Searching for Security: Our MFW Diary

Bluefire

2 more days until the new month begins and I'm itching to make overpayments. July is going to be a good month for that I feel. June in some ways didn't go as well as I hoped (I still haven't started to sell anything!) but in others ways really surprised me - we spent less than half of our usual grocery budget, less than £100 over the entire month! No idea how we did that if I'm honest.

Speaking of groceries, the weekend saw a change which should provide some savings for the foreseeable future. I found myself attempting to write a list for a 'monthly shop' once more (we've fallen out of the habit) which included trying to work out how much cat food we'd need for the month. Jess, our resident owner, prefers Felix Sensations fish in jelly above all else, and since they helpfully reduced the packets from 12 to 8 in a box, this has become a costly habit. We normally buy in the supermarket when they're on offer at £2.50, but this is the first time (quite stupidly) that I've ever realise this way one box is only lasting 4 days!

So while researching for alternatives via the mine of information that is MSE, I came across Zooplus who quite handily not only sell bulk boxes of Felix at 72 for £16.99, but also offer free delivery above £29. A short time later and after a kind soul on the pets board offered to refer me as a friend (giving me a 10% code) there is now 144 packets of Felix making their way towards us for the princely sum of £30.58. By my reckoning that's a saving of around £15, especially if the 2% Quidco cashback comes through.

Well chuffed with that, the cat can stay after all!

Bluefire

Yay, it's the first day of the month! :j Let's start July off with a bang shall we?

A massive £947 squirrelled away into savings this week. June was a very quiet month indeed in terms of grocery & general spends, so there was plenty left over for the pot. An added bonus is that HSBC don't take the first payment for the new BTL remortgage until August, so the rest of the extra savings have come courtesty of an interest payment free month.

£410 overpaid on the residential mortgage. We are now 79% of the way there with overpayments, 82% with offset savings. 65% when it comes to the overall target. Mortgage free date (if we were to cease overpaying & just do our standard payment) has dropped a couple of months to August 2021.

But most excitedly, the mortgage balance is now in the 16K bracket. Happy days! :beer:

Bluefire

I have finally started selling stuff! Or at least trying to anyway. Just local Facebook groups for now as it makes life easier. Currently the goal is one item a day, which may not sound like a lot but it's certainly better than the zero I was listing before!

Hopefully as time goes on I'll step it up because today I've set myself the goal of making £1400 by the end of the year. This is on top of the £200 per month I'm already putting towards overpayments. Hopefully the majority of this can be achieved through decluttering the house, but I may have to look into other methods as well. Time to start frequenting the 'make £10 a day challenge' again I feel!

Bluefire

£108 overpayment made. There's a good reason for the odd £8 this time which will hopefully become clear next week. Another month sliced off the mortgage free date, and both the savings & overpayment targets for this year are now at 80% or more completed. Ticking along quite nicely all in all.

Yesterday saw a rare splurge for us after the purchase of a Cineworld Unlimited card for £144. Thankfully we have 3 nearby cinemas to choose from, so at least we'll be getting out & about a bit more now. Luckily there's plenty of good films coming out this year too (although I'll happily see the bad ones as well!)

Nothing sold yet on the Facebook front. I shall persevere nonetheless.

Bluefire

First item sold! A mini oven we've not used for years (I used to do all of my cupcake baking in it, 12 cupcakes at a time for stalls selling 150 cupcakes plus! Long days...) so that's £15 in the kitty. I've also listed a job lot of large first class stamps collected from doing the RM survey on eBay, hoping they'll fetch around £65-£70. Feels good to get off the starting block at least.

Bluefire

Another £100 lopped off the total yesterday. My eBay listing finishes on Sunday, so I should be able to make another decent overpayment then which will probably be the last one for the month. Need to get back into selling over the next week, I said I'd do one a day this month, it's the 11th and I've only advertised four things!

In the meantime though, another 30th birthday means I have another cake to make. I'm off to the bakery!

Bluefire

Today's birthday cake effort!

Luckyinlife

Stunning looooks amazing wow

Bluefire

My eBay listing netted around £53 after fees, so I topped it up a bit this evening and made an overpayment of £87, just enough to knock another month off the MF date. I may have only left myself with £2.86 in the bank though... oops. Good job I'm not planning on going anywhere for a while!

Bluefire

It's been a rough few days. My Nan was rushed into hospital on Wednesday as her heart kept stopping. Absolutely terrifying thing to witness. Touch wood though, she had a pacemaker fitted yesterday & is recovering well. Considering she's 91 & had 2 major heart attacks at age 70, I think her heart has done pretty well to get her this far really.

When I haven't been at the hospital I've been throwing myself into the finances to keep my mind occupied. Our budget has been re-worked, and I plan to post it up here later. It felt a bit hypocritical of me to offer advice on the budgets of others without sharing my own.

The good news is that our tenants wish to sign a 12 month contract, which makes the plan for paying off the mortgage seem a bit more realistic. As things stand, I have the balance reaching zero next September, that is as long as I keep winning the fight to pay any spare money off the balance & not on holidays (which I'm sure DH would much prefer!)