Getting a Grip and Saving towards the mortgage

Busy_Mee1

It is a glorious morning here and it looks set to be another beautiful day. It was like summer yesterday. I managed to get a few outdoor jobs done yesterday and cleaned the decking, as well as a few indoor jobs. I went to the gym first thing and then called to the butchers on the way home to buy meat for the freezer.....this worked really well for us last month.

We managed a trip to the garden centre too, which was absolutely heaving but I made a beeline for the reduced plants and managed to get some bargains. I think we have completely filled our garden over the years with yellow stickered plants. They generally just need a bit of watering and TLC to perk them back up.

I am washing everything that moves this weekend because I can dry it outside. I am currently eying up my lovely Laura Ashley throw....it says dry clean only but it is pure cotton, so I am going to risk it on a gentle wash :rotfl:

In MF news the accounts are starting to settle and I harvested the interest from the new T@sco accounts last night which was 2 x £13.13 and 2 x 5.83.

I finally managed to activate Mr Mee's N@tionwide account and having fretted because I wasn't able to open the regular saver before the end of the tax year and spent ages trying to work out how to recoup a similar amount of interest for this tax year, I suddenly realised how stupid I was being. All I need to do is close the regular saver a few days early so that they pay the interest in the 17/18 tax year ! I am really stupid sometimes :rotfl:

The odds and sods account 2017/18 has got off to a healthy start with a number of Tilly Tidies, various rewards and bits of interest - 88.69 paid in so far :T

Everything looks to be on course to hit the £50k challenge in June and then the next target will be £60k by January 2018. I feel like we are running out of time now and Mr Mee's retirement is looming closer, so we need to save as much as we can while we have both salaries coming in.

We are off to do the supermarket shopping this morning, but are meeting some friends for breakfast first. I then intend spending the rest of the day in the garden planting my bargainous plants from yesterday and I think we will have the first BBQ of the year.

Have a great day in the sunshine everyone.

Busy_Mee1

It is Monday again but it has been such a lovely weekend, the weather has just made all the difference.

We had a lovely catch up and breakfast with friends - they have just come back from South America and I enjoyed hearing about their travels. We wIll now add South America to my (very long list) of places to visit !

The supermarket shopping was done and we spent £63.67, so a total of £116.92 out of a monthly budget of £250. I cannot believe what a difference it is making to our finances cutting back on the amount we spend on food. We have halved our food bill over the last 2 years, we regularly used to spend £130 per week and bought lunches at work. I feel quite ashamed that we spent so much and we are definitely eating better, as I cook most things from scratch, and now much prefer to take homemade lunch to work.

Aldi's super 6 is excellent this week. Potatoes, carrots, parsnips,courgettes, cauliflower and leeks are all 29p. I think they did a similar offer at Christmas, so this must be for Easter.
I bought a couple of bags of potatoes and then used up the slightly sprouty ones I had in by turning them into mash and freezing it.

I didn't really do much cooking yesterday, as I spent most of the day in the garden. I just made the mash and then chicken piri piri kebabs and vegetable kebabs for the BBQ. Unfortunately by the time we came to eat the weather turned much cooler so I just chucked them in the oven instead. So we still haven't had the first BBQ of the year - we can save that for another day.

As usual on a Monday I am on my way to London and won't be home until 8 tonight, so no gym tonight. I plan to go Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday this week.

Have a good week everyone

Busy_Mee1

Happy Easter everyone :easter:
It has been a hectic and stressful week at work and I am using this weekend to recharge, so nothing much planned.

Mr Mee got his new tyres. He shopped around and ordered them online with a company and then got them delivered and fitted free at Kwikfit. He was really pleased with the price and we have now ordered 2 new tyres for DD's car from the same place. DD has taken over paying for her own car this year (we paid for the running of it while she was at university on the basis that she was living at home and needed to travel to university and her placements, whilst her brother lived away and we paid for his accomodation). However all the expense has come at once, tax, insurance, MOT and service. I have been strong and let her pay for all these but the MOT did say she would need new tyres shortly which we have now offered to pay for. The hardest thing I have found in my MSE journey is being less generous with the kids but I am being really good and explained that we are trying to save now for Dad's retirement. They understand this and are fine with it, but I find it hard.

It has been quite a spendy weekend, we went to the pub tea on Friday night. Our local pub does 2 meals for £12.99 and it is lovely home cooked food not plastic pub food. So with drinks it cost us £21.09

The grocery shopping went over budget and we spent £82.49 :eek: so £199.41 out of £250. This gave us a large haul of food - Aldi's super 6 veg was even cheaper this week down to 19p, so I need to make lots of soup !
Hopefully I can cut back next week to bring us in on budget, but we really had got to a bare cupboard situation and on Thursday night I had to call and get a pizza for the boys from C@@P because I was busy and needed something quick and easy for their tea. This felt like a major fail on my part, but hopefully normal service will be resumed now.

We have got the outlaws coming for dinner today, so we are having roast beef and all the trimmings and I making a very large chocolatey Easter Cake for dessert :T

I only have 3 days to work next week before we are on holiday but the amount of work I need to get done in those 3 days is really stressing me out, so I am going to log on tomorrow to try and get as much done as I can in advance.

Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Kittenkirst

Chocolate Easter cake sounds delicious

I hadn't realized the super six was even cheaper this week...I may have to get some in for soups

Have a lovely Easter

try_harder

Happy Easter to you too ,i am just waiting for the grandchildren to arrive they are so excited and i need to hide the eggs in the garden if the weather stays dry ,it is quite sunny at the moment but does look quite cloudy .
I completely understand what you mean about the children it is so hard to change a habit of a lifetime ,you are doing so well me much less so i am afraid .I just find it so hard and have tried to cut down but have failed miserably i dont really know how i am going to get round that one but as Scalett o Hara said i will think about that tomorrow .
I am sorry that you are having so much stress with your job ,i hear it all the time from my friends ,it must be so difficult for you and i hope you will be able to relax today before you start again your dinner sounds lovely by the way especially the chocolate cake .Have a lovely day and keep up the good work i am hoping to reach £13000 saved by the end of the month but am struggling this month as like you we had an mot due and 2 cars insurance to pay plus i bought lots and lots of eggs and goodies so i will be very happy if i reach my target .£13000 here i come

Busy_Mee1

I am having a lovely day off after a very stressful week at work. I think the end is in sight though, as I think I might have sorted out a new role which should start towards the end of June. I am ,keeping my fingers crossed because I am not sure how much longer I can maintain my current stress levels. It makes me just want to give up work completely and that really isn't like me.....I normally love work, but I think the combination of a high octane environment and some challenging personalities are making this job particularly difficult.

Anyway enough whining about work, for today is a good day to be enjoyed. I had a lovely potter around town this morning and got some bargains.

I went into Boots , not a place I normally frequent because compared to Homebargains I find it really expensive, however today they were just filling up the reduced shelves. I got two Duplo sets for my little niece who will be two in May and two tubes of La Roche-Posay moisturiser for £3.00 each ( should have been £13.50 each) and a fake bake set for £2.00 ( thought I might need to take some of the bright white glare off my legs for my holiday !)

I used to be a Clarins girl in my more extravagant days and would think nothing of spending £30 a pot on moisturiser but since I became MFW I have significantly downgraded to Nivea, B@dy Shop or anything else on offer and to be honest didn't really notice the difference.

I also went to P@undland and picked up Fruisili cereal bars and packs of mixed fruit/nuts and seeds and then very cheekily took back a gift I had been bought from M&S that I couldn't use and exchanged it for a new dress for my holidays - which meant I only £1.45 to pay :T

I met DD for a very nice lunch and catch up, I don't feel like I have seen her very much lately and I am going for a bit of a pamper session this afternoon with a voucher I had for my Birthday

In MSE news my mortgage balance is standing at £247,334.83 and that means that at the end of April my savings could (with a fair wind ) offset the mortgage to below £200k :j
Still eye watering I know, but my mortgage stood at £271,751 in January 2015 and we only had £22 k saved towards it then. We have effectively knocked £50k off the mortgage in just over 2 years. That feels unbelievably good :j

try_harder

Wow i knew you could do it that is amazing £50000 in just over 2 years no wonder you feel good you should be very proud of yourselves i am so pleased for you.
Glad you have had a nice day today i cannot imagine how you and lots of other people on here hold down such stressful jobs i definitely couldnt do it i am not very good at dealing with stress .I dont see my oldest daughter as often as i would like to ,she lives and works in London which is a fair distance from us and i miss her a lot she has a very pressurised job too and doesnt get home till quite late some evenings she would be upset if she knew how much i miss seeing her and would want to come back more often but i dont want to give her any more pressure .
Keep up the good work and i hope things improve at work for you soon with the new role .

EatingTheElephant

Such great progress over the past couple years. Well done :T

Hope you are feeling a bit less stressed after your day off, sounds like you needed it.

Busy_Mee1

Hi Try Harder - thank you for your lovely comments, it does feel really good because I feel like have more control over what felt like an impossible financial situation. I still think about our finances a lot ( plotting and planning ) but I don't worry about our financial situation anymore because I know we will be able to pay off the mortgage.
I am so lucky that my children live close by, but we have had periods when they haven't. DS was away at university for 5 years and DD went travelling and I did really miss them.
Could you go and visit your daughter in London ? - if you book in advance you can get some fairly cheap rail tickets. It would be nice to go and spend some time with her and it means she doesn't have to make the journey to you.

Thanks ETE I had a lovely day off.

I need to do an inventory of what food we have to use up before we go on holiday - we have a bit of a glut of vegetables because Ald@i had them so cheap last week. I hadn't realised that DS is also away for part of the time we are, so they will need using up. We have loads of carrots, so I have grating them and putting them in salads and realised this is a very cheap alternative to salad leaves. My favourite lunch box salad at the moment is caprese salad - leaves, grated carrot, tomatoes, home grown basil, mozzarella ( only 49 p a ball ) and pesto. Very tasty and cheap :T.

Savingcraving

Hi there I've been lurking throughout the week reading various people's posts and getting inspired including by yours which has been great to read through. At the grand age of 44 I too have decided to take control as the sense of time passing all of a sudden is slightly freaking me Out! Thank you for the inspiration for starting a diary. I am going to give it a go as I think it will help to focus me. Feel quite daunted about the prospect of working out all the figures and I have no spreadsheet experience at all but I will do my best to figure it all out. Much better I guess than burying my head in the sand which I think I've been doing till now. How do you start a new personal diary? Do you just hit new Thread Button?