Hope is not an Effective Financial Strategy

shangaijimmy

So over the 2 months of this diary there have been a few tweaks and amendments to income and outgoings, so i thought it appropriate to post our monthly budget. Overall its not too ground breaking, but sets a good picture of our family life!! Its a very fluid budget that allows us to live and pay off the mortgage debt fairly aggressively, with a goal of ages 46 and 43 and both kids still in school (plan for university costs!)

Income - £3386.96

Outgoing
Mortgage - £687.26
Council Tax - £177
House Insurance - £11.38
Mortgage Cover - £33.83
Life Cover - £13.80
Mrs SJ Gym - £9.99
Mrs SJ Mobile - £10
Line Rental - £16.40
Water - £42.69
Gas & Electric - £108 (paid back underspend and now on track)
Me Private Pension - £150
Car Insurance - £18.20
Car Insurance 2 - £18.82
TV Licence - £12.12
Pet Insurance - £9.30
Premier Sports - £9.99
Mortgage Overpayment - £423
Total - £1760.34

Monthly Allowances
Petrol Me - £80
Petrol Mrs SJ - £120
Food - £320
Total - £520

shangaijimmy

Halifax rewards have been swept up by tesco savings and promptly dispatched to the mortgage account.

That's £15 i'll never pay interest on ever again!
That's also 2 days worth of interest for the month taken care of!
Its also £8 worth of interest saved!

Great start to the weekend...

[Deleted User]

SOA looks good, gotta love Halifax

Tonight my MSE evening consists of brewing up 9 litres of banana wine Though some will be freeze distilled Got everything ready inc boot full of bananas!

The wife has point blank refused to drink my previous attempts at banana wine until she picked up my glass by mistake and thought it was a quality wine

Other than that, working Sun - helps with mortgage OPs and extra pension payments

Have a great weekend!

shangaijimmy

Banana wine?? i appreciate your wife's reluctance as the name puts you off. We use up our bananas with banana bread and banana and white choc muffins!!

choccielover

ATB for interest saved I have a spreadsheet that shows my original mortgage and interest by month (all 26 years ) then one that takes into account the ops.

The difference between the 2 is my interest saved.

Again, not wholly accurate as I can't seem to get my calculated interest to match what I am being charged but it's close enough for me

Chocs

[Deleted User]

shangaijimmy wrote: »

Banana wine?? i appreciate your wife's reluctance as the name puts you off. We use up our bananas with banana bread and banana and white choc muffins!!

Get it right and it tastes and looks indistinguishable to regular wine made from grapes. Careful not to use to much of the skin, then you get banana skin wine which is only suitable for the alcoholic content, yuk...!

Banana bread is great but never thought of white choc muffins before. The wife has just bought new muffin baking tins for the oven...

shangaijimmy

Muffins are perfect if you stick it the microwave for 20s before you eat it, the choc is perfect then...

shangaijimmy

I've just posted this on the mortgage free between 2025 and 2030 thread so i thought i may as well do the same on here.

The link below is my house of bricks for the fridge. Very simplistic, and as you can see i colour in a brick on the printed sheet, then make a note of the date on my spreadsheet! At the start of each year i print a new copy off with the dates on it, so Mrs SJ can see how fast/slow we're progressing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-RWg-v4lfUuXzJZUjFQcFBZUkE/view?usp=sharing

shangaijimmy

Quiet weekend really. Sold a few things on eBay, 5 to be exact, but spent the money on golf things as soon as I'd sold!!

Also my small change jar has moved passed the £20 mark, so I'll be moving the £10 into mortgage account in the next day or 2. I hoped I'd make £60 a year in small change (anything less than 20p) but I'm slightly behind and looking like £50 is more realistic. At the minute I pay into mortgage every time I get £10, but am thinking of moving to £5 amounts in future for extra motivation through faster achievements! 1 x £5 payment per month seems feasible?!

[Deleted User]

shangaijimmy wrote: »

Quiet weekend really. Sold a few things on eBay, 5 to be exact, but spent the money on golf things as soon as I'd sold!!

Also my small change jar has moved passed the £20 mark, so I'll be moving the £10 into mortgage account in the next day or 2. I hoped I'd make £60 a year in small change (anything less than 20p) but I'm slightly behind and looking like £50 is more realistic. At the minute I pay into mortgage every time I get £10, but am thinking of moving to £5 amounts in future for extra motivation through faster achievements! 1 x £5 payment per month seems feasible?!

Great plan, sounds like you can pay extra OPs direct into your mortgage?

With our current HSBC deal I'm limited to the regular monthly 20% OPs which is great but I'd like to do ad-hoc payments too. Instead I just put money into the complex world of multiple high interest current accounts all feeding each other hoping the wife does not spend it prior to the next re-mortgage :mad:

Like you trying to get the mortgage cleared before high school is finished whilst also contributing extra to the pension...

Feels like climbing a mountain at the moment

Hmm... sorry the above sounds depressing, don't mean it to.

Think I need to do one of the motivational house brick pictures to see progress