Mini LBM - need to get back on track!

edinburgher

Couldn't you fix the shower + give the room a lick of paint = 'freshly refurbished bathroom' in estate agent speak?

Always good to have a few small improvements obvious if you're trying to sell.

FacelessNumber

Love it edinburgher

However whoever put the shower in before cocked it up and we can't get behind it to fix it without ripping the shower apart! At the moment we are thinking leave it because it isn't broken enough to make selling it an issue.

But we are going to speak to another plumber and see what they say first!

I'm having a couple of weeks of a health kick before the Christmas gluttony happens - basically limiting wine and chocolate for the next 2 weeks! We are going on holiday on the 10th Jan so not the ideal time of year to be in a bikini!!!

FacelessNumber

Oh dear I have just realised that I started this as a spending diary...didn't last long did it!

I was looking at my student loan yesterday and they have my balance at about £600 higher than it should be! So I need to ring them at some point.

Christmas spending is fine...I put £50 away every month this year in preparation so thats plenty to be getting on with

FacelessNumber

Post Christmas money check - no problems. Christmas all paid for. Managed to OP £65.88 off the mortgage today meaning I hit my OP target of £1200 for the year.

Have set a target of £2000 OPs for next year. However we are likely to be moving so that might change things a bit!

New job starts on 20th January so plenty to look forward to in the new year. Also going on holiday so just need to find some spending money for that - have looked at the numbers and shouldn't be a problem. I do have £800ish in my ISA at the moment but generally try not to touch that as I am trying to build up an emergency fund along with everything else. I might need to dip into it with the job change though as I think there is going to be a delay in getting paid from one job to the other.

Only £186 left to pay off my parents, but that is on hold until I know what is happening with pay etc from the new job. I have the money ready and waiting for her. Overall finances looking pretty healthy. Hoping to really build up the emergency fund this year - would be nice to get an extra 2k into it although the new job does come with some uncertainty money wise - overall should be more than my current job but could be a bit up and down depending on the work.

So my aims for 2014:

OP £2k
Save £2k

Small chunks for January:
<£150 on diesel (normally £250 due to commuting but am off quite a bit with AL/job changeover).
Budget changeover - needs tweaking due to likely variable salary.

Sorry about the rambling but I feel more organised for getting it on paper. I'm off to change all my SOs to the 1st of the month.

edinburgher

Well done on a debt free Christmas and achieving your OP goal :money:

FacelessNumber

Just checked my mortgage snowball and have knocked another month off the end date now December 2036, initially April 2037.

I check it based on OP so far, not taking into account any further OPs. If I continue my basic £100 OP a month it knocks another 5 years off.

Keeps the motivation up looking at things like this. Have also made myself a grid with 100 squares and every 1% off the mortgage I colour in a square.

Does anyone have any other good motivational tips I can use?

FacelessNumber

Well 2014 has started with an NSD on the personal account and small food spends on the joint account.

I have also started using Tilly Tidies for the first time - 88p tidied into a separate online account. I have decided to try and do this every day and every time the account gets to a decent amount, maybe £25, I will either OP it off the mortgage or add it to my savings.

One of my goals for 2014 is to start my masters, which will obviously cost me a fair amount of money, but to me is worth it. So I am looking into this and how to finance it as well as moving house etc etc!!

Our current mortgage fix also runs out in March but I don't think it's worth changing as we are likely to move within a few months of this....if anyone can give me any advice I'd be very grateful.

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone :)

FacelessNumber

Spending today: £2.99 personal (diet coke and a euromillions ticket - wouldn't normally buy one but every now and again I do for a rollover ).
£33.55 on groceries from the joint account.

Did my second TT of the year - £3.64 (decided to do to the nearest fiver as I don't think I will be able to one many days, if it gets too expensive I will change it). Now £4.52 in that account.

I have decided I need to tweak my budget spreadsheet as I want a bit more detail on it but as I have a 2500 word essay due in Sunday, it will have to wait till after that!!

FacelessNumber

NSD yesterday and am spending all day today writing an essay so unless I decide to go and fill my car with fuel I should have another one today.

Another £1.94 added to my tidying account....I'm loving this so far

I'm not counting DDs and SOs in my spending diary as they are bills etc and are accounted for in my budget.

Anyway back to the essay.....10% written, lots and lots of reading to do for every few hundred words written as it is masters level makes it very slow going! And of course I'm procrastinating on here!

FacelessNumber

NSD yesterday as I barely left the house other than to walk the dog at 10 at night when I felt like I was getting cabin fever! 1000 words of the essay left (about 1200 written yesterday so not bad going).

In true procrastinating style I have been crunching my mortgage figures this morning

Our balance this morning was 83020.14 so of course I immediately OP'd 20.14 leaving us a nice round balance of 83000.00!

I worked out today that we have so far OP'd £1164 in 9 months (Apr-Dec). This has already saved us £22.39 in interest, which of course doesn't sound like a lot but that is interest that will never go on the mortgage!
Our daily interest sits at £7.95, whereras if we hadn't OP'd it would be £8.08. So we are saving 13p a day without doing anything extra. Makes me feel like I'm saving money without putting any effort in, plus any extra payments will make that come down further.

It's brilliant and has put me in a cracking mood for the rest of the day! Even though our OPs might slow down for a couple of months with the fact that I am changing job, we are still saving interest