The next chapter!

chocoholic_chick

I've been on the MFW wagon for going on a year and a half now and have had my ups and downs with it but now we're really wanting a new house and so the focus is now going to be more on overpaying to get enough equity in the house to get a bigger house! So not truly a MFW anymore I suppose?

Anyways I had another thread/diary but was a bit rubbish at keeping it updated so ( probably like so many others ) thought new year, new diary! I have made a little bit of progress since starting my journey in Sept 2012, but my overpayments have been no-where near the impressive numbers some manage to do at a somewhat measly £1433.51. I had maybe unrealistic ideas about how much we could afford at times, and then new jobs, new cars etc got in the way!

So I'm a member of the 2014 MFW challenge with an aim to OP £4000 this year, whether I make this or not remains to be seen but I'm going to give it a blooming good go!

Muser1

Good luck! Looks to me like you did a FAB job that's a great reduction. X

Miss_money_penny

Just want to say good luck! I just started here at end of last year and I'm determined to be savvy in every way I can. I see your signature... Grocery challenge is proving difficult for me too!

chocoholic_chick

Miss_money_penny wrote: »

Just want to say good luck! I just started here at end of last year and I'm determined to be savvy in every way I can. I see your signature... Grocery challenge is proving difficult for me too!

Thanks and good luck to you as well I think I just went a bit crazy over Christmas and seemed to spend what I'd normally spend in a month over the course of the festive break!! Back to watching the pennies again now and trying to get back into the swing of meal planning, it really helps loads. I was forever wandering round supermarkets picking things at random then getting home with loads of stuff I already had in the freezer and nothing to actually make a meal! I know that if I do stick to meal planning I'll come under budget and there'll be a little left over from this budget to go towards loan/mortgage OP's.

So aims for 2014:-

• Overpay the mortgage by £4000
• Overpay the loans by £1850
• Re-decorate the house!
• Lose weight and exercise more
• Stop being so lazy! ( suppose that goes with the last point )
• Try one new recipe a week out of the millions of cook books I have and never use
• Build up savings by £1000

Think that's a nice little list to keep me going for now!

Alchemilla

Good luck. X

chocoholic_chick

Can't believe it's still another 23 days until pay day!! Am I the only one that thinks January seems to be never ending

Have worked out we have £80 left in our main account after all bills to last until pay day and £368 left in our food and petrol account for the rest of the month. I'll have to do 3 weekly food shops, I'll need to top up with petrol a couple of times and DH seems to go through about £30 a week in petrol so hoping all of that will come to no more than £315 so in theory should have money left over. Ideally I'd love their to be and for it to go on an OP, but with only £80 left to cover anything else that crops up I'm not sure if it's do-able.

Hoping that with some careful meal planning at the very most I'll spend £45 a week on food/toiletries, but we're both now trying to eat more healthy ( aren't we all after Christmas! ) and healthy food doesn't come cheap

Made a start on my stop being lazy target tonight. Got in from work and made dinner, portioned it all out as per the recipe so have 4 portions of bolognese in the freezer now and whilst that was cooking I tackled the pile(s) of washing I'd dumped in the spare room in the hopes it would sort itself out! So that's now all sorted, folded and put away :T

Trying to slowly start building up my homemade "ready meals" in the freezer again and really need to sort out the chest freezer, I really have no idea whats in there at all, I never get further than the top layer of items which gets used and topped back up! Maybe a job for the weekend...

chocoholic_chick

Afternoon! Had a busy busy weekend, yesterday was mainly spent visiting friends and family and today we've made a start on decorating the house ( though at the minute it just looks a mess as there's stuff everywhere Arghhh!) Starting with the bedroom as it is desperate so we have everything prepped now and will hopefully get all the painting done next weekend

An unexpected bill cropped up for £130 so to stop us going overdrawn I now HAVE to really watch the spends on our food so that any surplus can go toward the overdraft. I meal planned for the week and went to Aldi's armed with a small list of things I needed to make the meals and was quite pleased when I came to pay that it only came to £21.20. I won't be able to do that every week as alot of this week is using up the meat I have in the freezer, but I still have a pack of mince and a whole duck that I know of that aren't getting used this week so will put my thinking cap on and see how many meals I can stretch out of those for the following week.

