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

glitterjunkie

Finally found time for a little update, this week seems to have been ridiculously busy for some reason! Hope everyone is well my big news is my first mortgage OP has been made!! managed £520 instead of the planned £400 so far this month and will add more bits as and when I can. What a good feeling!

This weeks spends- quite a spendy few days but again most of it was good bargains in the sales so money well spent, as will save money later in the year!. £9 in matalan sale (well £20 but returned some) on a work top and 2 scarves for pressies. £9 in Poundland on various bits including food pots to freeze more meals and 3 comedy DVD's which have gone away for hubby's birthday. ..very impressed with these for £1, inc jason manford, lee Nelson etc, definitely worth a look! £32 in Boots 70% sale on 9 pressies to put away for birthdays/cChristmas 2014... very few people left to buy for now! £21 in Aldi on groceries, £10 in New Look on 2 dresses (£5 each! Plus paid on a giftcard I got for Christmas so free really). £11 on a replacement TV remote after spending 5 days looking for ours we have realised that DS has probably put it in the bin - little monkey! Did shop around for this as the first one i found was £15 £48 on tickets for a show for my mums birthday, quite expensive but she really deserves a treat as she helps us out loads with DS so its a little thankyou. I did save £1 booking fee by popping in to the theatre to get them myself rather than booking online And last but not least hubby decided he needed a Dominos takeaway at £17, which was very naughty but that's the only treat we have had this week so I think its allowed I need to do a Tesco shop today to stock up on bits tgat aldi don't sell, and helpfully they have sent me a £15 off £50 spend code because I haven't placed an order for a while due to changing to Aldi - good result!

glitterjunkie

This week's money making/saving- nowhere near as much as the spends unfortunately haha! £4.40 on Ebay (I put 6 items on but only 1 sold... suspect January is quiet on there). Plodding on with Onepoll and was selected for a telephone interview which paid £5 and only took 10 mins which has boosted the total - up to £22.20 now sent 5 DVD's to music magpie for £5.12 - I hate that website when they pay 30p for stuff, but got £1-ish for these which isn't too bad. Also rediscovered my library card and decided to set myself a challenge to only buy 4 books in 2014, and use the library as much as possible finally Pavlovs_dog has kindly given me lots of advice on Swagbucks so tonight when DH is on nights I shall be looking into this and joining up

Thistlewhistle

Hi Glitter,

I've been reading your diary with interest and would like to subscribe of that's OK. I'm looking for inspiration to keep me going and I found loads of it here!!

Thanks for the reminder about driving licence renewal - I just checked mine and it expires on 29th June 2014 - I knew it was soon! My friend forgot to renew his and was fined £1,000:eek::eek::eek:

I've popped the date in my diary!

Thistle

glitterjunkie

Hi Thistlewhistle and thankyou so much for stopping by! I would love q subscriber do you have a diary?

The driving licence thing is such a pain isn't it? The DVLA sent me a reminder otherwise I'd have forgotten. Ouch for your poor friend! A tip for you- don't use the Post Office service like they tell you to, they take your photo at the counter and send it electronically but it adds an extra £4.50 onto the cost! :0 if you have a passport size photo already lying around then send that by post yourself and it will 'just' be the original £20 (or if u have a current passport I think you can do it online and use your passport photo which is also £20.

glitterjunkie

Good week here, I've managed to OP the mortgage by £643.05 this month! Which is a combination of the planned monthly £400 OP, an unexpected bill refund, money made on local selling sites, Ebay and Music Magpie. Whenever I make anything extra im going to try and send it straight to OP since its not budgeted spending money anyway if that makes sense? The only thing I will have to watch is possible Early Repayment Charges with being on a fixed rate until November I think we can only OP 10% of the total balance. So will have to start watching thatttowards the end of the year

Our First Direct account switch completed today so when they give us the £125 joining bonus that can go to OP too

Done quite a lot of grocery spending on the big monthly shop at Tesco but managed to combine a few vouchers to make it cheap-ish. I also used Click and Collect for online grocery shopping for the first time, rather than having it delivered. .. it was really easy to collect, took 5 mins and was only £2 service charge rather than the £5 we usually pay for delivery so I will defo be doing that again. Stocked up on Pampers nappies, mega boxes are half price at Morrisons this week so I bought 6 boxes = 444 nappies! Lol shouldnt need any more for a couple of months now and will try Aldi nappies after that

Just nipped into the newsagents to get a Mirror paper for the £5 off £40 spend Aldi voucher so will be stocking up on Saturday. After that we will have about £200 left in our 'spending' Account to last until 10th Feb which isn't too bad considering the freezer and cupboards are full so we will only have little 'top up' fresh shops to do for fruit bread milk etc.

Going to do omelette for tea with ham cheese peppers mushrooms and onions, probably the cheapest meal we have it only works out about 80p each. We haven't had it for ages and I don't know why as I actually much prefer it to more expensive meals

glitterjunkie

Today has been a much needed NSD, went home for lunch so avoided the temptation of the shops! put £30 into Christmas savings account (that doesn't count as spending does it?!) - this is budgeted every month so should have £360 by December, but actually I've done so well with buying pressies in the January sales that I doubt I will end up needing the full £360 in which case it can be a nice little December OP. Forward planning and all that...

