The dream is within reach!

pumpkinpies128

Hello everyone, I have been a supporter of Martin for some time now, basically consulting the website before we buy ANYTHING/make any financial choices. My husband and I have recently come across the MFW pages, and have made the decision that this is the path we wish to follow, as we feel it will open so many doors, relieve a lot of pressure and generally enable us to enjoy life a lot more rather than working too many hours to mention, which is our current situation.
So, a bit of background info on pumpkinpies....
We are in our early thirties, been married five years, only just bought our first home last March...nothing too fancy, just a two bed larger terraced. When we met, we both had bad debts with sky-high interest, in excess of 10k each, which at 25 years old really isn't cool. This prevented us from doing so many things, and is partly the reason we have only just bought our house now. We rented two dire properties before we got married, and at our worst, OH had 20p in bank on payday:eek:. We have struggled through, and taking on extra work and generally battering down the hatches (after a lot of advice on here) we are now debt free.....apart from the mortgage! Our current mortgage debt is 80k, not a lot compared to some, but our wages are a lot less than the national average. It feels strange to write down how we have progressed, and am chuffed to say we managed our first OP of 1k last week:j. We keep having to pinch ourselves at the size of the savings....so any encouragement would be greatly received to keep this up

Muser1

Welcome!

I love a new diary. Well done on clearing the debt and on the op :money:.

MUSER X

pumpkinpies128

Thank you Muser, I have been terrible at keeping up to date with this, but really am going to try harder! Pleased to report since my last update we have made another OP of £300.00 on Saturday...and boy did it feel good! I can't believe the savings.....where £300.00 op is equal to saving £750.00 in interest. Why more people don't do this I will never understand! Had an interesting conversation with a 21 year old colleague of mine today which made me smile, so thought I would share it on here. I was sending a text to my hubby, and she said "awww look at your little samsung!" (whiny patronising voice needed for effect). My phone is a smartphone, paid outright and I put £15.00 credit on it a month. I can text, call, browse...anything really. Then I realised, what she was implying was that it wasn't an Iphone.....I overheard her telling someone her phone costs £60.00 a MONTH. I thought to myself, my phone does everything I need, my family and friends still speak to me (even though I don't own said Apple product)....and I'm £45 a month richer than you....am I bonkers for thinking this????:D

Sophie-1

Well done on getting out of debt. Keep on saving. Totally agree with you about the phone. Samsung do great phones.

Winter_Jasmine

Hello, congratulations on your progress so far

Your attitude sounds similar to mine. I find it so interesting, now that I think/hope I've really seen the light, to listen to other people's thoughts on money/possessions. So many get tricked into believing these things are important. I've never been much of a radical but DH and I were wandering around the shops the other weekend and I was admiring the pretty, pretty things when it suddenly dawned on me that it's all just a trap! I said to DH that it all suddenly reminded my of the witch's house in Hansel & Gretel haha! :rotfl:

Good luck with your journey, I look forward to hearing your updates :beer:

pumpkinpies128

Good Morning everyone. Wow Jasmine, never thought of it as hansel and gretel before but you really have hit it on the head there! I mentioned it to hubby and he nodded vigorously!!!!! It is his birthday later on this month, and I said what would you like? New trainers? aftershave? etc etc.....you know what he said? "A mortgage overpayment!" :rotfl: So rang the building society yesterday, made another op of £200.00 (the money I'd saved for his birthday treat) not much, but amazing to see that just by doing that it has shaved two months more off the term. Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Hurdler

How on earth can someone's phone package cost her £60!!! Even for my top end iPhone at the time my tariff is half that!!!! Maybe that young lady needs to become MSE!

That being said I got called by one of those stupid companies that bombard you with calls once you start doing questionnaires and surveys and I had a woman offering me a better package than the one I was on now, and she wanted to offer me a Samsung which I refused as I have one for work and I hate it.

So she offered me a package with a WORSE iPhone than I currently have on my tariff. And I was just laughing asking her why would I change for an older phone when I have the top end one now - the script she was reading didn't have the answers obviously because she just insisted that because I wanted to stick with Apple this was a great package as I could have a phone 2 versions older!!! I just put the phone down in the end!!

gallygirl

pumpkinpies128 wrote: »

Tam I bonkers for thinking this????:D

Yes, you are bonkers. Bonkers on wasting time thinking about what a silly vacuous girl thinks :cool:. You're over £500 a year less in debt than she is (am saying that instead of better off as I'm guessing she probably spends her wages and then some!).

Get used to ignoring what people say. As when you've paid off your mortgage you'll be told you're so 'lucky' .

someday_soon

Hi There

Well done on your debt free status - feels great doesn't it?
When I started on this path, there were so many instances where I started to see other people's poor financial decisions (and my own:o)justified by a fancy label. If you are in marketing it's all about adding value to your brand, quite simply, being able to charge more for your thing than the next man. This was the real lightbulb moment for me. I still like nice things, but I refuse to be led by the nose by fancy marketing and the pressure of others.

Good luck on your journey.

Someday Soon

pumpkinpies128

Good morning, hope everyone is well. Just thought I'd update, had a letter from the BS yesterday re the mortgage. As we have been overpaying, we need to sign something to say we want the term reducing accordingly...(so we can see it coming down before our very eyes!) Current balance is £78970.86 with remaining term of 23 years and 1 month. Absolutely cannot wait til this is not in the "twenty years away" bracket. Might have a play about with calculators and see what it takes to achieve this for 2014. Have a good day everyone, and thank you for your lovely comments and support so far.....the forum is so helpful!

Alchemilla

Welcome and good luck.
As Dave Ramsey says...you are weird but normal people are broke, so weird is good.