Morgage Free when you are addicted to shopping.

littlegreenpeas

Thanks for the jumpy smilies .


You are very welcome to mutual stalk as I will be watching your cooking tips and obviously the mortgage reduction.


The ham hock soup you made will use a packet of soup mix (lentils and beans). I have in the back of the cupboard and have been avoiding for months.


LGP x

jamesd

littlegreenpeas wrote: »

Just a quick update as have been able to pay £1000 off the mortgage and the term time has come down 2 months

Congratulations!

One thing you might consider if your mortgage lender lets you do it is keeping the term the same and letting the required monthly payment drop. This has some advantages for you:

1. The lower mandatory monthly payments mean that the amount you need in your emergency fund to cover say a year of required spending drops. If that required spending total drops by £1,000, that's another £1,000 you can overpay with unless you prefer to just have a longer lasting emergency fund.
2. You get more flexibility with month by month spending, so you can do things like making only a normal payment before high spending times of year.

Doing this has no significant effect on how much interest is saved or how long it takes to clear the mortgage. That just depends on how much is paid in total and when.

littlegreenpeas

Today is going to be an outstanding job day. I have written a list and then will work through them one by one. The main thing is putting up pictures that we have hanging around the house.


Happy New MSE year, here is to big reductions for all.


LGP x

jamesd

Oh, one other thing you might find interesting is to read about Mormon food storage. That church recommends that its members have a year's worth of food stored and there are some quite useful things to learn about things like how and where to keep lots of key staples even if you don't actually want a whole year of everything. It's something else that can make an emergency fund last longer and reduce pressure on finances at a possibly tough time.

I tend to keep three to six months of food around just for convenience. Not necessarily the food I want to eat all the time but it means I don't get forced to shop and can easily wait for sales and such. Bulk buying at sale time can be a big saver. It can be worth getting nice big home deliveries at such times, though you'll find that large amounts won't always be available for everything and deliveries may be for less than ordered. Delivery for a lot can be cheaper than going out and shopping yourself.

For me there's a nice psychological benefit, since I grew up in a fairly poor family. While there was always food it wasn't always great and it's nice to know that there's plenty around, whatever else may happen.

littlegreenpeas

Thanks James for the suggestion and I will look at this as an option.

littlegreenpeas

James, I am a hoarder of cleaning products but I never thought of it as financial planning but as money tied up to be cleared. I rotate or clear the food I have in the cupboards on a fairly regular basis so that it doesn't go off.


Couple of questions for everyone


Do you use one supermarket or a mix of where ever is cheapest ?


Do you markets for fruit and veg and then freeze ?


Do you use the money comparison site for supermarkets ?


Thanks

Crumpets

Hi LGP, well done on your mortgage reduction :T:j did you phone up your lender to find this info out? I've no idea how long is left on my mortgage:cool:

For my shopping I tend to do a weekly shop at Aldi and a monthly shop at tesco, I try not to go anywhere else in between but if I do it's what ever is handiest. I occasionally use the local farm shop for fruit and veg and this is something I want to do more often but I don't think it's a cheaper way of doing it but I like to support local businesses. I have never used a comparison site as it seems like a faff:rotfl:

How's the list going?

Crumpets x

Happy new year by the way :beer:

pavlovs_dog

littlegreenpeas wrote: »

Couple of questions for everyone


Do you use one supermarket or a mix of where ever is cheapest ?

Do you markets for fruit and veg and then freeze ?

Do you use the money comparison site for supermarkets ?

Over the past year we have shifted to shopping predominantly at a!di. A!da is my other preferred supermarket. I find MrT and MrM expensive, and nearest MrS is too much of a trek to be worthwhile.

in 2014 we're hoping to take our a!di money saving a step further. When the £5 off £40 spend vouchers next come out, we're going to experiment with buying 2 papers instead of one, and doing a big shop to stock up the cupboards and freezer. This would involve a bit of advance meal planning, breaking packs of meat down into meal size portions for freezing etc. For the rest of the month we would shop from our stores, with weekly top up shops for fruit, milk etc.

This will hopefully help us begin to reign in our food spending which was beginning to spiral towards the end of this year.

Another system we're going back to is envelopes in the coffee cupboard to store recipts for food and petrol spends, so at the end of the month I can tally up and check that we are within budget.

as for moneysupermarket - we buy very little branded food, so I only use it if I want to check the price of something specific.

pavlovs_dog

jamesd wrote: »

Congratulations!

One thing you might consider if your mortgage lender lets you do it is keeping the term the same and letting the required monthly payment drop. This has some advantages for you:

1. The lower mandatory monthly payments mean that the amount you need in your emergency fund to cover say a year of required spending drops. If that required spending total drops by £1,000, that's another £1,000 you can overpay with unless you prefer to just have a longer lasting emergency fund.
2. You get more flexibility with month by month spending, so you can do things like making only a normal payment before high spending times of year.

Doing this has no significant effect on how much interest is saved or how long it takes to clear the mortgage. That just depends on how much is paid in total and when.

I'd never really thought of it in this light. Thank you for the food for thought, definitely something to consider as our fix ends in June 2015.

littlegreenpeas

Hello All


Happy New Year, today is day 9 of non essential shopping freeze. I cannot say that it has been easy, the only thing that has got me through is posting on here and reading others mfw diaries. My friends mostly don't understand what I am trying to do.


pavlovs_dog: Thanks for your post, I am interested that everyone that has posted seem to have avoided the big boys in the supermarket world. I would love to buy Ald* shares .


How do you know when the £5 vouchers are coming ? I really like your plan when stocking up the cupboards, this is a good idea, but I need to make space.


Crumpets: I always ask the mortgage company how long I have left, just to check its coming down The don't let us make capital repayments online so I have to phone each time anyway to pay.


Nothing to report really, still writing my list of things to do, ticking them off gradually.


New Years Resolutions
1 Go out more. I have this every year to push myself to do different things. Don't need to be expensive but just different.


2 Lose weight- Like most people, just want to loose a dress size.


3 Pay off the most I can off the mortgage and maximise my money.


Back to work tomorrow, I would like more time off but I have to pay the OPs


LGPx