Lumina's leap towards a brighter future

PennyJar

Hi Lumina,

Just been reading all your posts...and find me and you are very similar in that it's just my wage at the moment coming in...we too secretly have our eye on a 4 bed detached 250k house (house prices are low where I live in South Wales).

Have a 5 month old, but allocate £120/month for expenses and it's more than enough...have just washed and bagged two massive sacks of clothes which she is now too big for and they are practically like new - so well done by getting 2nd hand ones.

Me and the OH biggest expenditure was also food - same as you we ate out a lot - spent a lot of time through the week in supermarkets looking to buy a loaf of bread - ending up with a trolley load full later (roll eyes)!!! Even though since we've been married we always shopped in Aldi's. Lately I've got the bug for 'yellow stickers' - reductions at 7pm in Morrisons, Tesco and M&S - again the trick being to only buy what we need - bread 10p, meat in M&S £2.00 from £8+ etc? A good website I've been dipping in and out of for inspiration is reduced grub.com.

I've subscribed to yours - maybe you could subscribe to my diary - 'Penny by penny - brick by brick'.

PennyJar

MinnieCooper

Hi,

I am new too! I haven't introduced myself on the board yet though :-)
I well remember nursery fees. I have put 2 children through nursery (from 10 months old) and it is eye-watering when you think of how much money we could've paid on the mortgage! We had no family help with childcare so have spent the last 11 years paying nurseries and a childminder. Anyway, my eldest is now at secondary school (he's 12) and I hardly ever need childcare for him now as he has a key to let himself in (usually hubby is home though as he has a lot of early finishes). I get home 15 minutes later anyway. We also have an 8 year old daughter who still goes to the childminder occasionally (after school and in the hols). I have just gone back to FT hours after working PT since baby no.1 arrived. It was very tough losing half of my salary and then paying out huge childcare costs. I am glad I stuck with it though as I have my career back on track. Extra money now is being thrown at the mortgage!

Yes, baby clothes. I often bought bundles from eBay as they are like new (babies grow very fast). I also stock up on clothes for the children in the sales (always buy next size up). It has saved me £££ over the years!

Anyway, good luck with your journey!

Lumina

PennyJar wrote: »

Hi Lumina,

Just been reading all your posts...and find me and you are very similar in that it's just my wage at the moment coming in...we too secretly have our eye on a 4 bed detached 250k house (house prices are low where I live in South Wales).

Have a 5 month old, but allocate £120/month for expenses and it's more than enough...have just washed and bagged two massive sacks of clothes which she is now too big for and they are practically like new - so well done by getting 2nd hand ones.
PennyJar

Hi PennyJar, just subscribed to your diary when are you going back to work?
I'd love to buy a detached house, but OH and I went through the business finances yesterday afternoon, and I think I won't be possible for us to save £1390/month anytime soon OH was really busy in June, but investments and overhead allocations meant that he actually didnt earn anything... on the other hand it's much more important to me that he's happy and to be honest, if that means that we'll be in our current house a little longer, then that's a trade I'm willing to make

MinnieCooper wrote: »

Hi,

I am new too! I haven't introduced myself on the board yet though :-)
I well remember nursery fees. I have put 2 children through nursery (from 10 months old) and it is eye-watering when you think of how much money we could've paid on the mortgage! We had no family help with childcare so have spent the last 11 years paying nurseries and a childminder. Anyway, my eldest is now at secondary school (he's 12) and I hardly ever need childcare for him now as he has a key to let himself in (usually hubby is home though as he has a lot of early finishes). I get home 15 minutes later anyway. We also have an 8 year old daughter who still goes to the childminder occasionally (after school and in the hols). I have just gone back to FT hours after working PT since baby no.1 arrived. It was very tough losing half of my salary and then paying out huge childcare costs. I am glad I stuck with it though as I have my career back on track. Extra money now is being thrown at the mortgage!

Anyway, good luck with your journey!

Thanks MinnieCooper! We found a lovely nursery, but we had to sign up when I was 10 weeks pregnant because their waiting list is so long... that was a slightly surreal experience :rotfl:.

We had a lovely day out and generally a good weekend that was filled with not to doing very much. We only paid 2 pounds for parking and then resisted the temptation to stop at a cafe after our walk, so that about 7 pounds saved :j I'll send that to the mortgage right away

MinnieCooper

I often take a flask or travel mug out with me when I go for a walk. I also buy a cake in Asda, or somewhere, for £1 and spilt it between us. Saves a fortune!

PennyJar

Hey Lumina,

Thanks for subscribing - I'm back in work Oct 3rd and trying really hard not to think about it - and trying even harder to live in the moment too (not so easy).

