Mountainlioness' diary: the MFi3 journey

mountainlioness

Hope so! It's a pretty good deal in the current climate and at least we can get out at any time without penalty if we want to (and of couse, make plenty of overpayments) always a bit nervewracking as you wonder if you've done the right thing but our excel spreadsheet says we have so am sticking by that!:rolleyes:

Have managed to save on my car insurance renewal as well as the mobile - got it down £82 using the Martin L system:j but really need to tackle our spending at the moment. Budgeting and restraint are a bit out the window at the moment (although the house is really coming together now!)

mountainlioness

Hola!

Wow - so much going on on the main thread - good luck to all those changing jobs and hatching sprogs! :j We're hoping to do the latter later this year so will join the MFi3 baby-making community then!

Speaking of which, we have just got to the point thanks to a payrise where we can just squeak by on one of our salaries - pay the mortgage and bills, put food on the table and fuel in the car (erm...:rolleyes: ), maybe not save too much or have the "extras" we now enjoy but still survive. Bit of a milestone for us as it's really the green light for the baby-making

These means that we should be saving the other salary - or at least most of it - right now in preparation. But every month we're using up all the extra cash on clearing the credit cards (whatever we're treated ourselves to in the month before ) and giving ourselves allowances (as well as saving and overpaying of course!)

Time for a serious plan to get out of these bad habits and start making the most of this pre-sprog time.

Luckily we have someone in our spare room, maybe all summer, so all that should go in the fund. We're planning to get some minor building work done on the house this winter (will give us 3 beds plus study so pretty future proof) so not everything will go off the mortgage but there's no excuse for not doing some serious saving.

mountainlioness

We now have A PLAN!

Added up our bills, plus food and fuel and existing savings - multiplied it out for the rest of the year and deducted that from our conservatively estimated joint salaries (they vary) -which left over 10k! What the blinkin eck have we been doing with our cash recently?!

We get an allowance for personal expenses (£2.3k til end of the year combined), and I've also allowed:
£300 for our pre-xmas booze cruise
£700 - 350 each for work clothes (we both have the kind of jobs where you need to look smart and we both need a new suit)
£350 for takeaways (we have the BEST local curryhouse - just ain't realistic to budget that one out of the window!)
£1000 for extra joint spending - most likely the odd bit of DIY. This is all over the next 7 months

We might spend less, but that's the ceiling, end of. Absolutely everything else, that's over £5.5k we're gonna save.

The plan is:
1. Overpay on mortgage by minimum of £330/month
2. Increase our major savings pot from £300/month to £420 (just switch to Bradford and Bingley). This will pay for the building work and sprog fund)
3. Increase our ISAs from £100/month to £180
4. Save £200/month in our easy access e-savings "float" account for emergencies
5. Increase our xmas saving to £30/month so we don't have to dip into any other savings.
6. Save every penny from renting the room and split between the pot and the mortgage.
7. When hubster's commission is good, the extra salary also gets split, ditto with my annual bonus (though there may be a teensy weensy little treat in there too! )

We already save a small amount for annual expenses and hols...

When I was doing this I realised I'm not much of a MFWer - less than half of this is going towards the mortgage. I suppose people would argue this is a bit misguided... I guess I'm a bit too cautious - I like to have some little pots of money "just in case".

so am opening The Plan up to critique... if you had £5.5k to save in whatever way over the rest of 2008, where would you put it? (double entendres welcome!)

setmefree2

Just wanted to wish you luck;)

mountainlioness

Thanks SMF!

Today I checked our mortgage balance and we're at £252,756 - which is a lot of money, but we started this challenge just under a year ago at over £263k so it ain't too shabby :beer: I think our goal was £25k over 3 years so we're on target too!

I still find the sheer size of our mortgage compared to so many on here pretty scary, particularly with our family plans but I really hope we can knuckle down in the next 12 months and get some serious saving/OP under our belts so we're a bit more comfortable.

Fuel prices (now 127.9/l diesel in our area) have finally got to the stage when public transport is (marginally) cheaper so hubby and I are going to invest in a folding bike to share and start getting the train on the odd day. He already car shares about 3 days a week and I've just found someone who might be interested so hoping to cut the bills a tadge on that front.

Also, hubs is taking his Institute of Advanced Motorists test on Sat, conveniently just before his car insurance is up for renewal so fingers crossed! I'm going to post up on the insurance board but if anyone knows which insurers take notice of IAM let me know

Cheers!

ML

abouttimetoo

Hi Mountainlioness

Well done you on how much you have reduced your mortage by in the last year. I know what you mean about the size of your mortgage - I feel exacty the same way and I'm single so it's all down to me:o

The fuel prices are scarey aren't they, on a personal level I only do c.2000 miles a year so I'm not too affected but I know the situation is hitting many people hard

Best wishes

mountainlioness

Cheers, ATT

I'm really pleased because we can't generally overpay by more than £2-300 so to see that kind of fall is brilliant. That's between 2 though so what you're doing is much more impressive! :T

I do about 8k a year so it's not as bad as for some but just sitting down and working out how much goes down the pan each and every day was a bit sobering. DH is a salesman so gets a certain no of pence per mile - he also drives an efficient car but we may hit the point soon when it costs more than he gets back. It does make me laugh in some ways though as his nobster of a boss drives a w**k tank and ever since he bought it it's been costing him to do work miles !?! what an idiot - why pay to do stuff for your job just so you can announce to the world you've got a good salary? As you might be able to tell, am not a big fan

setmefree2

abouttimetoo wrote: »

The fuel prices are scarey aren't they, on a personal level I only do c.2000 miles a year so I'm not too affected but I know the situation is hitting many people hard

Hi

The SMFs have very low mileage and we have gone on to NU's pay-as-you-go motor insurance scheme, and it's saving us money:money:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/compare-cheap-car-insurance

Saint Martin talks about it here...it's very gd.;)

setmefree2

The SMFs had a big mortgage (still have:rotfl:) just 5 years ago - but you just have to keep going. It'll be hard, when everyone else has gone as they are paid up, we'll still be slogging away...:p

mountainlioness

Yup, we're the long haulers! :rolleyes:

hey ho that'll teach me to live in herts and break all the rules of sensible house-buying

I do go through phases of being really enthusiastic about the whole MSE/MFi3 thang (in one at the mo- DH thinks am obsessed). We have spreadsheets, we have cabbages, we have slow cooker meals and a lean mean budget... ok we also now have 3 lovely new prints (our local print/framing place has an annual half price sale and we were 1st in the queue for an amazing - and huge - coast-scape and 2 etchings, we also bought 2 further etchings for DM and DD for xmas) but there is a budget line for it! We're not very good a total dedication to the MSE cause - our weaknesses are food and pictures (usually old maps) so no point scraping back the budget too much.

End of June we're paying off the last of our large credit card bills (we pay in full every month on a cashback card - this has been eating up a lot of our spare salary and we decided enough was enough) so The Plan starts in earnest on 25th (pay day) I actually want to get cracking with this even though it means less financial freedom - am looking forward to seeing the savings/OP grow. Our re-mortgage with HSBC starts on 1st October so hoping to make hay while the sun shines (one of our current products with Nationwide is BOE-0.11 , hard to believe from today's perspective!)

DH is off doing his IAM test - I'd better get on with working on my doctorate - then it's cabbage time later!

Cheers

ML