MissCreative's journey to financial freedom!

PennyJar

Sounds fab - hope your car is alright...cars are a nightmare. My little fiesta is cheap as chips and really reliable, whereas the truck for the babi is super expensive!! But it's safer I suppose...

zcrat41

Thanks for your meal plan. I guess the free fruit at works helps - we spend about £20 - £30 a week on fruit alone!

MissCreative

Woah that's a lot of fruit! Though I don't like fruit very much so it would seem that way to me :rotfl:
When I say DH snacks on fruit, it's more like he'll have an orange or some grapes at 4pm, so if we had to buy it instead it would only cost us a few pounds extra a week. He's not a big snacker really

I'd love a smaller, cheaper car (or no car at all!) but cars are DH's hobby and interest and I don't want to take that away from him.

NSD today :T (if you count the fact that we'll be paying for car repairs on Thursday when they're done, not today :rotfl:)

Lrimas

Hey MissCreative.

Just caught up on your diary and I have to admit that I am super impressed with your food shopping skills as well. Ours are much higher. My partner is in charge of cooking and there isn't much I can do to keep the costs reasonable (although we have a budget now and if any of us go over it during the week then we have to pay for it ourselves).

Oh, for your accounts that need DD you can also get a Tesco Internet Saver and Instant Access Savings account that allows you to pull in money from other accounts. Charities are great (and I also have one on my account) but it can get a bit expensive once you start to have loads of accounts. It is also a better idea to have one big DD for a charity than loads of small ones as (as far as I'm aware) it costs them money to pull money in via DD.

zcrat41

I do have 2 preschoolers as well MissC - all 4 of us pretty much have an apple, a banana and a plum (summer) or satsuma (winter) a day as minimum

MissCreative

Sorry ZC, I hope you didn't take any offence or think I meant you buy too much fruit or anything - I know your household is larger than mine and it's great that your children eat natural healthy food
I just meant that's a lot of fruit to someone like me who doesn't like fruit much
Although, I've heard frozen grapes are very nice so I think I'll give those a go soon.

Thanks for the DD tips Lrimas, and that's interesting about the cost to charities.
DH and I are going to start with the Nationwide account and once we've filled that up we'll probably go with TSB - I think both of those don't need DDs.

PennyJar

Hey ZC,

Its really good you make sure you all have your 5 a day...you'll have to give me tips when DD gets older lol

But I agree with MC £20-£30 seems slightly high for fruit.

Was trying to do the math - so you eat 12 pieces a day (approx) for 7 days. So you'll need approx 84 pieces of fruit per week...when you scale it up...I've come to the conclusion you eat a lot of fruit :rotfl: But technically this means you are currently spending 35p per piece of fruit.

Do you have an Aldi near as they do offers like a punnet of plums for 69p, a bunch of bananas for 68p, a punnet of apricots 48p... You could save a small fortune if you switched.

Even if you managed to spend half £15pw you would make a saving of £180 per year. But if you shopped at Aldi's I don't think you would even need to spend this much so could possibly save more.

Here's the link https://www.aldi.co.uk/groceries/all-groceries/fresh-food/fruit-and-vegetables/c/fruit-and-vegetables

Let me know what you think

PennyJar

MissCreative

Morning all :hello:

NSD yesterday, plus brought in £55 from selling an exercise mat and a dress-making mannequin on Gumtree :T
Going to pop a few more items on there tonight - anyone want to buy a giant clock? :rotfl:

Also going to have a declutter. I have a bag of items to go to the chairty shop on Saturday already, but I know I can add more to it. There are some PJs I no longer wear, and a lot of socks I can throw away as they're very worn out.

DH wanted KFC for dinner yesterday so he went and bought that with his personal budget and I cooked up the steak and vegetable curry anyway. I only had a small portion so there's enough leftover for DH and our friend tonight, and I'll have some eggs and broccoli that need using up. Means we get £2.50 from our friend, and our dinners can now stretch over to Sunday

juststuff123

Hi MissCreative,


I'm enjoying your diary. I was under 30 when I started my mortgage free journey. Things tend to snowball and allthough I don't think "mortage free by 33" will be possible. I'll have to settle for Mortgage no more at 34" (originally thought I'd be 37).


Have a look at regular savers, you can get some good rates and they tend to be harder to get access to than good interest current accounts even if it's just in your head. (if your a bit worried you'll dip into them.) I have a list on my diary somewhere that might be useful.


Also have a look into building a month to month buffer. So for example you pay for all the things you need in August with the money you earnt in July or even June. (Apologies if you do this already). It adds a real sense of security to your life! Similarly, try to put money aside each month for annual expenses, car insurance, Car breakdown emergency fund, TV licence, flat mainenance charges etc so that when they come due, you have the money sat ready to go and you won't be stretched to the limit when they hit.


You seem to have your head on straight so you shouldn't need any luck. But Good Luck anyway!

PennyJar

Hi just stuff,

Good advice will have to subscribe to your diary too.

Mine is penny by penny...brick by brick - bit older than MC, I'm 33 so could be MF by 40.

PennyJar