3653 steps to completion

Moneyfordreams

I find we can still have nice meals out (far too many), but I'm cautious over other aspects of spending and planning.. being watchful really does seem to stretch things without doing without

mirko

7 - Had a £2.50 cashback from trying a product but the name on the cheque was wrong. Seems really petty but I emailed a few times and am getting a new cheque sent!
8 - I normally have Quaker porridge oats in packets for breakfast (just add milk). I haven't checked but I imagine it's a lot more expensive than buying a bag of oats. (Though the issue with bags of oats is portion size which I imagine I'll get wrong, could end up being more expensive ). Brave new world this. Measuring out my own oats/milk!
9 - Going through my old 2ps and taking them to the supermarket to buy cheap goods with on the self service machines. Kids love helping with this. Can of baked beans which helped with two of my work from home lunches this week.
10 - Not buying lunch at work ever. I did take in a packed lunch most of the time, but there were often days when I didn't. This should save me a fortune.
11- Listed the Olympic 50ps onto eBay. Here's hoping for a sale. This should spur me on to list a few more things.

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All of the above a really small steps to get my head around the bigger ones. I need to get my gas/electric bill sorted as I've not changed in about 18 months (I estimate) and get a diary together to say when my car insurance goes out etc. - so I can play more effectively.

CathT/Moneyfordreams - You're right. Supermarket bill considering the size of it plus the number of different things within it mean there should be some easy savings. The first steps on this journey for me are to get rid of all the pointless expenditure, I can look at sacrifices such as fewer meals out later...

lcfcstephen

mirko wrote: »

c) Look into changing energy supplier, that's a well overdue task.

Hi Mirko - I look forward to reading more posts! Make sure you're signed up to the Money saving Emails because the collective fixes tend to be really quite good (plus the bonus of having the £30 cashback) Also worth joining the Energy Club as that will remind you when you should change deals etc. Really useful!

mirko

Must admit, I'm already a member of that, just ignored the email when it came earlier this year. I'm trying to be better behaved this September, I promise!

mirko

OK so, five months later and I've finally set up a google sheet with monthly finances on it. Getting back into budgeting properly as the long term goal is to pay off mortgage by my 50th birthday (12 years). Should be manageable.

I've recently collected together all my debts and sorted them out quite nicely. I still need to track down the exact figures on some of them.

A lot of the time of the next week or two will be spent going through documents and working out payment schedules to work out the exact situation.

Anyway, a few things I've done:

12 - Listed approx 10 items on eBay. Already have bids on 3. Surprised they're so popular. I have a lot of old stuff that needs to leave the house via this route.
13 - Cashed in £31 of Quidco loot and have overpaid on a credit card to reduce the balance.
14 - Car radio broke after a battery replacement so have purchased £1.29 metal tongs to get the radio out so I get the serial no (and from this hopefully the code so I don't have to pay Skoda £30 to do it all for me!)

mirko

Resurrecting my own thread in order to track what I'm up to.

Family, 2 adults and 2 children 10 and under. (Also a dog, cat and 2 x guinea pigs - I feel like I work at a zoo!)

I've felt that everything has been getting away from me recently, however looking at the original post things are better than they were 2 years ago.

Debts
Mortgage: £120,076.42
Loan (2 cars): £7,500 (at 2%)
Credit Card at 0%: £4,500 - approx

Savings
Cash: £3,500

The savings are there as a buffer for when "bad things happen".

Focus at the moment is on attempting to reduce the non-mortgage debts before tackling the mortgage head on - though it's already being paid down every month.

Things I need to do over the next week or two:
a) Get the jar of 5ps which we've collected since the 5p came out and cash it in MetroBank (it's over £100 collected over more than a decade!)
b) Pay in a £100 cheque tax rebate thing from HMRC.
c) Continue with eBaying some old stuff. Have made £40 or so in the last month. Need to ramp it up considerably now.
d) Go through all the cupboards and do a food audit. There must be dozens of meals we could have.
e) We currently have £300 in Nectar points - bonkers I know. May try and spend them on food over the next month and transfer the £300 into CC payoff.

Some "easy pickings" to start with anyway.

Target: Pay off £4,500 CC by the end of the year. It'll take some doing.

mirko

OK, so to continue the numbers I've done above.

15 - Sold £180 of stuff on eQuay this month. A lot of old collectable stuff that I should have got rid of years ago. I'm sure someone else will appreciate it more than me. I have five parcels that need to go tomorrow.
16 - Dipped my toe into matched betting and have won about £35. Really not sure it's something I want to spend too much time on in the future.

