MFW Baby steps

jodles16

Welcome and good luck Petal! Just like the famous supermarket, every little helps! Best of luck saving for the wedding, its all about balance! I don't feel I am going full MSE, could be a lot more frugal, but the balance feels like it works! With regards to long term on the mortgage we did the same, the way I look at it is if the worst happens we should be able to afford the monthly repayments and in the mean time we will overpay, gives more flexibility!

Jodles

Petal88

Thanks jodles! You're totally right and apart from anything, I worry that if I do this too strictly it'll be a bit like a starvation diet that is bound to end in a binge

Today I've managed to spend just £1.60! Admittedly, that's not including regular transport costs that are inevitable (£5.80 per working day :eek:) and really I shouldn't have spent that at all as it was on naughty snacks from the vending machine at work... still not too bad though!

Petal88

Sounds like the OH might still be coming home over the weekends this month, which will kind of scupper my grocery budget for Nov. It also means he won't get paid extra this month for being away, which I had been counting on... At least I'll get to spend some more time with him which I'm grateful for.

Still need to set up an account with the Spanish bank this weekend and was thinking I should go through some of my stuff and see if I can eb@y any of it. Never done that before! I'm also considering putting the flat up on AirBnB over xmas and new years as we're not in anyway - feels a bit scary but the prices in our area for a flat our size is about £55/night which is excellent money. It might not go towards the mortgage but it would certainly help pay for a few of our wedding guests!

Frugalfamily3

Hi Petal

I've just caught up with your diary and I'm very impressed with your mfw progress

What's Airbnb? I assume it's some way of letting your home out to people but on a day basis? sounds a good idea to make some quick cash if so.

Be careful with eBay by the way. Their and PayPal fees can really dent the money you make, and postage costs can be easily under calculated. I'm not trying to put you off. I've used eBay for lots of stuff I wanted to sell. But I learned by making some quite costly mistakes

Have a lovely weekend x

Petal88

Frugalfamily3 wrote: »

Hi Petal

I've just caught up with your diary and I'm very impressed with your mfw progress

What's Airbnb? I assume it's some way of letting your home out to people but on a day basis? sounds a good idea to make some quick cash if so.

Be careful with eBay by the way. Their and PayPal fees can really dent the money you make, and postage costs can be easily under calculated. I'm not trying to put you off. I've used eBay for lots of stuff I wanted to sell. But I learned by making some quite costly mistakes

Have a lovely weekend x

Thank you FF3, I hope you'll stay for the ride!

Thanks for reminding me about the dangers of eb@y as well - I definitely got burnt last time I tried using it at university when my postage ended up costing me more than the item sold for! I'll be keeping an extra eye on it this time...

As for Airbnb - it's a website where you can put a room or your entire home up for people to stay short term. It's got over 1.5m listings in 190 countries so it's very popular - I use it myself when I go on holiday! As it turns out, the OH is keen on listing our flat after all so we'll be taking pics tomorrow for the website! I was narrowmindedly focusing on xmas/new year alone, but realised that actually, I'm off on work travel several weeks per year where we could make a pretty penny by letting it out then too.

In other news - OH agreed to us taking up Martin on his Plusnet offer from this week's email! That's a casual £180 saved that's going straight into the wedding pot

Luckyinlife

Petal88 wrote: »

Just OP'd 59.03 to take the mortgage amount under the next whole thousand - these baby steps feel good! Now to update the signature too

Well done on the OP petal :] :j

great figure now the mortgage is :]

Must be mad to see such a huge amount of money online on your account tho id sign in every day to take a look if it was me haha

Dird

What ACCA exams are you going to take?

Petal88

Dird wrote: »

What ACCA exams are you going to take?

I've gone a bit nuts and signed up for 4 of them - although one will be a resit so should be easier to revise for... I'm doing P2, P3, P5 and P7. I reckon I'll struggle a bit with 5 and 2 but am hoping I'll pass 3 out of 4 at least!

Have you done the ACCA then Dird?

Petal88

Luckyinlife wrote: »

Well done on the OP petal :] :j

great figure now the mortgage is :]

Must be mad to see such a huge amount of money online on your account tho id sign in every day to take a look if it was me haha

It is mad although I think I'm desensitised to it a bit as a Londoner, and always fully expected to have a mortgage that size. In fact, I'm still not used to seeing people in here with just eg 140k in mortgage! The worst thing is, our next place will come with an even bigger mortgage :eek:


Sorry for the multiple posts btw - I cannot for the life of me figure out how to work the "multiple quote" function!

Luckyinlife

Ya thats it isnt it on here you get to see a lot of different peoples positions around the world not just the area you live in.
for me houses around 100-200k is the norm in London this wouldn't get you a garage in some area worlds apart really. Im just as happy tho maby a bit happier than most haha

The multi quote thing can be done easy enough
Go to reply advanced
then scroll down copy and paste the user name and comment and there is a quote tag to click once its highlighted Next to the insert image