Can definitely do better!

new_mortgageeee

An excellent day financially - though more by luck than judgement. NSD (home now and won't go out again), plus received £48 back on my bathroom (quote accidentally included two sets of installing a cupboard!), found an email to say I'd won £30 on the lottery at the weekend, and came home to find a letter telling me a new owner of an old flat had challenged the council tax band and I was due a refund of £290.99! Phoned to arrange direct payment rather than waiting for a cheque. Popped the £48 back in the house renovation pot; the others will probably go half to OPs half to new house fund.

Feeling lucky :j :j

new_mortgageeee

Mid month update for Feb:
Main mortgage OPs = £128.41
Smaller mortgage OPs = £200
House renovations/big bills savings = £50

I think that will be it for spare money this month, the standing order into the House renovations/big bills savings will go across on Monday for £285, along with £300 into the new house fund. Anything left over will go towards rounding the main mortgage OP up to a nice number!

Happy to still be on budget for groceries shopping and general expenditure - £244/£500 for the month. In fact I've just remembered that a) Feb is really short so there are only 11 days left, and b) I'm away for five of those days and shouldn't have any out of the ordinary expenditure for the other six :j

Have had a great couple of days at the allotment - much digging and edging, and today the first seeds for the year are in! Radishes (mainly to mark out area dividers - but tasty too!) and parsnips - slightly suspect old seeds so we've gone for an early sowing in case none of them germinate and we can try again! OH back over there now finishing digging and doing a tip run whilst I do some work (after spreadsheet updates!).

I hope everyone has had good weekends

NMx

new_mortgageeee

Looking at Feb as a fairly standard month, I think my monthly OP targets will be:

Mortgage 2 (2.39%): £250 (max 10% allowance)
Mortgage 1 (2.19%):£100 plus rounding up to 00.00 (c.£80 at the moment)

NSD today apart from 5p at the library to photocopy my drivers licence.

new_mortgageeee

Get paid tomorrow :j:j

Nothing more to pay for Feb so as things stand:

Mortgage 1: £100 regular OP :starmod:
Mortgage 1 nice round number: £78.41 :starmod:
Mortgage 2 10% OP: £250 :starmod:

New House savings: £300 :starmod:
Big bills account: £285 :starmod:

Extra savings top ups: £103 :starmod:

That's £1116.41 diverted into savings or OPs this month :j:j:beer:

This is SO much closer to where my last SOA said I should be. I'm delighted!! Can't wait for next month's DD's to start coming out on the 1st now...

new_mortgageeee

A new month, and new OPs to be made!

Preemptively whipped out my OPs and the majority of my savings transfers for this month as soon as I was paid at the end of February. My calculations left me with min. £300 left over (which is now in savings) so there's a decent extra amount should I need to pinch any back for unforeseen spending. And hopefully it will make me feel like I don't have lots of surplus cash (which amazingly I seem to at the moment, now I'm sticking to a pretty strict food budget) and fritter it away. Happy that my spreadsheet budget included only £13 of 'fritter' for February :j

Regular payments have now come out to mortgages, and just waiting for automatic money shuffling (mainly to get max. interest rates on a couple of current accounts) into bills account and new house savings account.

In terms of general budgetary spending in Feb, I went £38 over budget on my day-to-day cc account, but that included £60 worth of gifts and things for the house, so I'll transfer them out of allocated savings once the last cc bill is paid. Overall then, a win for Feb :beer:

Bathroom is paid for (still need to buy tiles - job for next weekend I think) and booked in to start towards the end of April :j had many text shenanigans with the delivery company who just don't want to understand that their big lorry won't fit down Devon lanes that are limited to 6ft! Have done my best, and will see what turns up.

March so far:
Mortgage 1 regular OP: £100/£100
Mortgage 1 nice round number: £57.93/£57.93
Mortgage 2 10% OP: £250/£250

New House savings: £250/£300
Big bills account: £0/£285

Extra savings top ups: £300

Really chuffed with how things stand since the beginning of Jan. Just did a quick 'offset' calculation (what I owe on mortgage vs. what I have in savings) - happy that this is well below my expected £100k at £88,803.

