Getting a Grip and Saving towards the mortgage

try_harder

Ah lovely to hear from you as always .A bit of a mixed bag there but mostly all very positive .I feel exactly the same as you , this month is and has been extremely difficult i guess we all look forward to a New Year with such high hopes of all the great things we think we will do and things we will achieve its all a bit of an anticlimax after weeks of high adrenaline and the excitement of working up to Christmas.I have to say that i have felt very low .

Good news about the fireplace at least thats £200 you saved so well done and well done saving another great amount this month you are doing so well there too.

I think you will feel so much better once you are able to get back into the swing of things at the gym ,it always makes a huge difference to your wellbeing i hope you get back soon maybe tomorrow.

shangaijimmy

January can be horrible for many of reasons! Nearly at the end now, and as the light starts to improve in February the year properly starts!

themadvix

Sorry to hear you've been feeling down in the dumps BM, but your reaction to your husband's suggestion of saving less, it sounds like you haven't entirely lost your mojo!

You've got some nice things to look forward to there

Busy_Mee1

On the whole Mr Mee is generally supportive of everything that I do, but he has a totally different attitude to money than me. He never went without as a child and therefore never worries about money and the lack of it. At the moment he is rebelling against my saving so much, because he believes that our finances will “come right” in the end.

I just can’t live with this “ kick the ball and hope” kind of approach....I like a plan and the security of that plan.

The fundamental problem is that Mr Mee wants a new car and I am trying to resist. We don’t need a new car, he has a very nice 3 year old car which by most people’s standards is lovely. Mr Mee on the whole doesn’t ask for much but this whole car thing has cost us thousands over the course of our marriage, so I am resisting with all my might at the moment. Hence his mild revolt I think.

So the conversation on Thursday night went like this Mr Mee: “ shall we go to the pub for tea tomorrow?

Me: “ We can do but we only have £40 left until pay day”
Him: But we haven’t only got £40 have we ? We have £60k in the bank
Me: Sigh .. but we haven’t really got £60k in the bank have we..that is earmarked to pay the mortgage off and we are still £180k short...

I am starting to think that I should use the savings and actually pay it off the mortgage, even though it makes no financial sense to do so. It will stop it burning a hole in his pocket !

In the meantime I think I need to go about this MS business quietly and in a way that means he doesn’t feel like we are being tight with money. I need to be careful of the language I use around him ( no saying we are skint this month) and generally go about saving money without making him feel as if he is doing without. For example I haven’t told him that my new target is to save £1600 per month and £20k by the end of the year....this needs to just happen as if by magic and be a lovely surprise for him !

I can do this ... I have saved £1600 this month and he hasn’t suffered at all- in fact we have managed to eat out quite a lot.

I have managed the grocery spend really well and my final shop of the month yesterday was £37, bringing the monthly total to £237 for January. We did have quite a lot of food left after Christmas and I have been shopping carefully around what we have. It is all the small things that I do that make the difference to the grocery budget, for example:

Stocking up when regular staples are a good price. This weekend dishwasher tablets £1.99 for 40 in Lidl.

Cooking from scratch, this month I have made lots of soup. Our new favourite is Nana’s magic soup (see T@sco website for recipe). Making sure nothing is wasted and that we meal plan to use everything that we have

Watching portion control, for example buying a large loaf and splitting it and freezing instead of buying small loaves. A large sliced wholemeal loaf is £45p in Aldi v a small loaf at around 80p. I split into 3, so effectively 15p a portion. This saves on waste and the bread is always fresh.

We all take all of our food and drink to work, so both Mr Mee and I have NSDs every week day, unless we have to pay for parking.

I am hoping to have a reasonable month next month too, as we are away quite a lot. I had to chuckle though, the friends who we are going away with next weekend messaged to ask if we are taking sandwiches to the airport rather than paying extortionate airport prices for food.

These are friends who are very capital rich/income poor and achieved financial independence at the age of 51 and retired. They are very savvy with money and will on the one hand take sandwiches to the airport, but on the other hand upgrade to business class when flying long haul. They are always looking for ways to make their money go further, and their attitude is that they would rather spend the money saved at the airport on a decent meal while we are away. They are definitely people after my own heart and it does Mr Mee good to see it is not just us being careful :T

Thanks Try Harder, Jimmy and Madvix for popping in. I am feeling a bit more like I have my mojo back again ...we had a couple of days of sunshine this week that made me feel a lot better. :j

try_harder

Lovely post and very humorous for us looking in but i can see how it feels from both sides .I completely agree that it would be best to not speak about anything to do with money saving as much as is possible anyway.I know that i am now completely obsessed with so many aspects of budgeting and saving that i now find myself thinking about it all the time and also talking about it to others lots of whom have absolutely no interest and think i am rather sad.I wish sometimes that someone else would do all the thinking and i could see the total growing every month in the bank , you are saving a fantastic amount every month and as you say on the whole Mr Mee is very ,very good .

