Getting a Grip and Saving towards the mortgage

Busy_Mee1

Well another week has flown by. It has been a bit of a stressy week at work as I had the "important" presentation at work this week.

I nailed it though thankfully and managed to do it without notes, which I was pleased about given my foggy brain at the moment.

I haven't had much sleep this week - I keep waking up at 4 am and can't go back to sleep, so I was ridiculously tired yesterday. I did go and do Park Run with both DS and DD, but I was very slow and my legs felt like lead. I am pleased I made myself do it though, but I was shattered for the rest of the day. I finally had a good nights sleep last night (combination of the physical excercise and a couple of glasses of red wine I think ) and I feel like a new woman this morning.

On the MFW front I can report that I have only spent £5 over the last 6 days. £3 of which was on car parking and I can claim back from work. So only £2 of our own money spent on a newspaper and packet of wine gums yesterday ( I was in desperate need of some sugar ). I only ever buy a newspaper on Saturday these days and it lasts us all weekend, with the various magazines and bits to it.

I renewed our boiler insurance yesterday as our H0meserve had jumped from £156 per year to £420. I shopped around and got it for £176 per year with £31.50 TCB :money: We do need insurance as our boiler isn't really good enough for the size of our central heating system and does usually pack in at least once over the winter.

I also bought dollars on Friday as the £1 had rallied so much and was at a 12 month high. I just took this money out of the EF/Holiday fund. It did strike me that actually the more money you have, the more you can save. At one time I just wouldn't have had the money to take the opportunity to buy currency at the best price.

I think that is all my all my news this week, we are off to do the shopping today, a combination of HB, @ldi and L!dl.

Thanks Try Harder, Madvix and Kittenkirst for dropping in- lovely to see you all :T

michelle09

Well done on the presentation, sure it's nice to have it over. Enjoy your shopping trip!

Busy_Mee1

Thanks for popping in Michelle.

The shopping trip was expensive yesterday £87.56 spent in total, but I did get a big haul of stuff. Chickens were half price in M&S, so 2x medium chickens for £2.50 each, plus a whole load of YS stuff. My freezer is full again.

I returned to my normal Sunday cookathon yesterday, I haven't done this for ages. I cooked veg soup to use up some miserable veggies that had been lurking in the fridge and extreme MSE alert, I actually fished some celery out of the bin. Mr Mee had chucked it out because it had passed it's sell by date in June :eek: Have I taught this man nothing....anyway I fished it back out. I will point out it was still wrapped and I removed all the brown outer stalks and the good middle bit went in the soup. This will do DD and I for lunches this week and I will freeze some too.

Mr Mee also made his famous Gino D'Campo ragu sauce, which will be tonight's tea. I cooked a roast dinner with one of the £2.50 chickens and a packet of reduced to 20p Paxo (bought ages ago) and DS came round to help to eat it.

I finally managed to apply for our ESTAs yesterday which is a couple of hours of my life I won't get back.

Have a great week everyone :T

themadvix

If it was still in its packaging, I can't see what was wrong with rescuing the celery!

Busy_Mee1

Well that is another week that has gone in a blur. It was quite stressy at work at the beginning of the week, with a number of things not going to plan. All sorted now thankfully.

I spent a couple of days in London, so quite spendy with a nice meal out and drinks with a colleague. I can claim some of this back through expenses though (food not alcohol ! )

I managed a run yesterday morning and have dug out my slimming world books to try and focus my mind on losing some weight. I really need to lose about 5lb before our holiday, otherwise my holiday clothes just won't fit :mad:

I nipped to @sda yesterday as we have friends coming to lunch today- spent £52.36, but this included a dress reduced to £10 :T At least one thing that will fit me on holiday :T

I am going to make apple crumble for pudding, with a fruit salad for me :A

We are then heading over to visit some other friends tonight and staying over, so all in all a busy weekend.

Hope you all have a good weekend

try_harder

What a great saving on the boiler insurance ,well done .Looking forward to your monthly update .