19 days until pay day...

chocoholic_chick

9 days until pay day....

Had a really good couple of weeks money wise. Despite the unexpected bill that cropped up, another that I had budgeted £80 for only came to £50 and with more careful meal planning last weeks shop came in at a rather impressive ( even if I do say so myself! ) £18.12!! I am now obsessed with seeing how many meals I can get out of a pack of mince :rotfl: So mince is featuring A LOT on my meal plan at the moment but I'm trying to mix it up a bit! So we have had homemade lasagne and cottage pie this week interspersed with a 4 bird roast dinner ( meat leftover from a dinner I made in December that I found in the freezer! ). I have a cottage pie in the freezer as well from leftovers, so 3 meals for 2 out of a pack of steak mince that was reduced to £2.25 :T Really pleased that we're both managing to eat alot healthier too, even though we are on a budget, Aldi make it much more affordable to have a few veg with every meal and some fruit with our lunches.

With some super conservative driving I've managed to make £20's worth of petrol last 2 weeks, need to top up tomorrow though but all of this has led to us having a spare £50 in our food and petrol budget which has gone winging it's way as a mortgage overpayment tonight :j

As it stands with the last couple of bills left to come out we'd be £38.20 overdrawn BUT hubby has expenses to be paid of just over £50 so hopefully that'll come through over the next few days and we will hopefully finish the month with a few pennies in our account!!

I've kept up my trying 1 new recipe a week so far, though admittedly they've been off the good food website rather that my recipe books as I was searching for recipes to work around what I have in. I've started the decorating and I'm making more of an effort to not just laze around by getting bits and pieces done in the house. Sometimes this is just doing dishes/washing/tidying up as dinner is cooking but it's still better than just sitting on my bum, even though sometimes that's all I feel like doing when I get in from work

Also so far this month have overpaid the loan by £100 and the mortgage by £50, will pay more once we're paid on the 31st, but I'm pretty chuffed with that considering it's January and we're having to go 6 whole weeks between pays!

Been watching winter watch and feeling pretty guilty about not putting food out for the birdies, realised we still have meal worms/fat blocks/fat balls from a few months ago so put it out for them this morning and it's still there untouched! So at least I don't have to stress about birds dying from starvation this month from us not feeding them now :rotfl: Will top up with food for them after pay day if they venture in to the garden.

glitterjunkie

Hi chocoholic-chick, have read your first few entries with interest. .. well done on the food shopping savings! This is an area im really trying to cut back on too with meal planning, stretching out meat and careful shopping. Its really difficult to get into it im finding, but hoping it will get easier after a while. One thing that's helped ne is working out the cost-per-meal of our favourite things, and just trying to have the most expensive ones less often than the cheaper ones. Havingan omelette for tea tomorrow with all the bits of random veggies and ham left in the fridge for about £1 xx

chocoholic_chick

Quick update as things here have been manic with alot of ups and downs over the last few weeks and a bit of uncertainty for the future

So aims for 2014:-
Overpay the mortgage by £4000 £250 to date
Overpay the loans by £1850 £250 to date
Re-decorate the house! Bedroom done!
Lose weight and exercise more Lets just bypass this one....
Stop being so lazy! ( suppose that goes with the last point ) Trying!!
Try one new recipe a week out of the millions of cook books I have and never use Have kept this up
Build up savings by £1000 Only £50 so far

Still doing really well with the food budget and underspending on there, so the £50 towards the savings came out of this budget as we should have plenty left over this month

Hoping once things are a little more settled I'll get the opportunity to update this more!

chocoholic_chick

Well things are still looking a little uncertain for us. All overpayments are on hold for the moment as DH is off work sick and will soon drop to SSP so any spare cash we have has gone into a savings account to try to help with the shortfall on the bills we'll have Going to leave my target as it is for now, but this may have to be adjusted down as we have no idea how long DH will be off work for at the moment.

Really trying to strip any unnecessary spends from our budget now, but even cutting back to the bare minimum we'd still be about £200 short per month, I've managed to get our savings up to £1800 so we can cope for 8 - 9 months if need be, after then I don't really know what we'll do. Just have to hope DH is well enough to go back to work before then.