Things to do before I go off on holiday with the family at the start of August.
a) Post all eBay parcels - ppl have only just paid for them.
b) Withdraw money from betfair account pay off CC with proceeds.
c) Finally cash the £100+ in change (all 5ps) with metrobank - they're really heavy so if I lug them into town I want to do it on a cooler day!
d) Get all photos backed up onto my own backup HD and cancel the 7.99 I spend on google drive pm.
e) Payday tomorrow so time to organise things into buckets ready for another month.

mirko

17 - Pleasingly managed to get rid of a dozen or so eBay parcels. Have made approx £180 in ebay (before postage) in the last 60 days. Not a bad haul. Shows just how much crap I needed to get rid of - and I still have more! One parcel remains unpaid for and a NPB has been raised. Need to look into it as still no news..
18 - Paid in a £100+ cheque from HMRC for a tax rebate of sorts.

To do before holibobs on Friday:
I want to start paying stuff off in £100 chunks
a) Get £97 from betfair and pay off some CC (with £3 added from Bank Acc)
b) Get £100 from paypal (ebay) and pay off some CC.
c) Learn about how to pay extra on mortgage, loan and CC so that I can do small Tilly Tidy payments to make sure it works.

Feeling quite positive about the "money saving journey" at the moment - it's quite pleasing to see my post from a couple of years ago and see we are better off now - and haven't even let a broken shower get me down. One of those things, when you own a house maintenance is something you have to suck up!

mirko

Bit stifled this month as just got back from the family holiday and the dog is going into the vets tomorrow for a big op. Insurance should cover it but it's going to be four figures and always makes me worry that they won't pay out - they should!

19 - Got details of how to overpay on my mortgage and have made a 42p (!!!) overpayment to round it to the nearest pound! Sometimes the knowledge can be helpful.
20 - Transferred out the £97 from betfaer for matched betting. Doubt I'll be doing too much of it. Not sure it's my thing. Put that aside into my account for now.
21 - Transferred £100 from eBae sales from Paypal. This will go to debt repayment.
22 - Got some bags from HSBC bank to pay in the £100+ of 5p coins we have in a jar.
23 - Remembered knowledge is power. Found out that the CC 0% rate still has a couple of years to run on it. Should be paid off long before the 0% rate ends.
24 - Finally registered my Shell card and will use it at the garage. Will accumulate a few points to get a couple of quid off now and again. It's the normal garage I use. Small steps.

Hopefully within the next week or so I'll be able to pay off some debt with the bits and pieces I've taken in from betfaer + online selling.

Few points to do:
a) Chase up £100 housekeeping bond from holiday, should get it back as we didn't wreck the property!
b) Update my Google Sheet with all the money on it for July. Always "good" to see exactly how much is spent on what.
c) Time to change gas/electricity. Update them with latest meter readings and jump ship.
d) Learn how to pay into child's trust fund. We have one child on about a 1000 and another on about 100, would be good to equal them up a bit.

mirko

I've found it quite difficult to overpay debts recently. I thought I'd take a look at this thread (and forum) for some inspiration and was pleastantly surprised to see that progress has been made in the two years since I started this thread. Obviously never happy.

Current values are:

Mort: £113600.00
Loan: £5063.79
Credit Card: £3594.00

The loan was for a car (should not have bought brand new, but to be honest it has been nice having a reliable car). Mortgage has gone down by 11k and loan by 10k. However the car is a bit older than when it was purchased and it'll be time for a new one soon.

When I've had spare pounds I've been rounding off the mortgage to the nearest 100. I really should be doing that to the credit card rather than the mortgage but I haven't got the details added to my current account properly to do so. Credit Card also stops being 0% later this year so I need to look into that. (It'd be nice to get the Loan to 5000 and the Credit card to 3500 to give some nice balance and lovely round figures)

It's also interesting that I felt originally that I should add this post to the mortgage free board when it's debt-free that we should be aiming for really. Shows perception is important. Saying that, the debts are manageable but it's debt I'm focussing on before the mortgage.

£850 paid off mortgage every month (approx 200 is interest so it's nearer 650 in truth being paid down)
£325 paid off loan every month
£100 paid off credit card every month (it's this I need to focus on I think as currently it won't be paid off until April 2022, there should be more room in the summer of 2020 to pay more when the loan has gone but that's still some way off). Time for a plan to kill that CC.

A few things to do in my massive long list of steps:
a) Google Drive 7.99 a month storing all my photos - too expensive, I will save old photos elsewhere - I have hard drives.
b) Get details on how to overpay credit card. Make it easy so I can do it from my Co-Op Bank Acc.
c) E-on meter readings. Get an up to date picture on how much we owe and where we are. I believe they owe us money.
d) Try and move all DDs to the first of the month. I have a big list of them, so I know how much everything is, it'd just be nice if they all came out on day 1 so I knew where I was.
e) eBay. I have a ton of old small stuff that I can sell on eBay that I'd love to shift out of the house. I made a few hundred pounds earlier this year (that I used to pay off some mortgage and some debt) so it's a win-win as it'll clear the house out a bit.