Attempting to pay off our mortgage for a bigger house! :)

glitterjunkie

A few more bits to add. .. went online to pay my Amex bill and saw they had an offer for a £5 statement credit at Tesco when you spend £10 so registered for that, and also did a Tripadviser review which should get me another £5 statement credit

Unfortunately cancelled out by seeing I had a £6 overdraft charge from Natwest for going a couple of pounds into my overdraft for 1 day, grrr! Even worse that £6 charge has sent me into my overdraft AGAIN so there will probably be another £6 charge next month how annoying (its an account I dont use alot)... never had any bank charges before, it's my own fault but it's really annoyed me! Going to cancel the OD I think as dont really need it anyway.

Rang Barclays to set up Online Banking too in the hope it will allow me to see my mortgage details online, im not sure whether it will or not but hoping so! The last mmortgage statement we got said 'you can now access your mortgage details and recent transaction s online' so fingers crossed. Id be interested to know if anyone with a Woolwich mortgage can do this?

ViolaLass

glitterjunkie wrote: »

also ordered a lovely dress from Next online for £60 reduced from £125 which I am really pleased about as saw it a few weeks ago and was hoping would go inthe sale. It will be worth it if its nice as can be worn for 2 separate weddings we are going to in 2014 and 2015 = £30 per outfit

You didn't have any dresses already? It may have been reduced but you could have saved the £60 as well.

glitterjunkie

ViolaLass wrote: »

You didn't have any dresses already? It may have been reduced but you could have saved the £60 as well.

I hear you ViolaLass, and you are of course correct and it may go back when I try it on, if I don't absolutely LOVE it however it is something ive had my eye on for a few months, i really liked it at full price, and it can come out of budgeted 'spending' money leaving the savings intact. It will be the only 'posh' dress I buy in 2014 hence why it will do for 2 occasions

l'll maybe ebay £60 worth of old stuff to make up for it :A

glitterjunkie

Evening diary

Well I am so annoyed with Natwest for charging me (well, more furious with myself for letting it happen) that it has given me the push I needed to switch to a Firstdirect account. Opened it at 8pm tonight (Sunday) and was really impressed that I could speak to a real person at that time! The £100 bonus for switching will go straight to OP and the 6% one-year regular saver will be fab! Natwest really aren't giving us any incentive to stay at the moment, savings rates are rubbish and there's no interest free overdraft any more (whereas it used to be free up to £100) so I am happy about switching

My hubby has been out tonight playing pool and spent £20 :-/ I meanwhile have had a really busy evening online doing everything I can think of to make sure our finances are as good as they can be. I know who is working the hardest at this MFW thing! :rolleyes: I've done the following things tonight -

* Opened Firstdirect account as above
* Emailed Natwest to complain about the bank charge I recieved, because upon looking at my account again I didn't actually go into my OD on the date they said I did? Worth a try, hoping they might waive it
* Emailed EDF Energy to tell them not to reduce our direct debit like they are wanting to, as I'd rather build up a credit than a debt.
* Signed up for Martin's Cheap Energy Club on here - can't believe I haven't done this before! Luckily it says there arent any cheaper deals than our current one, but our fix runs out in March 2014 so I am not sure whether we should do another fix now or wait until March? Hmm.
* Signed up for an Equifax free trial through Topcashback, as I haven't checked my file for ages. Hopefully £8 cashback coming from that. Interestingly the entry for our mortgage also includes a more up-to-date mortgage balance than the one we got on our last statement, and it's fab to see it's now in the £53 thousands (£53,880) as I thought it was still £54-something. Having tried and failed several times to get a balance from the rubbish Woolwich automated system yesterday this has made me very happy!
* Also signed up my hubby for a £1 Sun plus trial for the £10 Amazon voucher, as I already did one last month (must remember to cancel this and Equifax in a couple of weeks!)

ViolaLass

You spend £60 on a dress that you plan to wear twice but complain about your husband spending £20?

glitterjunkie

I wasn't complaining, my husband works very hard and he deserves a night out I was merely pointing out the irony of me being at home sorting out the pennies while he is out spending them :beer: which I will tell him to his face in the morning when he sobers up

I have said on another thread tonight that I only want to do MFW to the extent where we can still have a life too, surely its all about balance? Hence why we have 'spending' money built into our monthly budget before OP's and savings, to spend on dresses and nights out. Id much rather take an extra year to pay it off and enjoy myself!

glitterjunkie

Oh and if we're really counting then I forgot to mention he spent £50 on a night out too, so overall he has had £10 more than the cost of my dress but again its all budgeted spends so all good! X

The_Palmist

well done and don't lose the spark.

I see you are working extremely hard to save and cut down on the outgoings. What about spending a bit of time working on increasing the incoming i.e. looking for a new job or a promotion at the same place for both of you.

Best wishes

glitterjunkie

Thanks very much The Palmist my husband has actually just got a new job a couple of months ago, which is what has made us want to do MFW... he got a good payrise and so instead of frittering away the extra money each month its better to put it towards the mortgage

I should definitely be paid better for the job I do however, and so I think you're right and I may have to start looking for either a promotion/payrise or looking elsewhere in the next year or so

glitterjunkie

Happy new year everyone! Hope you all have a fab one well since im at home alone with DS this NYE and he's fast asleep so no company, I have nothing better to do than update my diary

Spent a bit on groceries in asda (£26) and Tesco (£12) today, ive been careful to downshift things where possible and only bought stuff that we really needed. Poor DS has got Tesco baby shampoo instead of his usual Johnson' s for less than half the price haha, im sure it will be exactly the same though. Should get £5 credited back from Amex for the Tesco shop too! Going to do a big Aldi shop in a couple of weeks once the cupboards and freezer are bare. Also used 5p off a litre coupon to fill the xar with petrol saving £1.80

£3 spent on soft play entry with DS yesterday (money well spent as he loves it) and £2 spent on a cup of tea in there (NOT money well spent)... however it gave me a flash of inspiration and today spent £5 on an aluminium reusable water bottle and insulated travel mug Ive never thought about it before but I must spend a couple of hundred quid a year on drinks when out and about, well now I won't have to!

Also got my Natwest bank charges refunded after my complaint so overall another good few days. Feeling really positive about what our mortgage will be like at the end of 2014 if we can keep this good start up, I WILL get it into the 40k's