Getting a mortgage and then becoming mortgage-free!

Kittenkirst

What a fantastic suggestion Fortune!

I feel very inspired even if I do a handful of pots and plant them up....would save me pennies and make the garden a little more functional (& pretty!)

Plus I do like mint in my mojitos in the summer ;P

Kittenkirst

Finally heard about my annual bonus figure and it's a lot higher than I thought- £2k before tax!

My salary increase is 3% so £900 before Tax increased a year which is better than nothing

All in all a chipper day!

The annual bonus was to cover a token OP, cost of kittens & injections and a small amount on flights for gf's 40th this year. Pretty happy that I can take her away for a while later in the year and still make a small OP

Kittenkirst

As I had already been plotting the gf's birthday break, I set to investigating cheap flights for some out of this world destinations (I looked at Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Cuba etc) and found some fantastic flights to EQUADOR at the end of May.

Two return flights swiftly booked to have a (budget) holiday of a lifetime for the gf's 40th- £720 for return flights for two to Equador! Pretty pleased with that, and there's enough in the pot for the kittens and the OP

newgirly

Lovely handy bonus kittenkirst, the holiday sounds exciting as well

Kittenkirst

I'm slinking back in after yesterday's splurge!
NSD today and a few bids on eBay so far, headed to the gym and ran a leisurely 3km as a rehab run for my calf (I did 4km slowly last week) and in preparation for the 5km (or 10km if I feel up to it) obstacle mud run on Saturday. It's come around very quickly :O

chumpy45

You are doing so well, very inspiring with the Ebay sales. I have only tried local FB selling sites so far and have had a little success. Kittens sound like fun and fab bargain flights - well jel as my DSs would say :rotfl:

FloppyDisk

Fantastic salary news, and good luck for the run tomorrow, you've got great weather for it!

Kittenkirst

Hi guys, thanks for the words of encouragement!

I have had another slow & gentle run of 4km last night- when I say gentle I mean slow, they were still crazy hard! Hoping my calf injury will stay at bay and allow me to complete the run fully,

Off to a masquerade ball that the company are laying on tonight- lovely gf isn't coming (not her thing) so she is being taxi there and maybe taxi home if it's not too late...I'm planning on not staying out too late as need to leave for the run at 7am tomorrow and do not want to be doing it with a hangover! (Hoping the company put wine on the table too to help keep the spends of the night down too, I have budgeted for it but I'd like to keep the costs down!)

Guidebook and phrasebook for Ecuador have arrived so started reading up a little on it, gf is very excited and we have been practicing some very basic introductory Spanish (hello, thank you, please etc)

Last small tilly tidy for the mortgage of 63p makes the Overpayment total for March a nice £272.10

A few more bids on eBay received and I have used the app Shopmium yesterday to claim some free milk and try some coffee bags for £1.00 (posh coffe for pretty cheap!), also signed gf and her mum up and got them their chocolate that they get free... once those have accepted I should get £6 in referral credits to use towards the grocery shop this is an experiment into using these style apps and it seems straightforward so far

Kittenkirst

Morning morning! After a heavy going two days I just can't sleep!

Friday at the masquerade party I managed to only spend £19 and got picked up by 11pm rather tipsy and having had a fun night!

Yesterday we took on the Xrunner Mudrunner course and survived! Over two hours of wading through chest height mud, clambering fences, plunging into lakes....I feel pretty battered right now.

We had a team of 11 and ran in three groups- the gf and I were in the second group and am pretty proud of us! One memory that'll stick with me is when gf's shoe got stuck but we couldn't find it, I had to tear into the mud and yank it out. :rotfl:

A celebratory nandos was had (and partly paid for by a group rebate we got!) after we had all showered, im still finding mud everywhere and my socks went straight into the bin!!

Small tilly tidy of 27p this evening and have cashed out £4.27 on Quidco that's now confirmed so that'll be sent once it clears. eBay bids on 5 items so they will sell- hurray!

Busy_Mee1

Gosh that sounds like a hectic but fun weekend. The trip to Equador sounds very exciting, South America is definitely on our list of places to visit and I look forward to hearing all about your trip.
Hope you have a restful day today : )