I do fear we may fall into the takeaway trap tonight, as both DH and I have had long weeks at work, and we have eaten all our lovely batch-cooked freezer meals. I'm definitely learning that a lack of organisation is what leads to overspending, mental note made to do as much batch cooking and meal prep as possible this weekend

Up to £24.60 on Onepoll now, checking several times a day rather than once is really helping! Getting lots of VO surveys but screened out of every single one grr. I had an invite to join the Bounty Word of Family panel a few weeks ago and did my first survey today, they seem to be pretty good payers at £1.20 for a 10-min survey. I used to be a Pinecone panel member and really regret letting kt membership lapse now as they were the best payers ever!

In other news my lovely friend has bought me one of those savings pots, im sure they are called a terramundi or something like that? Its meant to hokd £1k of £2 coins and has to be smashed to get into it, removing the temptation to raid it for cash! So im going to make it a challenge to see how quickly I can fill it up

Also got my Amazon voucher through from the Sun free trial, so that's paid for birthday pressie for a couple of parties DS is invited to. He has a much better social life than me and DH but I don't mind, im always so busy at work that my idea of heaven is a night in front of the telly or reading, with a nice brew and total relaxation so that is what tonight will consist of! Do have an engagement party to go to tomorrow but won't spend much as DH on nights so I will most likely drive there, show a face for q couple of hours then have to be home by 11 for the babysitter, so probably only spend a fiver! Not really sure if a present is expected for an engagement or not? I don't remember me and DH getting anything, i think people just saved their money for the wedding?

Have lovely weekends everyone! Xx

t-rexcellent

glitterjunkie wrote: »

Good week here, I've managed to OP the mortgage by £643.05 this month! Which is a combination of the planned monthly £400 OP, an unexpected bill refund, money made on local selling sites, Ebay and Music Magpie. Whenever I make anything extra im going to try and send it straight to OP since its not budgeted spending money anyway if that makes sense? The only thing I will have to watch is possible Early Repayment Charges with being on a fixed rate until November I think we can only OP 10% of the total balance. So will have to start watching thatttowards the end of the year

Well done Glitter! That's a fantastic OP - think you deserve the takeaway tonight :T

Love reading all your little moneysaving bits and pieces - lots of little savings add up to big OP's

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi GlitterJ, doesn't it feel marvellous to start Oping the mortgage

You've done brilliantly and well done on the surveys. I'm also back doing 1P each day. Is a little boring but saves reaching for a biscuit.

Also great that you're saving for Xmas. It's lovely to know you can enjoy it without worrying.

Have a good weekend, Tilly x

glitterjunkie

Thanks t-rexcellent and Tilly I quite enjoy Onepoll, I need to get out more I think!

Quite annoyed with myself this weekend as I didn't keep a check on the fridge resulting in remembering at 10pm on Saturday that there was 1kg of chicken breast in there that needed using that day. Did open it and start dicing it up for the freezer but decided it smelled a bit funny and didnt want to risk it. So in the bin it went what was I saying about disorganisation?! So no batch cooking done this weekend, but got 15 sausages out of the freezer to do a big batch of sausage mash and onion gravy tonight to portion up for DH to take to work (lovely butchers sausages... I've discovered if you buy a pack of 30 they are half the price per sausage of buying 6!) I really hate wasting food, but actually we are pretty good and don't waste much in general. Fruit is probably the worst one, but DS absolutely loves fruit so we don't waste as much as we used to.

Talking of DS, I used to spend a fortune on posh Organix/ellas kitchen bsby snacks and biscuits but ive discovered that he enjoys a plain Rich tea biscuit and some raisins just as much, at a fraction of the price so I will be buying those in future!

I sold 3 things on a local selling site yesterday but when I went to deliver them only 1 of the people was in grr. .. I hate that, it's so rude! So wasted half an hour and some petrol :-/ put the £5 I did make into my new terramundi (?) money pot thing as was £2/£1 coins, so that's a good start.

Did do an Aldi shop with my vouchers so the weekend wasn't a total disaster once again i am amazed at the prices in there, especially cheese triangles for DS 59p (usually spend £1 on these), hot chocolate £1.09 instead of my usual £3 and mayonnaise/salad cream 89p instead of our usual £2/3. Also treated DS to a huge toy kitchen which was £70 but paid with the £100 voucher I got for free on my Amex card so it ended up costing us nothing in actual money. .he didnt really get a big Christmas present as couldnt think of anything he wanted, so it's like a belated pressie. Its bought us hours of peace and quiet already as he loves it and plays really happy, which is priceless as any parent knows! To me this is what MSE is all about, having a good standard of living and treating my little family but doing it by shopping smarter, living within your means and not getting into debt for it I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't have had the giftcard, so its nice that he has had an extra treat thanks to MSE!

Happy Monday everyone! X

gallygirl

glitterjunkie wrote: »

To me this is what MSE is all about, having a good standard of living and treating my little family but doing it by shopping smarter, living within your means and not getting into debt for it

:j Great quote, sums it up completely :j