Im so glad you are feeling much happier again now ,it is staying lighter longer every day day now which is lovely too it will soon be spring ..Well done on your grocery shopping too just over £50 a week is brilliant .

michelle09

It's one of the reasons that I tend to put most of our savings straight onto the mortgage. Then we don't have it. and there can't be any fights. Mr M isn't fond of all the MS I do, but does like the results (esp when I knocked £100/month off our mortgage repayments!)

Your friends did amazingly well. And I'm with them, I don't see the point of being MS at all costs, but using the money for things that are important to you.

gallygirl

Busy_Mee1 wrote: »

I had to chuckle though, the friends who we are going away with next weekend messaged to ask if we are taking sandwiches to the airport rather than paying extortionate airport prices for food.

These are friends who are very capital rich/income poor and achieved financial independence at the age of 51 and retired. They are very savvy with money and will on the one hand take sandwiches to the airport, but on the other hand upgrade to business class when flying long haul. They are always looking for ways to make their money go further, and their attitude is that they would rather spend the money saved at the airport on a decent meal while we are away. They are definitely people after my own heart and it does Mr Mee good to see it is not just us being careful :T

Good to see you brighter :j.

Hats off to those friends, they've identified what is important to them and gone for it :T.

When Mr BM thinks it will come all right in the end - what is his idea of the 'end'? Do you have long term plans for retiring etc? I found it much easier to be sensible (aka 'downright stingy' ) with money when I decided on the long term goal of retiring at 55. I then worked backwards from that, e.g. I wanted to pay the mortgage off (I was only working to a maximum 8 year timescale so that worked better than investing) by xx date, I wanted xx in my pension pot by yy date etc. That then got broken down to mini-goals - pay x off the mortgage this year - and that got further broken down into micro-goals - pay x off this month. Maybe we shouldn't take about the nano goals and 3p overpayments etc . Seeing how your targets fit into macro goals, and then measuring progress against them, might help?

Busy_Mee1

Thanks Try Harder and Michelle .... I am glad it is not just me working away quietly at all this stuff. Mr Mee is always pleased with the results he just doesn’t like me being tight ( I like to think savvy tho’ )

Gally - we are working towards Mr Mee’s retirement in 2 years. He is 5 years older than me and will retire at 60 ( although he could choose to work longer if he wants) He has categorically said he will retire then, and after 43 years I can’t blame him. He will receive a good final salary pension and lump sum.

We have a mortgage that is set to run until my 60th Birthday, part is repayment and part interest only. It is the interest only part £169,000 that I am saving to pay off. I hope to have £100k saved by the time Mr Mee retires, which along with most but not all of his lump sum will cover this.

Once Mr Mee retires I will continue to work, but I am not sure how long I will want to. So, actually what writing this down makes me see is that I have more of a vested interest in this than he does. The better off we are financially the more choice I have on when I finish work.

The good news is that we do have a plan B, which means we sell the house and downsize to a mortgage free property...that is Mr Mee’s fall back position and why he is not worried about the finance. I just want us to have the choice

themadvix

Hi BusyMee,

I think it's very hard when as TH says, it becomes an obsession (which it has to be if we really want to make every penny count) and your other half (or other people in general) aren't as interested/committed as you. I think the clarity you got from responding to Gally's post is perhaps something you should discuss with Mr Mee - would it help him see what you're doing (I appreciate that I'm sure you've already discussed it many times, but sometimes returning to the big picture is a useful reminder).

It's great you're going on holiday with friends who are completely on board and I totally agree with them about sandwiches vs business class!!

Busy_Mee1

Morning all I thought I might as well do the monthly update as there will be no more financial activity this month. So the scores on the doors this month are as follows:

Saved this month. £1,617.08
Total savings. £61,633.08
Mortgage. £240,266.82
Savings:Mortgage. 25.6 %
Savings offset mortgage to. £178,633.74

Next savings targets £70k by end of June 2018
£80k by end of December 2018 :eek:

Next month our mortgage will drop into the £230s which will feel better. The repayment part of the mortgage is reducing the total by c £800 a month.

Madvix - you are absolutely right and I had a good chat yesterday with Mr Mee ( we had the 2 hour journey to see the elderly Step-Dad which gave us the opportunity ) and I think we are back on the same page. He just doesn!!!8217;t like it when I am inflexible with the finances....so when I say we can!!!8217;t afford a meal out because we only have £40 left in the budget... I have promised to relax a bit more around all this. The trouble is I do feel a bit panicked that we are running out of road as far as our earnings are concerned. All of you younger people out there please take note !