Busy_Mee1

Thanks Try Harder and as if by magic here is the monthly update....

We have just scraped over £1500 in savings this month, largely due to spending on the holiday at the beginning of September and also due to Mr Mee spending a bit too freely on his Apple Pay. Luckily the Santander Lite offer of 5% cash back finishes tomorrow, so he can go back to having cash spending money. This should clip his wings

September Update
Monthly Savings. £1,503.19
Total Savings. £56,235.44
Mortgage. £243,944.66
Savings:Mortgage. 23.05%
Savings offset mortgage to £187,709.22
Av. Monthly savings (2017) £1580.12

I am really pleased our savings now offset the mortgage to the £180s and we are still saving over £1500 per month.

We could do better, but I feel that we have got the frugality versus " having a life" balance right. All our purchases are considered and no money is wasted ( when I can rein Mr Mee in !). Our money also works hard, with decent interest on the regular savers and cash back on any purchases from TCB, Barclaycard cash back and Santander Lite cashback.

Forward Look to October
Finances are looking tight for October as we have a credit card bill of £1000. This was the car hire for the US holiday and 2 pairs of glasses for Mr Mee, on top of all the usual spending. The good news is that there are only two weeks at home and then we go on holiday, which is all paid for :T
Providing we are careful in those two weeks we should be able to meet the savings target of £1500 :T
I have just claimed £53.26 Topc@ashback which is a good start to the month

Today
I have joined a new gym this week, I have found one that is £14.99 a month with no contract. I went for a visit on Wednesday and it seemed really good and an absolute bargain. I am going to do a class called "grit" this morning. I am not sure what state I am going to be in after that :eek:

We are also going back to the fireplace showroom because the fire place we picked is no good ( they came out to survey) so we now have to go in and see what we can have. I am hoping we can now push this on until after our holiday and give me a bit more time to dig the money out for it.

Other than that it is all the usual weekend jobs - cooking and cleaning etc. Will try and see DS as I haven't seen him for a couple of weeks and I am taking a friend who hasnt been well out for coffee.

Have a great weekend x

Busy_Mee1

I am feeling ever so slightly broken this morning. The Grit class was very good, very high intensity work out with weights but only 30 mins. So hard but was over quickly, but boy am I feeling it this morning

I cannot believe what great value this gym is, I was paying £35.00 a month at my last gym and the facilities were no where near as good as this for £14.99. I am not sure how they do it - lots of members I think, although it has never been a problem getting on any of the equipment.
I also suspect they don't employ many staff - the membership and barriers are all done by machine and the staff are all PTs , so I suspect self employed and paid on a session basis for classes.

Another advantage of this new gym is there is a small @sda nearby, so very handy for popping in to check for any reduced items. Yesterday morning they had Sure antiperspirant reduced to 45p a can, so I picked up 6 cans

We went back to the fireplace showroom to discuss options and we are thinking about what to do. I think we will sort out after we get back from holiday.

I have to confess to a bit of spending yesterday afternoon on a few bits in the Debenh@ms sale for the holiday. A lot of my holiday clothes are looking a bit tired, but when I think about it I have had them a few years.

We need to go shopping today - the cupboards are really bare at the moment as we didn't do a proper shop last week and Mr Mee hates it. It is really funny, because he has never gone without anything. Although from a working class background, his family were quite well off and did without nothing and he really likes the security of full cupboards. There was less money when I was a child and the cupboards were often bare, so it doesn't bother me, in fact I see it as a challenge !

Have a good day x

EatingTheElephant

I'm glad I'm not the only one finding the weeks are rushing by in such a blur.

Fingers crossed you manage to get the fire sorted, it will be lovely now that it is getting more miserable. We have been lighting the fire quite a bit recently, makes it really cosy when the rain is hammering down.

I have a friend that teaches grit, so I've heard it's a really tough one. The new gym sounds brilliant, good find!

themadvix

The gym sounds great!

I love the challenge of empty cupboard too, although not the cost of restocking so much!