Meandering to mortgage free

TimmySaver

lindens wrote: »

Good luck on your journey - both the personal one and the MF one.
Another hobby which helps you get free stuff if you are lucky is entering competitions. Many of them are online and via social media, there is a forum area of its own on here. Prizes come in handy for presents or just cheering you up, handy when money is tight. You also find websites and blogs that you wouldnt normally visit. Its very addictive though!

Thanks Lindens. I hadn't though of entering competitions. Sounds like a great idea though. I guess if I win something I can't use, I can always sell it on ebay/amazon/facebook!?

lindens

TimmySaver wrote: »

Thanks Lindens. I hadn't though of entering competitions. Sounds like a great idea though. I guess if I win something I can't use, I can always sell it on ebay/amazon/facebook!?

Yes indeed, my biggest win was a range cooker which wouldnt fit in my kitchen without expensive re-modelling(not very MSE) so i sold it to a lovely lady who came all the way from Calais for it. i used the money for much needed carpets.

TimmySaver

lindens wrote: »

Yes indeed, my biggest win was a range cooker which wouldnt fit in my kitchen without expensive re-modelling(not very MSE) so i sold it to a lovely lady who came all the way from Calais for it. i used the money for much needed carpets.

Sounds like it must have been an amazing cooker. Can't imagine travelling to get something like that. I've entered a couple of competitions for books and morrisons vouchers. I've subsrcibed to the weekly thread.
Hope you're having a good week.

TimmySaver

Been quite a good week so far. DW's pregnancy sickness seems to be more in the morning now instead of all day. So while she's still being sick a lot, her weight loss has slowed down and a wider selection of food and drink are staying down.

Also, Swagbucks gave me the MSE sign on bonus today! Which I found really exciting (sad, I know) as I expected that they'd hold on to it for as long as possible. So that's an extra 1,698 SB.

I joined both Onepoll and Opinion Outpost and have had a bit of success with them: Onepoll account is currently at £3.20 (£2.50 of which was a sign up bonus). Opinion Outpost account is currently at 35 points.

DW also called Halifax a couple of days ago and we were offered the mortgage we wanted. We've posted back the thing they sent to us (can't remember what it's called now). So should get confirmation in the next week or so.

I hope you're all having a fab week.

tylersbabe

Just checking in

Hope your wife is feeling better and all is going well for you both

TakingThePlunge

Hi TimmySaver,

I just popped over from my thread to have a little read of your diary - have subscribed. Just wanted to say good luck with it all, sounds like you've had a really tough time so well done on being so positive and proactive with everything. Congratulations on the new arrival too - I can totally empathise with your wife, I was sick all day for about 5 months, could only eat at night, no fun! glad to hear she's feeling a bit better.

I will be checking out all the survey sites that you mentioned, sounds like something I could do when I'm normally faffing about checking Facebook!

TimmySaver

tylersbabe wrote: »

Just checking in

Hope your wife is feeling better and all is going well for you both

Thanks tylersbabe. I don't want to jinx it, but we seemed to have turned a corner. She's still very tired, but we're starting to be able to increase the amounts she consumes, which is brilliant.

TimmySaver

TakingThePlunge wrote: »

Hi TimmySaver,

I just popped over from my thread to have a little read of your diary - have subscribed. Just wanted to say good luck with it all, sounds like you've had a really tough time so well done on being so positive and proactive with everything. Congratulations on the new arrival too - I can totally empathise with your wife, I was sick all day for about 5 months, could only eat at night, no fun! glad to hear she's feeling a bit better.

I will be checking out all the survey sites that you mentioned, sounds like something I could do when I'm normally faffing about checking Facebook!

5 months. That sounds really bad. I've been keeping a weight diary and a food/drink diary so we can try to monitor how things are going.

I guess the surprising thing, and the thing I hadn't thought about, was my usage of facebook and twitter. As you mention, it's gone down tremendously and I haven't really missed it. It's quite nice to know that I can be earning money rather than checking what everyone else is doing with their lives!!! :rotfl:

TimmySaver

Just thought I'd write a bit about how we manage our money. when we first moved in together we decided to keep our own current/saving/ISA accounts so we could keep some independence. We set up a joint current account for all joint bills (water, gas, mortgage, etc) and a joint savings account for things we wanted and holidays.

That was 7 years ago and we've found that it's worked for us ever since.

We were lucky in that DWs parents gave their children their inheritance around the time we were looking to move in together. As I always wanted DW to feel secure about using it all for our deposit, we've maintained a spreadsheet that notes each mortgage payment by payee (DW or me). It works out how much we've each paid and the percentage of the house that gives us. So if the worst came to the worst, DW would get the percentage back she's owed (which is much more than I'll get!!). As we recently got married, we're aiming for the best case scenario - but I always wanted her to have whatever level of financial freedom she wanted.

Hope that makes some sense. Having a bit of a rubbish day.

Hope you all have a fab weekend.

TimmySaver

An exciting weekend! After being a tad late to the party (ok, a couple of decades), I now have a paypal account!
Even more exciting than that is that I had my first payout from Opinion Outpost of £2.50 paid into the paypal account. So, that's £2.50 off the mortgage (or on necessary baby things) - I'm not going to make any over payments now until the mortgage has changed to the new product (November), so will see what has a higher priority at that point.

Here's my weekly update of the sites I've been using:
Last week:
Online earnings (Total/Current):
Swagbucks:1584/1584
Bubblews:$6.90/$6.90
YouGov:12599/2500
iSay:10100/440

This week:
Online earnings (Total/Current):
Swagbucks:6357/6357
Bubblews:$13.69/$13.69
YouGov:12599/2700
iSay:10100/925
OpinionOutpost: 50/0 - had a payout today!
OnePoll: £3.45/£3.45

100 Day Challenge to earn £50 online: £2.50

Really happy with how things are going so far. I may even put these figures up in a spreadsheet to track how well they are doing over time.

I hope you all had an awesome money saving MFW week!