Hello! and starting to overpay! Eek.

TakingThePlunge

Hello all! :hello:

I have been an unregistered lurker here for AGES! Have taken loads of useful tips from all of the MSE forums but have never posted before...

A bit of background - I'm married with two kids age 8 and 6, we bought our house last August with a mortgage of £270k over a 30 year term. OH is a development manager and I'm a content marketer working part time.

We currently pay £1350 a month for the mortgage on a fixed rate until May 2015, the interest rate wasn't the best because the LTV was 90%. Since then I think we must have talked about starting to overpay what we can and getting the LTV down, about a million times, but we have never done it.

Anyway, today we have finally made the commitment to start overpaying by £500 a month - which is the amount that *should* be left over of my salary once we have paid for childcare etc. I say *should* because so often we seem to have nothing left at the end of the month because we just buy this and that without thinking about it! That has to stop now or we'll find we go backwards quite fast...

Our house has had to have a lot of work done to it - we've ripped out fitted wardrobes, ripped up floors, redecorated everything, new bathroom, totally ripped out and changed garden front and back etc - and it's an ongoing project, we're due to start remodelling the kitchen (using the existing cupboards but changing worktops, oven, sink etc) and replacing the boiler. The money for that is already put aside so shouldn't affect the monthly stuff but that's if we can stay within budget! :A

I thought here might be a good place to write down everything we do to try and overpay/save money and to try and keep myself on track. I do like a good spend so will have to be extra disciplined with myself!

lulabelle1

Welcome and best of luck with your journey.... Subscribe to a few threads/diaries and I'm sure they will assist with keeping you on the straight and narrow!

TakingThePlunge

Thanks lulabelle1! I will do, have just set up a regular standing order online to overpay £500 a month. So this is really happening!

Think I will try and cut back on food shopping spend this month and see if I can eek out some more pennies to put towards it! :cool:

jezebel

Welcome and good luck with it.

Have you set up a budget spreadsheet? Always a good way to track your spending and see where that extra money is going at the end of each month. Martin has quite a comprehensive one that even covers things like haircuts and holidays! Also, don't forget to allow yourself a few small treats (and maybe some for the kids) as it makes the bigger savings easier

TimmySaver

Best of luck with you MFW journey, TakingThePlunge! I recently started my own diary too, after lurking for many years!

I'm going to subscribe to yours in the hope of getting some ideas

PrincessLou

Good luck! I've just subscribed :j

Have you considered doing an SOA and maybe we could spot areas where you could cut back your spending?

TakingThePlunge

Thanks for the warm welcomes guys! I have been at work all day and just saw these, tried to reply and had already forgotten my password! Not a great start huh??

We do have a budget spreadsheet somewhere but it needs updating - I will try and do that ASAP so I can get some opinions on where I can maybe cut back. We aren't trying to live like paupers - with two small kids I want them to still be able to do clubs etc - but am happy to cut back if we're obviously being silly and overspending on unnecessaries!

I've just listed a few bits and bobs on the old bay of e. Sure I won't get much for them but it's all helpful

TakingThePlunge

Think I have the OH on board with this! he's online at mo working out what we can get for the Xbox and wii that never get used. Probably not a huge amount one there are new gen consoles but at least they'd be out from the TV cabinet!

We're in a bit of limbo at the moment as my car broke down a few weeks ago and is STILL in the garage! They can't figure out what is wrong and having spoken to them yesterday it's looking like a very big bill could do without that at the mo!

Anyway onwards and upwards - our first overpayment went out yesterday. Hurrah!

Pushkin

Hi exciting to see a new diary!

You mentioned selling your games consoles and I wanted to mention £bay to you. I have only recently started selling on but one of the things I sold was my k1ndle f1re. I got £80 for it which I actually thought was quite good.

I know from looking at companies like M0sic M@gpie they would pay a lot less so I just wanted to let you know about that - am sure you are already aware but as you say you want to get as much for them as possible.

Good luck.

TakingThePlunge

Thanks Pushkin! Yes I think we will try ebay first - he looked into prices for selling to the shops and the buying sites etc and it was a pittance. I know they're only sitting gathering dust but I'd rather not give them away for nothing if I can help it

My little bit of money saving (or rather not money wasting) today - we had three packs of meats in fridge due to be used by today. Normally I'd end up missing this fact and have to throw things away cos they go off, but because I've been thinking about it I was aware they needed using... So lots of cooking ready for the freezer going on here today :T
We had so much left because OH has been away quite a few nights this week so we haven't been using as much food as usual.

TimmySaver

TakingThePlunge wrote: »

Think I have the OH on board with this!
Anyway onwards and upwards - our first overpayment went out yesterday. Hurrah!

Two excellent bits of news. Great to hear that it's going well