It amazes me how house prices vary between areas - I'm fortunate where I live. Completely understand what it's like re Business Finances as DH recently closed his own retail store he had set up 18 years ago, after leaving school. It's hard going running a business and unlike a 9am to 5am you often take it home and think about it 24/7 - he's not working at the moment and although we have less income, we definitely don't miss the stress :eek:

PennyJar

Lumina

PennyJar wrote: »

It amazes me how house prices vary between areas - I'm fortunate where I live. Completely understand what it's like re Business Finances as DH recently closed his own retail store he had set up 18 years ago, after leaving school. It's hard going running a business and unlike a 9am to 5am you often take it home and think about it 24/7 - he's not working at the moment and although we have less income, we definitely don't miss the stress :eek:

PennyJar

Yes, we found out very quickly that running a business keeps you busy 24/7... it is very stressful at times, but at the same time OH is a lot happier than when he was employed

MinnieCooper wrote: »

I often take a flask or travel mug out with me when I go for a walk. I also buy a cake in Asda, or somewhere, for £1 and spilt it between us. Saves a fortune!

This is a great idea we tend to not have lunch on weekends before we go out for the day and by half 2 at the very latest we're both grumpy and hungry and then we just tend to stop at the closest cafe/shop/restaurant to have a proper meal that we never enjoy because we're that hungry :mad: i will try and buy a treat before we go out next time - I should know by now that you shouldn't shop when you're hungry

I'll post an update with financial progress in a minute - payday today

Lumina

Payday today :j August will be the first full month with our new budget in place.
So far I have moved money to various accounts (annual bills, JA, savings). The allocation for annual bills is only £62 this months, as our holiday (budgeted for ) will be taken out of our JA this month (only paid deposit when I booked it). Moved £860 to savings which will pay for heating and I allocated £315 for food this month. This is still lots compared to what other people on here are spending, but I feel we need to take small steps and can always review in a few months time...

July:

• managed to overpay 30£ in july by TT every time I logged into online banking
• got our mortgage statement, slightly annoyed that our payments haven't made as much of a dent in the overall balance as I had hoped...
• on the other hand, we also overpaid £580 last year by making random payments (I didn't think it was that much) which will save us 2 months or £400 in interest :j

Plans for August:

• have homemade lunch 4 out of 5 days a week
• track food spending and stick to meal plan most days
• TT works really well and we don't seem to miss the money
• find 2nd hand pram for LO
• use any underspend from Aug as direct mortgage overpayment so that it can't be used elsewhere
• will need to revise meal plan slightly - Veg soup with bread for dinner apparently looks like it's been eaten before and doesn't qualify as a proper meal
• need to try UHT milk. we seem to drink loads atm (only get online shop every 2 weeks) and then have to go to local shop where I get tempted by chocolates and ice creams...
• decide if we can reduce our emergency fund by 2k and use it as OP instead

Lumina

Quick update: mine and OH MFW journey will initially be about making changes to our spending habits and we've tried to to address these habits...

This weekend has been surprisingly inexpensive so far. We were super tired Friday evening and decided to eat out. However because we'd decided that our local pub isn't up to scratch anymore after it changed owners (burnt fish and chips anyone?), we had to find a new pub... that turned out to be more difficult than expected and in the end we decided to have home cooked fish fingers and chips saving of £20 :j

We went to our local market on Saturday, and one of the shops had a closing down sale. We bought some winter clothes for OH for £20 (would've spent £70 normally without hesitation) - a saving of £50 :j
Plus an accidental saving of £3, when we couldnt pay by card in a cafe and decided to go to our local one instead which is much nicer and cheaper.

The plan for today is to buy some cake from the supermarket before we head out for the day, aiming for £2...

To summarise, we could have spent about £115 this weekend :eek:, ended up spending £32, a saving of £83 :beer:

Lumina

First OP for August: £3.93 tilly tidy :T

Meal plan is working well and I'm surprised how much easier it is to come home from work and not having to think about what to cook.... we tried UHT milk and while I was happy to drink it knowing that it was saving us money, OH was not impressed

I tried to find a second hand pram, but I find it really difficult to make up my mind. I was looking at 3-wheel ones, because we tend to go on lots of walks, but not sure if a 4 wheel pram would be equally as good and there seem to be a lot more of those available...:huh:

Lumina

Two additional OPs since my last post: £7.42 & 3.52, bringing August's total to 14.87

I'm still trying to reduce our food budget, but just had to place a £95 order :eek:. It covers the essentials for 2 weeks, but we'll still need to do a few top up shops mainly for fresh bread, milk and cheese...and it doesn't include fruit and veg, because we get a separate veg box for £15 once a week...
OH normally has cereal for breakfast, but he's lost quite a bit of weight over the past few months and needs a proper breakfast... so far I've bought things for

• fried eggs on toast, fruit (60p)
• sardines on toast, fruit (£1)
• omelette, toast, fruit (80p)

Not sure what else I could make that wouldn't cost lots of money?