Mortgage free by 2021?!

Sundaysgirl

Amazing progress against your targets - what a start to the year! :T


Imagine if you could do another 11 months like that...

Good work on the fitness goals too, great that you've set yourself a race as something to work towards.

hiddenshadow

Sundaysgirl wrote: »

Amazing progress against your targets - what a start to the year! :T

Imagine if you could do another 11 months like that...

Thanks! That would be amazing. My secret goal for this year is to hit £130,000!

Good work on the fitness goals too, great that you've set yourself a race as something to work towards.

I'm hoping the race will keep up the motivation. I don't mind exercising, though I much prefer the "I exercised!" smug feeling to the "I'm exercising" exhausted feeling. Should get a lot easier once it's light out in the evenings again!

hiddenshadow

Regular February payment has gone through, though not the interest yet. Judging by what the bank told me it would be, the balance should be £156,363.85. Also have the following OPs to make today:

£65.00 budget tidying
£25.00 Swagbucks
£5.00 credit from Clyde$dale for the DD issue
£4.60 Shopitize
£5.10 refund from TFL for a delay last week
£209.07 more budget tidying

...bringing it down to £156,050.08 - should be able to do the last £50.09 during this month, allowing another brick to be coloured in!

Also used some of DH's bonus money to buy another ETF in the S&S ISA, bringing the total there up to £1,000 :T. Thanks to the market recovering a bit it's now worth £1,002.66 :rotfl:. So far the funds cover US and Europe, so plan to add UK, Asia, and some bonds in there eventually to get a good balance.

Ali-OK

Going great guns, well done :T

Rome sounds lovely and Amsterdam is fab too - visited with DS a few years ago now and the perfect walking city

shangaijimmy

Fantastic progress, great stats.

hiddenshadow

Thanks, SJ!

Almost halfway there. £17.74 interest from T$B and our first £5 reward from H@lifax. Current balance is £156,027.34. :j

hiddenshadow

We're into week 2 of meal planning/executing and things are going well.

DH prepared leftovers from last night to take to work today, but I still had 2 portions of leftovers from last week to use.

DH "complained" this evening that we have too much leftovers. I ordered 100 plastic takeaway containers that should arrive tomorrow/Thursday, so I'm hoping we can freeze any leftovers beyond 2 extra portions (1 lunch each) and we can slowly stockpile extra food. That'll come in handy for days when we don't feel like cooking, or don't have leftovers from dinner the night before.

Still evaluating/tweaking our weekly meal lists, but so far so good. Of course, DH also suggested that as we have "extra" chicken from last week's shopping, we should add it to the dogs' kongs as a treat. I pointed out that we could just freeze it and use it later. :rotfl:

hiddenshadow

On the subject of meal planning, just put in a grocery delivery for the weekend that covers a full week (minus some veg that we'll pick up in person), plus some bits for the following week, and some extra bits (herbal tea, laundry powder, etc).

...£45.71. Win! :j

Watty1

Isn't it great seeing the weekly shopping bills fall. I'm in awe of the people who feed themselves for a month on around £100 mind you

hiddenshadow

Me too - I think we'd need a car to be able to shop at multiple places in one go to achieve that, and to be honest I'm not sure it's worth the time/hassle trade-off to us. We'll see if we're willing to do it once we have a car, though!

Yesterday was quite busy - did my run in the morning :j first one with no walking breaks, and amazingly I did 20min just fine! My pace is glacial (just under 13min pace), but it gets the job done.

While I was out DH went into town to run errands, and when he got back we went into London to see The Mikado - I was super tired so almost nodded off throughout, but no fault against the production which was excellent. We also went out to lunch - were going to go to Pizza Express with nect@r vouchers but didn't think to book ahead and the queue was massive. Instead we went for mexican and spent just over £55. :eek: It was really yummy, though, and I have leftovers for lunch, so well worth it. May need to shuffle some money around our budget later in the month when we go out for DH's birthday dinner, though!

On the plus side, having such a busy day yesterday worked out well for the mortgage. I meant to buy a kindle book for 99p but couldn't decide if I wanted it and then forgot. I went to OP that to the mortgage today and Clyde$dale won't do payments less than £1, so an extra penny came out of my allowance money this month. In addition, I'd been eyeing fabric on sale but - again - couldn't make up my mind. Went online today to decide and 1 fabric was sold out, 1 fabric I decided I didn't like well enough, and the last fabric I did really like but only if the sold out one were available too...so I got none of them. Another £33.25 off to the mortgage! I still have £93.31 in my allowance for the month and no idea what I might spend it on, which is nice.

Finally, DH's work signed off on a season ticket loan again. He doesn't "need" it as he's doing PAYG as it works out a tiny bit cheaper (more so if he works from home or is sick), but they don't care about a receipt to prove an expense, so why not? £3k should go into his account this week sometime, and then it'll also go straight on to the mortgage. We'll balance it out by lowering our regular OP by £300/mo as that will be coming out of his salary for 10 months. What's not to like about an interest free loan for a year, and saving approx. £2,300 on mortgage interest long-term?