so I'm going to pick up a couple of years supply of those :money:

Not a lot else going on - taxi-ing DSS2 to and from his drama rehearsals and DS is back to his programming course and making some flapjacks with DD in between.

PFTP x

pennyforthepot

Can't believe I haven't posted for a week. Have been really busy with kids, decorating and parents staying from Cyprus. Last day of the month tomorrow so I will have to spend a couple of hours tallying everything up. I showed my step sister my financials spreadsheets yesterday and she almost wet herself at the complexity of it all - she was speechless when she saw my monthly spend graph and desperately wants me to do the same for her :rotfl:

Finances are a little bit all over the place as I've been to busy to keep an eye on it properly and what with kids easter holidays, my dad coming to visit and the fuel usage for the days I'm decorating (oh and the £105 it cost me to have a puncture fixed on the M25 on the way home from decorating) so I'm not exactly sure where I'm at. Looking forward to spending tomorrow morning sorting all that out.

Just dropped dad and his wife back at Heathrow and got stuck in the stop start traffic caused by the tube strike :mad:

PFTP x

pennyforthepot

OUTGOINGS: APRIL

£250-council tax
£129 -mobile phones x 5
£38-internet and landline
£59-gas
£70 -electric
£44-water
£192-car loan
£6.50-Red Cross d/d
£275 -food
£112 - Cleaning/toiletries
£112-fuel
£105-car maintenance
£409 -kids costs
£180 -entertainment
£0.00-house
£0.00-holiday
£0.00-birthdays
£0.00-christmas
£0.00 -contingency
£8-miscellaneous

£1967-TOTAL

54% - savings to income ratio

I have had a really good month this month in terms of savings - mainly due to my largest ISA maturing, my cashback credit card paying out and my earnings from decorating. May is a different matter - as I have a very large credit card bill to pay off and no additional income to report. If I hit £600 savings I will be happy.

Spend levels for April a couple of hundred pounds lower than March. Points worthy of noting are cutting my gas usage for the month to £60 which means I now owe £315 down from £400 and electricity I knocked of a tenner from what I owe which is now down to £108. Reduced my washing down to 23 loads from around 35 and dishwasher usage to around 15.The unexpected spends this month came in the form of £105 for a puncture and an additional £60 spend on petrol to get to my SILs for decorating. I managed to just about keep within my food budget for the month despite guests and school holidays and have put another £15 towards my Christmas food shop (£60 to date).

Next month's spend will be highly skewed by paying off £2500 for the holiday and a couple of weekends away plus a party to go to.

I am still on target with my savings for the year - at 38% of my £20,000 target having saved £7,700 since January so I'm pretty pleased with how things are going.

Off to spend my last £3 that I have in my food budget for tea tonight!

Happy Days

PFTPx

edinburgher

I like your roundup PFTP, I have been reading Your Money or Your Life and like the idea of tracking these sorts of things visually.

I'm planning to start doing so in the old fashioned way, with a pad of graph paper and some marker pens

PrincessLou

Hi Penny,

I've been subscribed from your very first post! Just a quick question - I remember reading a while back that you were bulk purchasing food and toiletries etc for the whole year. Can I ask how you worked out how much you needed of certain things and what items were on your list? I love lists so I suppose it's just nosiness really :rotfl:, but also I'm thinking of trying out the idea myself and am at a bit of a loss where to start. :huh: