Back to basics with pavlovs_dog: the £6k sprint

pavlovs_dog

Scores on the doors

Food £70.06 (+£3.39 on Xmas treats that I've put away)
Not bad for 3 weeks of shopping. All have been top up shops as I am running down the stores. This also includes £10 worth of loo rolls from Costco.


Petrol £34.37
This has lasted 2 weeks. OH will top up today on his way home from work.

pavlovs_dog

Poorlysick today. Tried to work through it yesterday and ended the day feeling like death on a plate. Today I've listened to my body and phoned in sick - not an easy job to do when you hardly have a voice left to speak of :eek:

I'm trying to stave off boredom by tackling gentle little tasks. I've paid the credit card bill. Just £550, including 2 months worth of council tax payments, all food and petrol for the month to date and a few bits of incidental spending. A very frugal month all in all.
Food totals stand at £83.81 with a further £8.89 on Christmas treats. I'll do a big shop on the weekend to replenish the freezer and store cupboard essentials.

Operation Declutter Pavlov Towers continues to plod along in the background. The mins game on the Konmarie thread is proving very motivational. I've just about run out of donation bags, so will do a drop off to the charity shop this week to clear what I've earmarked for donation and pick up more bags for the next round.

Aims for this afternoon
* make a dent in writing Christmas cards
* begin planning Christmas shopping/gifting
* Gumtree listings to see if I can make a few £ss for my old junk

jodles16

Hope you will be better soon, well done for being productive even though your poorly!! Sounds like you needed and deserved that week on hols. Have watched educating Cardiff and it just goes to remind people how important teachers are, not just at teaching but guiding!

Jodles

pavlovs_dog

hello end of term, am I glad to see you!

main aims for the next 2 are to recuperate and get some kind of order on the house and life admin.

I've just requested £50 of paypal from P!nec0ne and £25 from SBs, so that combined with the money already kicking about in my paypal account will be a nice OP of almost £100 to close the year.

Currently sat on the sofa writing the mother of all to do lists. It remains to be seen how many of these miracles I achieve! Chrimble shopping is becoming a rather urgent priority, don't think I've ever been this far behind!

pavlovs_dog

I've forced myself to apply the pomodoro technique today to get my bottom in to gear. I've done some general tidying and begun decluttering and reorganizing the kitchen. Two bits of junk sold on gumtree and my recycling bag is filling nicely.

I feel like I need a new challenge on the OPing front, but am already doing the things that established MSErs do. I've decided to adopt the 1% challenge I saw Turtlemoose mention a few months back. In addition to my normal built in OPs, I'm going to try and pay off a further 1% of the balance. I need to contact FD to check my mortgage balance, but I anticipate 1% to be around £1050. The money will come from my grocery/petrol challenges, selling junk on gumtree, surveys etc. According to MSE's OP calculator, this will shave off a further 4 months and save more than £1100 of interest.

pavlovs_dog

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas day. Apart from the usual hysterics courtesy of the mothership it has been a peaceful and enjoyable festive season.

I squeezed a few simple jobs in between family celebrations today. Oodles of packaging has found its way to the recycling ready for the next collection. A brief jaunt to town snaffled all of the cards for next Christmas for half price. Copious amounts of cheese, chocolate and spirits have been decluttered.

An easy night in front of the TV and an early night should see me fighting fit and ready to get on with some decluttering in the morning.

pavlovs_dog

My attention is turning to the new year and making every penny work. First under scrutiny is the grocery budget. I had initially planned to do a big shop to see in the new year, but closer inspection of the stores revealed that we actually had more in than I first thought.

I challenged myself to write a list of 31 meal ideas, and I could easily reach the 20s simply by planning around what we already have in. This should help make January a reasonably frugal month.

With the revised budget for 2016, I am going to start with £45/week to cover all food, cleaning materials and toiletries. As I get a tighter grip on the finances, I hope to be able to revise this down further. Left over money at the end of the month can go towards the 1% challenge.

pavlovs_dog

On a mission today...

My shiny new spreadsheet to track where our money goes is shaping up nicely.

Our fixed rate saving product is due to end imminently so we need a new home to stash our nest egg. We've decided to go for a one year fixed bond with First Save (2.12% AER) as we should have enough wiggle room to cope with most emergencies. Money that was gifted to us by the outlaws last year which we ringfenced for doing the garden will be used to drip feed a regular saver in OH's name. My regular saver is due to mature when we would want access to the cash, so we'll do a money shuffle later in the year.

I've signed OH up to SB to take advantage of a referral offer. I am making about £25/month reasonably passively. I can cash out via Paypal, so this money can go towards the 1% challenge.

pavlovs_dog

The mortgage has dipped below £105k and by the summer we'll be out of the £100s for good :j On this basis, I will set my 1% challenge total as £1050.

The house looks tidier and I have list upon list of miracles I want to achieve in 2016. I spent a pleasant few hours with my diary and a cuppa last night working on breaking big goals in smaller, more manageable steps. If nothing else, I hope that the new year will see me be more organised.

pavlovs_dog

I've signed up to MFW 2016 with the aim of OPing £6000. Built in OPs of £410/month will total £4920. This means over the course of the year I need to find a further £1080 to hit target. This will come from my 1% challenge and the odd Tilly Tidy.

For my MFi4 target I aim to reduce my mortgage by £25,000, resulting in a balance in the £70ks by 2018. In the interim, we also expect to have done some fairly substantial work on the house, paid for a wedding and honeymoon and bought a new-to-us car.

Here goes!