30 small steps

cookie9

A bit of free time this morning so thinking about finances. My regular savers account pays 5% so I am looking to pay in the max until January's instalment. After that I will put in a smaller amount as emergency funds and pay the remainder on OPs as the mortgage interest by that point will be higher than the savings interest. When the regular saver ends I can drip feed into another one until the second part of the mortgage fixed period ends. Hopefully I can then pay off a lump sum on it before tying up for a new fixed period. I need to call my bank as the main mortgage is on a higher rate than the second one so I want my OPs to come off that one only. I believe interest rates will start to rise so want to be prepared.

Financial goals for 2017
Reduce mortgage total into the 140s
Become mortgage neutral for second part of mortgage. £28,000 in savings

cookie9

Late but enjoyable night last night as we took advantage of meercat movies and went to see Rogue One. Very enjoyable even if we were both tired after work. Cinema tried for 20 minutes to get meercat 2 for 1 to work on their pc and eventually they let us in for free so a cheap night out.
Today is my last shopping day as I want to pick up a couple of gifts using my vouchers of course so quite MSE. Hopefully I can find all the gifts I have hidden around the house to wrap up tonight. Anyone else know the pain of looking for carefully hidden away gift?

Kittenkirst

Totally! Those 'safe' places to hide things are an absolute pain in the bum, I'm constantly forgetting the safe place and finding it a year later!

cookie9

After taking everything out of my wardrobe found "missing" gifts in DH's wardrobe! Think he may be going on the naughty list. Picked up our turkey this morning first thing so not too busy but 30 minutes later they were queueing to get into the carpark. Had a near Christmas disaster as they had sold out of Christmas crackers but luckily had to get some plants and garden centre had nice ones with 50% off.

cookie9

What a lovely Christmas. So nice to spend time with family. We are having lots of fun with the different games Santa bought. Wee man currently busy making a dinosaur model and everyone else is napping. I have spent quite a lot on food but presents were too not too expensive as used a lot of my vouchers. My Powder box arrived in good time and was very useful for gifts although I have kept a couple of things in it for myself. What a good deal it was so I am not surprised it sold out. I think I now need to go back to the Not Buying It thread as I have a lot of beauty products.

I have organised the new mortgage payment but it won't take place until January's payment. Interestingly the bank told me that as my deal ends I can actually overpay by 30% and not 10% so I will bear that in mind next time. Right I am off to update the spreadsheets!

jodles16

Hey cookie you have been a busy bee! Christmas sounded lovely!

Hope you are still off and having a good time before new years!

Jodles

cookie9

@jodles yes still a few more days off so trying to get all my tasks completed.

Funds moved around yesterday and spreadsheet up-dated. Time for a review of steps:

Cost reduction
1. Bills - dates noted for renewals. Haggle. Haggle. Haggle.
2. Menu plans and food shopping. Still using up some of the holiday food but going to sit down and work out my plans.
3. Not buying it. This year I am going to try not to buy new clothes for myself. A hard one to stick to but will try to be good.
4. Using it up. This is mostly for beauty products but applies to store cupboard too and also clothes.
5. Free days out. Days out at the park with less using the car.

Making money
1. Keep selling wee man's old toys.
2. Collect vouchers by using credit card for main shopping.
3. Look at tutoring again.

Mortgage
1. Monitor when fixed deal ends
2.Keep on making regular OP- now on main mortgage. With the odd OP boost when I can.
3. Save in higher interest account to cover second mortgage.

cookie9

A bit of a post mystery here as two friends have contacted me to say their Christmas gifts were returned to them as we didn't collect them but we didn't get a card through the door about them. Very odd. Wee man got lots of presents so it will be nice to have some later for him but a pain for friends to repost.

So far I have remembered to use my credit card for our purchases to get some cashback. I am menu planning and avoiding even looking at the sales in case I am tempted. I fear I could easily spot something that I must have that I don't currently know about!

Will be interesting to see the effect of my new mortgage deal and OP schedule on my MFW status. Lots of juggling of accounts to get the best rates. Have set up a savings account for my second mortgage and hope to repay a lump sum on it when the fixed deal ends to slash the term. Going to try for a frugal year.

mortgage_girl

Happy New Year cookie. It sounds like you've had a lovely Christmas and are on your way to a very MSE new year.

MGx

cookie9

Thanks Mg. It is always small steps here!

So glad it is the weekend. Had to go to Waitr@se to pick up bread and hot chocolate so treated wee man to a hot chocolate in the cafe whilst I enjoyed a free tea. Wee man had been swimming and we had quite a few places to go before heading home so felt a warming hot choc would be just the thing to keep him happy.

Next stop was the bank for wee man to pay in his coins from his piggy bank. I am trying to teach him the value of money so he was allowed to take £1 out of his account to spend. Tiger is good as they have their prices in whole pounds rather than 99p so he spent some time looking for £1 signs then deciding what he could buy. After that it was Tesco where I collected my lottery card win as someone gave me a card in my Christmas card and I won £10. Wee man enjoyed a free Tesco banana so it had been fairly MSE today.

The big thing on my to do list is to organise getting quotes for car insurance. Renewal is £522 so let's see how much I can bring that down by. Martin's tips always handy. I want to keep expenses down so I can fill my regular saver to the maximum.

Looking forward to my first OP of 2017 in the way only a MFW can understand.

Have a good weekend.

update: first alternative quote is £325 after cashback!