Searching for Security: Our MFW Diary

Bluefire

£110 overpaid today. £10 from the money I received towards ingredients for one of the cakes I made last weekend, and £100 from a small pot we'd been keeping aside to go on holiday later this year. We've decided just to go camping for a weekend now, so the money isn't needed.

In about 3 weeks we'll be looking to switch energy suppliers. I'm hoping that based on some searches I did yesterday that we might save in the region of around £60 a month, which will definitely come in handy!

The best news of all though is that my Nan is home & getting stronger every day. So very relieved and thankful.

newgirly

Sorry to hear about your gran, I hope she is doing OK now.

Congratulations on the cake its amazing :T

katep23

That cake is stunning!

Bluefire

Our current budget as it stands.

It may seem a bit odd in that there's no categories for presents, holidays, clothes etc here. This is because this is kind of an 'emergency' budget only without the emergency. Basically it's pretty certain we can pay our mortgage off next year if we stick with it, so we're happy to sacrifice these things in the short term in order to reach that goal.

DH's take home wage is £1,573.23. The Club Lloyds account it goes into gives us ~£13 interest a month, which is also included in the budget.

• HSBC Mortgage - £250
  (Our standard payment is £120, so £130 of this is technically an overpayment)
• Energy - £133.86
  (This is far too high, we need to both cut back & switch which will happen next month. I'm expecting another refund from the Co-Op at that point)
• Council Tax - £97
  (Paid monthly)
• Union - £13.19
  (DH is thinking of changing unions. Whether this will be cheaper or not I have no idea)
• Life Insurance - £6.48

All of these come out of DH's account as they are 'fixed' costs. The rest then gets put into the joint account which I manage.

• Family Debt - £300
  (This payment will remain at £300 p/m until the end of next year, when it will drop to £250 for the next 3 years until cleared)
• Grocery Budget - £200
  (Includes the cat & cleaning/washing products. Even with me following the Slimming World plan at the moment we're managing to have spare left from this amount most months)
• Mortgage Overpayment - £120
  (This will increase as & when the energy DD is reduced)
• DH's spends - £90
  (To include mobile phone bill of £7.22 p/m)
• Car Savings- £50
  (MOT, Tax, Insurance, service)
• Water Bill - £23.48
  (Probably a few more measures we could investigate to save money here. Plenty of shared showers going on already though!)
• Phone & Broadband - £2.50
  (Currently on a nifty offer with EE, line rental paid upfront)
• Petrol/Spare - £400
  (Every month £400 is swept into a monthly saver from which withdrawals can be made. This is just to allow for anything unplanned that crops really. DH's commute comes in at around £100 p/m. The majority of the time we have £200-£300 left, which is either saved or overpaid)

Other income

Rental income is £575 p/m. £156.28 goes out to cover the interest only mortgage, the rest at the moment is saved. In October we will start to use rental income as overpayments on our residential mortgage, and then at some point next year, towards renovations we want to do.

My income

Any money I receive varies greatly from month to month depending on how much effort I put into selling/surveys etc. The majority I overpay, keeping around £50-£100 to cover haircuts, toiletries, mobile phone bill of £11.

Bluefire

newgirly wrote: »

Congratulations on the cake its amazing :T

katep23 wrote: »

That cake is stunning!

Thank you both! I've got a feeling this one might be popular as & when I set up shop again.

newgirly wrote: »

Sorry to hear about your gran, I hope she is doing OK now.

She's not doing too badly thank you, staying with my Mum at the moment to recover. Hopefully she'll be back home & back to normal before we know it.

Bluefire

Our annual mortgage statement arrived today, confirming that over the past year we've cleared more than £10,000 off the balance. Even though I knew that from our spreadsheet, it's great to have it in writing!

Luckyinlife

Bluefire wrote: »

Our annual mortgage statement arrived today, confirming that over the past year we've cleared more than £10,000 off the balance. Even though I knew that from our spreadsheet, it's great to have it in writing!

Thats an amazing yearly OP :] wont be long youll be MF :]

Bluefire

£624 overpaid so far this month. £100 from me, £109 from pay day & £415 leftover from last month.

That drops us down into the 15k bracket and brings us another 3 months closer to being mortgage free. Daily interest is now around the £1.10 mark, not far off being under £1 now!

DH should have a pay out of £90 from Topcashback within the next 3 days which will then be overpaid, and I'm hopeful for an energy refund again once we've switched. That probably won't happen until next month though. Looking forward to the lower direct debit kicking in.

Main aim for the month is to start selling again. Listing 3 things & selling 1 does not a decluttering mission make.

Bluefire

Paid off the mortgage today:

• £35 in interest gathered from various savings accounts
• £90 from Topcashback
• £1000 offset savings

Bringing us down into the 14k bracket & knocking another 5 months off our MF date! Hoping to pay the remain £4000 offset savings by the end of the month. We've replaced that money in the savings account with stooze funds for the time being.

Luckyinlife

Great job blue :] smashing it