our forever patch challenge

EatingTheElephant

Well said Sammy. Fingers crossed for the car and congratulations on your pay rise.

sammy70

Me and the pooch set out early for a lovely walk, part on the transpennine trail, then off skirting 3 tiny villages, through fields, and back over a stream and home again.

We saw (and heard) lots of curlews with their really long beaks, they look like they belong in the stone age , really unusual looking!

We set of early, and the whole walk took just less than 2 hours at a fairly brisk walk, im glad we did set off early, as its like the med outside now, who needs to waste money on foreign holidays, when we have mini heatwaves, and lots of lush green gorgeous british countryside, and all its hidden wildlife right here!

Week 2 of my cash for groceries and petrol, ive not spent all last weeks due to using up what we had, and the weeks shop came in at less thn £50, so the leftover £50 will be an overpayment tommorow to the mortgage :T

Oh, and no spends on the mot, sailed through!!!!:beer:

sammy70

just a quick update, the £50 grocery savings has been paid to the mortgage, our new outstanding balance is £236,900, i love a nice rounded off figure :rotfl:

The weather continues to be of a tropical temperature here.

we had inlaws for tea today, then hubby dropped them home on his way to work (night shift), so im just bathed and ready for early night with a book on my lonesome.

Have a frugal happy week, payday for me friday, hubbys next week.. hopefully another decent overpayment to be made then, want to get into the £235's !!:)

chumpy45

Great news on the MOT, always a nervous wait!! Lovely to hear about your pay rise, and to read about your beautiful countryside walk. You are so right, we need to enjoy every moment.

sammy70

A busy week, worked late last night , paydayfor me yesterday, hubby 28th.

Last night i shuffled money round, cash in pots for food, petrol, coal, clothes and b.days/xmas for this month, also made £50 overpayment, wil make the standard £150 overpayment next week.

My daughter is starting up in dog grooming, so sent £500 to her to pay for setting up costs, this is her and partners (very) early xmas pressy:rotfl: ata least its less to find in december!

New mortgage balance- £236,850 :beer:
total overpaid nov 16- 23rd June 17= £2956.57 :j

Did well with food shop again, £49 at Aldi, and £20 morrissons, £10 under budget (which was included in the £50 o/p)

meal plan done for next week, car full of diesel for next week or 2, just house tidying today, and im organised for the week ahead

Hoping for a bit of time outdoors getting stuck into more land tidying this weekend with hubby

EatingTheElephant

Good luck to your daughter for her new venture.

Have a great weekend, hope the land clearing goes well.

sammy70

Thankyou for the good wishes ETE, she is working hard training at the moment, shes been saving whilst working fulltime, and has now taken the brave leap to training from scratch to be a dog groomer, shes on a 6 week intensive course paid for by herself, she decided rather than do one day a week, she would bite the bullet and do the course in one, she takes after me with the all or nothing attitude

Today ive made the standard £150 overpayment, our new balance is £236,700 :beer:

Last weekend, hubby and i did the following tasks-

located, and dug up the entrance to the septic tank in preparation for it to be emptied- glamourous or what!
Arranged for emptying of the septic tank- now done..

Dug holes and planted set of gate posts- got eaten alive by midges while doing this :eek:

Chopped approx 3 months supply of logs for the stove, which came from the 3 spruce trees we chainsawed down a while agoas they blocked light into the house - these logs should be seasoned to use winter 2018?? money saving for the future..

Stacked the mountain of chopped logs in the corner of hubbys workshop until we have built a newlog store..

both hubby and i were totally pooped after the log chopping, but it felt good seeing that log mountain, and we burnt some calories into the bargain, so all good! :T

Stuck to meal plan this week, grocery shopping day with my list tommorow, the freezer is desperate to be defrosted, so next 7 days is making meals using up freezer contents, so small shopping bill this week again i hope , meaning another small overpayment next week :j

shangaijimmy

Had a very enjoyable read catching up. Great progress in here and seems such a happy place!

sammy70

Thanks for dropping by Shangaijimmy:):)

My regular savings matured today, this has £2700 of my horse savings in it..

Transferred £2500 to premium bonds , and used £150 of it to make an extra£150 overpayment, couldnt resist!:j the other bit is waiting to be used, along with £25 saved from this weeks grocery spends, to round off the mortgage balance after the interest has been applied, and the direct debit for the standard monthly payment has been paid on the 1st of July (well monday 3rd with 1st being a weekend day)

cashed in £2.65 from quidco, which will also go to the mortgage once it hits my account, every litle helps!:beer:

sammy70

we are in the £235's!!!:j

The interest was applied to the mortgage today, £416.40- £13.88 daily for June :eek:

The direct debit goes out monday -£1208.83, which leave a balance of £235,757.57

Sooooooo, made another overpayment using the cash i saved to pay £57.57, which rounds our mortgage balance to a neat £235,700 :beer:

our mortgage balance has now reduced by approx £10,000 from the start of it, 28th November 2016, and the total we have overpaid is £3,314.14 :j

Im really happy with the progress we have made, we are working hard for it though, hubby has been doing plenty of overtime, we dont want to have him doing this long term though, in the next year or two he wants to look to reducing hours so he can do more at home in the workshop etc, we will have to get our thinking caps on on ways to earn more from home, we have the land and buildings.. a new challenge for the near future i think