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

glitterjunkie

£5.12 received from Music Magpie sent straight to OP and up to £28.50 on Onepoll. Really need to look at Swagbucks properly still!

Not much else to report, except I've spent £1 on a lovely new notebook to do my meal planning and shopping list in. That way I can refer back to it each month rather than writing it all on bits of paper that get lost in my handbag

Jacket potatoes tuna and rice for tea, cheap meal at about £1.50 for us both.
Quiet weekend planned so hopefully at least 1 NSD... depending what the weather is like and whether we can take DS to the park.

Happy Friday everyone! Xx

weeperson

Hi Glitter Junkie,

I've just read your full diary and wanted to say that you are doing SOOOO well ! :j

You've not long started and seem to have got to grips with all the MSE tips really quickly :money:

Even though you were a bit over budget for January you have speculated for most of your gifts for the rest of the year and if you can underspend the difference in Feb then that will be a huge achievement :T but even if you don't do it all this month, don't be disheartened - Xmas is a long way away and if you can accrue back the difference in a few months then you are still better off! We need to do EVERYTHING we can not to be disheartened with the little hurdles and end up back to where we started or worse so I think your attitidue to all of this is fantastic. Well done for getting DH on board too and for mananging all of the little extra things you are doing (eBay, surveys, MMP etc) as well as a full time job and a toddler! More than most people can cope with.... !!!

Will subscribe and keep up with your journey as i can see that you will really be an inspiration for lots of other MSE!

Laura x

glitterjunkie

Hi Laura and thankyou so much for dropping by and for the lovely message, its really cheered me up! i think you're right and i need to not worry about the little hurdles as its a marathon not a race. I will take your great advice on board so thankyou do you have a diary i can have a nosey at?

A bit of an update to follow...

glitterjunkie

Well payday has arrived so the spending account is looking good again and even better OH got paid £236 more than we were expecting, which was a nice surprise! Didnt realise he would get double pay for his New Years overtime shifts, i will definitely be packing him off to work again next New Years haha ive put the extra £200 into our spending account to make it back up to its usual amount and sent the odd £36 to OP so feeling much better than i was last week, and hopefully we can underspend a bit this month... we will see!

Ive also rejigged the budget and found an extra £20 to add to the regular monthly OP which is now £420. Ive been very encouraged by the OP calculator which shows we would be MF in 8 years just by keeping up this regular monthly OP (currently 25 years remaining on our term). And thats not even taking into account all the extra bits im trying to OP from other sources. Of course this wont happen if we buy a bigger house but its still nice to see Also been doing a fair bit of fantasy house shopping on Rightmove which i always find a good motivator

Cupboards fridge and frrezer are looking a bit bare so tonights job is to do an inventory (wont take long!) CHEAP meal plan with recipes from the OS board making an appearance, and this months shopping list, then hopefully catch up with reading some diaries on here xx

glitterjunkie

Today i have switched our energy deal as our 2-year fix ends next month... fixed with OVO for a further year at pretty similar rates to our current deal (only £6/month more) and £30 cashback which can go to mortgage OP I decided against the 4-year fix as it would have been £23 a month more than we currently pay...i suppose its a guessing game and only time will tell if this was the right choice, but will assess again in a years time anyway.

Meal plans done and small Tesco online order done (click and collect so £2-3 cheaper than normal delivery) and shopping lists written out to go to Aldi and Asda this weekend im using mysupermarket and the stores own websites tio find prices/offers, then getting different things from wherever is cheapest. its a bit of a pain to shop at 3 different supermarkets but defo worth it im finding. Id like to get the grocery spend down to £250 this month if possible as it was £318 last month.

Been a bit naughty and bought DS a new changing bag which was £36... one of those lovely Pink Lining ones. A bit extravagant since we do have a perfectly adequate one, but it was half price and ive liked them for ages. Made the order up to £50 for free delivery with a footmuff for his spare pram that we keep at his grandparents, also half price. The footmuff was needed, the bag not so much haha... so ive made myself a little February goal to make £36 on ebay to pay for it will take the photos tonight ready for the next free listing day, so watch this space xx

glitterjunkie

A fairly quiet few days here. .. done LOADS of grocery shopping and filled the car up with petrol there's £267 left in the spending account to last 3 weeks but we are really well stocked up with food, washing powder etc So this is only really for socialising and fresh bits like milk etc. Im trying 3 new cheap recipes this week, which are potato and bacon bake, stuffed potato skins and a creamy veg and leek pasta

£8.52 from TCB sent to OP as well as this month's £420 regular monthly OP. I've started getting childcare vouchers from work instead of tax credits and im £29 a month better off than i had calculated so amended the monthly budget to add this into the regular monthly OP from next month onwards, so it will be £449 a month

Got £93 cashback from my cashback credit card coming this month which I was going to send to OP but instead I am going to put it towards a little family break away at Center Parcs... had a look and if we go with our parents and DS It will only be £120 that we have to pay as they will also contribute to their share, so after the cashback is taken into account its only £27 . I know CP has a reputation for being expensive when your there but we plan to take our own groceries and just enjoy the swimming and walks rather than all the expensive activities as DS is too young for them anyway. Not had a holiday for 5 years so very excited

I am happy today, feel I have found a good balance with our MFW journey and some lovely people to share with and get ideas from!

Thistlewhistle

Sounds like you're moving forward GlitterJ.

I think balance is all important. No point in spending so much time making a living that you forget to make a life!

Here endeth the Thistle lesson for the day!!

T;)

Muser1

Hi Glitter we went on a 4 day cp break which cost us about the same per family. We went to the Ald1 on the way there and stocked up on food (and wine :rotfl:) we cooked all our meals and did lots of swimming and walking. It was brilliant we thoroughly enjoyed it. We also did the Sun holiday last year which worked out a similar price and I highly recommend. X

glitterjunkie

Ooh thistle I LOVE that saying! will remember that one!

Hi muser glad to hear it's going to be worth the money, ive never been but heard good things about it! Wine will definitely be taken hehe. I've been meaning to look into the Sun holidays actually, must do so...
Were they worth it? I see you're having two hols this year from your sig, where are you off?

A little update from me to keep me on track. .
X

glitterjunkie

* One item sold on local selling site and being collected tomorrow = £5 to either bank and OP or put in terramundi pot.

* The cheap bacon & potato bake recipe i tried was a huge success and worked out about £1.25 for a meal for 2 of us... amazing! Cooking bacon is my new best friend, only 81p for a pack which did us 2 meals can't believe I've never bought it before. We also bought some lovely butchers steak mince on offer 3lb for £8.40 and bulked it out with grated carrot (as suggested on this thread), peppers, mushrooms etc and made 2 big batches of spag bol and cottage pie which stretched to 4 meals for me and OH plus 12 meals for the freezer for DS! Im really impressed as usually I would use 1lb per meal, so managed to get a lot more meals out of it than usual.

* OP's are up to £1,300 in 2014 so far and total mortgage balance outstanding is down to around £52,500.00

* There's a few things I want to buy on Matalan website (replacements for one of my work cardis which is falling apart and joggers for DS, usually get Next but they are half the price at Matalan!) But I am refusing to buy without a discount code!

Onepoll up to £31 now, getting there slowly! Thats all going to OP when I reach cash-out. Transferred some of my Nectar points to Ebay so will get £2.50 off my next purchase and will OP the cash equivalent. Also did some of the free cashback quotes on TCB so should have a couple of quid coming from that slowly buy steady is the theme of this month I think!