Extending this forwards, my target for this year is to have £40,000 in the new house deposit fund (/invested in a new house!), main mortgage below £100k and mortgage 2 at c.£26,000 (which will be max OPs for the year). That would leave me with a net mortgaged figure of c. £80,000 - a nice number to aim for

new_mortgageeee

Ugh. Definitely feel like about to get walloped with a lurgi !

Still, it has meant that I haven't really been out for the last couple of days, and when I did venture out yesterday it was only to fill my car up.

Weirdly I think the short February has knocked a couple of my payments back - things that were due to go out yesterday are still sat there today, and presumably won't move over the weekend. Ho hum, I'm sure it will all work its way through eventually.

A couple of evenings this week I've been experimenting with doing some online transcription work - does anyone else do this? It definitely isn't as lucrative as some of the survey sites, and the exams you have to pass to join are a bit tough! It's also nearly all US spelling - organisation/organization is my nemesis! But as surveys seems to come and go I thought it might be nice to have that in the background for any idle evenings if I'm twiddling my thumbs. Have currently accrued USD$10.53 (minus paypal fees) - I don't think I'll touch it for now, and just see where it ends up.

OH is staying this weekend, and has promised it will be one of relaxing and pottering about the house/allotment. I really feel like I need a bit of a break! Hope everyone has nice weekends. NMx

jodles16

Sounds like a perfect weekend! Hope you dont end up with the lurgy, though lots is still going around!


You are doing so well with all the saving, very impressive! Exciting to be looking for a new property together as well!


Jodles

new_mortgageeee

Thanks Jodles!

Only had a mild lurgi for a couple of days thankfully - I was worried at the start that it felt like the beginnings of the full-blown flu! Happily spared that horror.

Not much to report from a MFW/MSE point of view. A quiet time of the month. Had three NSDs last week, and only minor top-ups for fresh groceries in between. Did splash out on a new, larger cat-carrier for my moggy. But it was 'delivered' by Hermes - and has subsequently gone AWOL. Currently stuck in the complaints system trying to retrieve it. SIGH.

Despite the delays from February, all my transfers/SOs eventually shifted, and I'm just waiting for tomorrow's final resting place(!) for the various pots and then I'll update my footer and totals for the month. Overall very happy with progress again - the budgeted grocery shopping is making such a difference. And the only difference I'm really noticing is that I'm meal-planning more to make sure I throw away less.

Still dabbling in transcription work, with $23 accrued to date. Prolific seems especially slow at the moment after a little rush about a month ago? Keeping an eye anyway.

Just waiting for the current downpour to blow over and then I'm off to the allotment to get sowing!! Oh, also *smug face* managed a run down to the beach this morning :j. It was glorious, if a little bit chilly.

Happy, relaxing Sundays all. NMx

new_mortgageeee

March figures at financial month-end:
Mortgage 1 regular OP: £100/£100
Mortgage 1 nice round number: £57.93/£57.93
Mortgage 2 10% OP: £250/£250

New House savings: £550/£300
Big bills account: £285/£285

Extra savings top ups: £300

Money diverted to savings or OPs: £1542.93 :eek:

About to pay for breakdown cover and partner’s birthday from bills account, so will go down a little bit. Still, so delighted

new_mortgageeee

Did a last-minute transfer into my bills/house account last night of £28 as I had a payout from transcribing and prolific. Rounded that up nicely.

I've been paid this morning, so I've done my standard OPs -
Mortgage 1 regular OP: £100/£100
Mortgage 2 10% OP: £250/£250

Now to wait until the 1st April to see what the 'nice round number' OP will be for Mortgage 1.

I'm looking forward to my April pay - it will include a 2% pay rise, a salary increment up, and the full tax allowance (in previous years I've paid c. £1k self-assessment tax through my tax code too). Should be a noticeable increase in take-home pay. April, May, and June are my most spendy months in terms of annual bills, car insurance & MOT etc. etc. I think I've budgeted for these all correctly in my bills account - time will tell!

Weekly shop yesterday of £46. Slightly over 'weekly' budget, but well within my monthly pot for March still, so happy with that.

Currently wondering what the cheapest way to buy dahlia tubers is as I'd like some for the allotment.