Mountainlioness' diary: the MFi3 journey

mountainlioness

Hey DH and Move to Portugal and thanks for your messages!

Chinese totally not frugal - bill last night came to £52, £18 of which was beer... best part of £15 each for all you can eat, which transpired as actually not all you can eat but a prescribed no of dishes from each course! Having come over all indignant at the beginning at this contravention of trades descriptons blah blah blah was absolutely stuffaroonied by halfway through the mains That'll learn me as they say. Hubby's 'itch' has now been scratched so we can go back to normal, frugal, service...

Off Freecycle plum-picking shortly - HB has decided that one can indeed have enough crumble so am scouring Delia for an easy plum-based recipe that doesn't involve going to Sainsbury's for extra ingredients :rolleyes: Ah the life of an MFi3!

On Saturday we leave for our coast-to-coast cycling expedition, which is pretty darn MSE as hols go. Pre-booked our train tickets and are getting to and from the north-east for £34 each... Camping as we go so accommodation should only be £10/night or thereabouts. Only major expenditure will be the evening pub dinners and pints of ale! We're putting £50 of our allowance in each, plus our £40 food budget for the week so target is to keep as near that budget as poss. Will report back!

Have a good rest of banks hols everyone :j

Karmacat

Hi ML

Your holiday sounds great! Let us know how it went when you've gone (so to speak!).... interested about the freecycle plums - somebody with plum trees offers them out for the picking on your freecycle group? Don't quite get it, sorry.

In gen, I think the idea of a mfi3 diary is a great one! All the little tiddly bits I earn here and there go into a separate account, and when they accumulate to the max £500 that Nationwide let you pay off, thats where they're going. I use the Olympic Challenge for that, tho, cos the amounts *are* tiddly- a fiver here and there. Ah, the day when I'm getting hundreds........... hi ho! Okay, rabbiting now, gonna stop. Have a good bank hol.

catshark88

I'm paying tiny bits off the mortgage as it's linked to our current account. I tend to round down the amount outstanding each day and its often under a fiver. The extra work for Barclays is my way of getting my own back for the hassle when I was moved from the Woolwich. How sad is that...:D

mountainlioness

Hi Karmakat - yes, twice now someone's posted on my local freecycle site to say they had more fruit in their back gardens then they could handle so fellow freecyclers could come and PYO! It's brilliant! Picked FAR too many plums, must've been about 5 kg! Made a plum clafoutis for dinner tonight (plus baked in a kind of sweet yorkshire puddingy type of batter yum), stewed a load and still have a couple of kg still to ripen :T

What is the olympic challenge btw? I'm with Nationwide too so would be great to get to the £500 monthly max!

mountainlioness

Just realised after reading Caz' diary that I never did a 'state of play' post so here is mine...

As you can see, we have a HUGE mortgage - we had to double our existing one to move for my new job, which is in a v expensive part of the country... although my employer paid for a lot of the relocation, the cost of the house plus the £10k stamp duty took their toll... :eek:

My OH and I have a joint account into which both our salaries go. We are both on what I see as good salaries for our ages and stupidly didn't realise what impact we could have had on our mortgage when we were in the old house. We spent a lot of our spare cash eating out (we lived in a freak centre of amazing food in the middle of rural Essex, which did nothing for our waistlines or mortgage balance :rolleyes: ). I had been MSEing for a while but in an ad hoc and low level way, nothing like now!

It's only now that we are paying 40% of our joint salary in mortgage that we've clocked the mortgage o/payment thing and have started to budget and plan properly.

Anyway, we have a base mortgage and 2 further advances, all on different tracker rates. We are concentrating all our overpayments on the most expensive, currently 6.09%. Our target minimum is £300/month though we had a bit of spending spree in August which we've paid off the credit cards in full this month (force of habit - hate paying interest!) I'd like to get that to the maximum £500/month (though we theoretically could do £500 on each of the three amounts - v unlikely!!)

In addition to the mortgage we are saving for a safari in Sept 08, for which we need to save about £4k, and to build up reserves in our savings to cover for emergencies. I've heard the ideal is 3 months' outgoings and we're basically nowhere near that.

At the moment, it splits about £300 on mortgage, £400 into the general savings/safari fund and £300 into the emergency float fund, which is an e-savings a/c linked to our Nationwide flex a/c (current a/c).

Waiting to hear what my PRP is - that will determine how much extra we have to play with. Will hear mid Sept - eek!

Anyway, I'd like to boost the amount of money we can put aside one way or another and would welcome any advice people may have. Quidco, pigsback etc will bring in only so much and I never seem to be the 'right' demographic for Test n Vote surveys. The only issue is that we don't have much spare time so what little we have we tend to want to spend together - so an enterprise we could share would be great.

