5 years and counting to freedom!

Frugalfamily3

Ooohhhh thanks Petal it probably is. I'm on my iPad tonight and it won't open the link, so will crank up my laptop tomorrow after work and take a look properly. If I start playing with it now it would be a very very late night cos I love spreadsheet fiddling

I decided to ask OH to do the spreadsheet over the weekend as we're away so will have more time in the evenings without house distractions. Might not need to now. Thanks again Petal x

Right cuppa and bed soon methinx
Night all
FF x

Petal88

Haha I know what you mean, I've been sat with it myself for the last 50 minutes! Can't decide if it's inspirational or if the huge amount of interest to pay is just depressing...

lawriejones1

One tip that had earned me hundreds is to renegotiate all bills through Quidco - I've earned over £500! That and saving all £2 coins. And using up everything (and I mean EVERY) but of food we buy.

The most important thing is to enjoy saving.

Frugalfamily3

Those are good tips Lawriejones. Thank you

The one about Quidco I'm going to look into and OH saves the £2 coins for our trips away so we have spending money that way. I've done a menu plan for a week so far and organised the freezer space so working on reducing the Ff3 food mountain

Plan for today:
Get outa bed in time to make lunch for work, unlike yesterday!
Buy spuds for mash (so not a nsd)
Look at mortgage spreadsheet that Petal sent the link for
Make sausage casserole from scratch with DS

Oh I forgot to say that I have had a total of £350 taken out of my account over the last 2 months for a car loan I no longer have. I sorted that yesterday and it's being refunded to me. So I can OP a bit more this month :j

MyBestJumper

Welcome back FF3! Another old timer with a new name here. Good luck with your plans!

Frugalfamily3

Evening

I think my OH is reverting back to childhood. He came home last night with 5 packs of mini smarties that were reduced from £1 each to.... Drum roll...... 10p each. They were Halloween trick or treat stock . So £5 worth for 50p! Also got reduced price muffins . So that's tomorrow's brekkie sorted

I've looked at and played with the mortgage spreadsheet. It's ace. Thanks Petal

And in other news... I'm paying my first overpayment tomorrow into the bank. Woohooo!!!!

Frugalfamily3

Well I've paid the first shiny new overpayment into the mortgage. We had £124 made up of a refund from car tax and the rest in coins. I rounded it up to £130. Using the Mse overpayment calculator, I found out that were saved £54 in interest! That's blaady brilliant in my opinion . Oh and in my bank they've installed a coin counting machine free to use for customers. This will save me having to count coins and delay paying them until I have a £1 worth in the money bags. A winner of a day! AND we had 2 vouchers for money off in Mr T so, as we're away for the weekend now, we popped in for hotel room nibbles and wine etc and found we could use both coupons together. We saved £8!!!

Happy weekend xxx

Frugalfamily3

Finally home after a lovely 3 night break to beautiful Cambridge. It was booked before I started this diary and was not mfw style at all but there needs to be a balance between frugality and enjoyment I think. It's our 7th anniversary today so we wanted to mark it :beer:

The mortgage op was showing in the account this morning and that account is now linked to my current account so I can Tilly tidy to my hearts content. Yay!

Im going to put together a menu plan for the week ahead in a bit, cos that might kick me back to reality. Oh for nice cosy pub lunches and restaurant dinners

Will get ironing done after tea ( I don't mind ironing if I'm watching something I enjoy on telly so we're going to watch a film I really want to see - Mechanical. If it's bad then the ironing gets postponed lol

Frugalfamily3

Oops the film we watched was Ex Mechanica (or ex machina). Either way it was very very good!

I've been doing some thinking and I'm not sure this NSD will work this side of Christmas, and certainly not this month, given that we went away last weekend for 3 nights. So, I'm going to aim for as many NSD,s as possible but not set a firm target number until January.

Been scanning in recipes from old magazines tonight to use in my menu planning. I didn't realise that some of the drawers in the two upright freezers were not all full, so when I started to look at menu planning earlier, I realised that as we have been eating out of the freezers for about three weeks, I only have enough for around 8 evening meals plus things like herbs, bread etc. When I did my freezer lists I didn't really look at the space in the drawers. Daft I know. Sooooooo lovely OH and I plan to hit C@stco at the weekend. I'm menu searching so I know what to buy for meals. My aim is to buy enough meat to see us through 3-4 weeks of meals for 3 of us for no more than £150. Does that sound extravagant?

Frugalfamily3

A quick update needed I think, cos I haven't for ages!!!! Shame on me.
Since my last post we've done the Costco shop and stayed within budget and also stocked up on non food stuff too. So apart from fresh food like milk and veg we don't need to buy anything. BUT impulse buying has tripped us up, and one of the kids had a birthday, AND Christmas is round the corner so the true mow lifestyle has defeated us

BUT I op'd £50 off the mortgage today, so I'm nearly at the £200 target for the month. Woohoo!!!!

Tomorrow I'll get my menu plan sorted for the week ahead and bake some bread for lunches. We have a small pork joint in the freezer, reduced price of course, so that's going in the oven tomorrow for the weeks sandwiches with the chicken I'm doing for Sunday dinner.

Now I'm off to catch up with diaries. Happy days x