Happy to post a full SOA if ppl would find it helpful.

Thanks!

ML

mountainlioness

Just a short note today as OH and I are travelling this afternoon for a funeral tomorrow Puts everyday life and worries into perspective...

Ashamed to say that have only today got hold of Martin's Money Diet book Although I did get it from the local library so have hopefully recovered some MSE cred! Although we're doing a lot it was interesting to see that there were actually some 'no-brainer' type things we weren't! We've never really saved for holidays (safari is the 1st) or xmas for example, relying on our salaries or short-term use of the credit card. Of course, this kyboshes savings and longer-term planning so have decided it's about time we incorporated these into our savings plan so everything can stay on track... Another step along the road, even a small one, has got to a good thing.

I must also take a sec to sing the praises of Stardrops, that bargainacious MSE Old Style institution. Got our first bottle from Netto the other day and it turned its reasonably priced hand admirably to tasks Mr Muscle and I had been baulking at. Am now a firm believer that it should now turn its able attention to more taxing tasks than my loo - world peace perhaps? Am firmly ditching the brands for lower cost alternatives - just need to wean OH off his expensive addiction to top of the range toothpaste and shaving gel!

Anyway, have a good Tue, see you all later in the week

ML

Dithering_Dad

Hi Mountainlioness! Good luck with the diary and the MFiT quest. I've added a link to the MFiT thread so that if people click on your name on the MFiT OP, they will be directed to your diary.

mountainlioness

Wow! Thanks DD! :T

Just got back from our 24-hour, 400-mile round trip for the funeral... absolutely knackered and a 4.30 am start for a flight to Scotland for work... So much on my mind at the mo the last thing I need (back late Fri, then leaving 7am for our grand coast-to-coast cycling extravanganza OMG!)

HAve done some more planning on the trip and looks like we can camp most of the way and have also joined the YHA so we can make use of hostels and bunkhouses rather than B&Bs. It's valid overseas and it seems that a lot of the places are more like 2* budget hotels/B&Bs (including ones with rooms for 2 ) so brilliant for city breaks etc. It was £20 for a family ticket for a year so hoping to make that back in a couple of stays!

Anyway, may not catch you guys til we get back so have a good week and a bit - please feel free to post me some messages in the meantime! :j

jobbingmusician

Hi ML and congrats on an interesting blog! Now, I talked to DH about your aerial amplifier and he says it definitely should NOT be that which is eating up your leccy. Sorry if this comes as bad news. They are designed to use at max 25w, which would mean that you won't really notice any difference to your bill if you unplug it - and they are designed to be on 24/7, so it won't do it any good to be constantly plugged in and out IYSWIM. (This is assuming it isn't an enormous commercial thingy).

If you want us to diagnose what is eating your leccy, post a list of what is plugged into every socket! But you know the theory that money = wattage x time the appliance is on, don't you?

mountainlioness

Hi Jobbing Musician

Eek! Was so pleased with self on identifying evil leccy snaffler! Am totally at a loss now as we always turn off TV, stereo, wireless broadband, laptop and mobile chargers etc etc off at the plug after use.

The only things that stay on are: home phones, fridge, freezer, microwave, cooker, dishwasher and washing machine. We don't use the microwave much so was searching high and low for the plug but no sign (all appliances integrated). The house is only 18 months old so would be surprised if the appliances were hugely wasteful...

Happy for any diagnostic advice you may have - thanks!

----

I am now in my hotel in Scotland - first logon is not work email but MSE - the addiction worsens! Having devoured the Money Diet am now into Thrifty Ways and have already made a list of traditional, basic cleaning products to stock up on once the evil branded products have been finished. Down to Netto for white vinegar, bicarb and value washing powder for me! Have also set up 2 new linked e-savings accounts for xmas and holiday saving. :A

Just seen the new Tips and the Npower Sign 8 online product but checked energyhelpline and we are already on a cheaper tariff! In fact, only 2 products came out as cheaper than ours (equipower and equigas) but with a total annual saving of £3 I think we'll stick with EP&EG as the customer service from Southern Energy (who do their 'front end') has been good and it's also an ethical tariff.

But I AM on the switching trail for our broadband, which is up this month on AOL. Unfortunately we're locked into BT's new 12 month contract (used to be 3:mad: ) so can't do an integrated package but there seem to be a few broadband-only products on the market for £10/month. As we're light users (no downloading of games or movies) we should be able to find something.

Only source of agro is my experience with online consumer panels (see my post on 'anything else moneysaving' ). Taking all your answers then telling you the survey's closed, what a swizz. I think I'm just going to stick to pigsback and quidco and the like and stop wasting my time on surveys... Am still on the search for other sources of income though, every little helps.

Ho hum better go -catch you guys later!