Learning to budget to make future adventures happen

crunch_time

doingitanyway wrote: »

Mean work place. don't they have any dependency leave?

Hope the children get better soon

Gosh no! I work for Local authority as a teacher!!

Thanks - they are much better now but another day off school for the boy tomorow.

Crunchy x

crunch_time

Morning all

Husband paid! £575 over payment paid to the loan bringing it down to £2525!!!! Next week the minimum payment will hit bringing us into the £4xxx which is very exciting!! Still on track to shift the loan by end of April.

Signature updated.

Crunchy xx

crunch_time

So husband and i (and kids) were driving back from a day at a very cold and windy coastal location yesterday and drove through a small town which had a new development of houses. We stopped to take a look and fell in love with the 4 bed detached show home. There was so much space for not as much money as we thought! This is the next step up for us and something we have been thinking about for a long time. We will literally outgrow our current house in 2 years time and are starting to think now about what we can do next.

This house was perfect.........

but it would mean me finding another job elsewhere as its too far away from mine and too long a commute. And uprooting DS from school/DD from nursery.

The at the beginning of the year was to move next year but since the windfall has shortened the length of time left on our loan, theoretically we could jump on anything this summer (we are not worried about the 0% credit card)

It's given us lots of food for thought and we have emailed our mortgage advisor to come round soon for a hypothetical 'how much can we borrow' chat.

Meanwhile, budgets all up to date. March is a tight month as its 5 weeks long. Hopefully we will be able to make a few over payments and not have too many expensive weekends!

Crunchy xx

crunch_time

Morning all!

Loan down to £2250 now and total debt down to £4838!!!

I worked out we paid a total of £6726 off in February alone!

Later this week I'm hoping to put the council tax money and some spare childcare money on the loan making it closer to £2k.

We have an appointment with the mortgage advisor next week. It may be very premature but its keeping us focused on the goal in hand.

Crunchy xx

crunch_time

Back for another installation. Disastrous morning. !!!!!! has managed to sever the cable for my laptop. I have no where else to store it and am pretty annoyed. This lead to a discussion with the husband about storage (again) and we have decided to bite the bullet and order a dresser which goes somewhere to solve some of our storage problems. Knowing. Ow we can afford the house we want I'm not so worried as I would probably be buying one in a years time anyway. It's ordered and arriving tomorrow. It's on the credit card though so all extra money will be going towards that for the time being. I can pay the rest off when I get paid in 19th march.

The good news however is that husband rang the bank and if we paid the loan off today we could only have to pay £1620 so £630 less than we thought. I know interest will accrue but not much so I'm going to amend my total loan to around £1800 for now to take it into account and get husband to ring up again at the end of march and see what the difference is.

Right better move some furniture around for this dresser!!

Crunchy xx

kansaskitty

Hi Crunchy,

Just read the first and last pages of your diary! Late twenties with an almost 2yo and no 2 due in 7/8ish weeks so I have very much enjoyed reading about your progress! Keep on keeping on and I will be subscribing for future updates!

KK xx

crunch_time

Morning!

Wow it's been a week since I've been in here!! I've had a sickness bug which has wiped me out for a few days. Much better now though. Dresser has arrived and looks fab! Enables us to have some more surfaces to put things on and my laptop is safely in one of the cupboards with a new lead!!

The sickness bug meant that meal planning went out of the window for a few days and lots of top up shops happened depleting the food fund a bit so I have topped this up. We also treated the kids to new scooters costing £75 in total.

So in all I have about £200 to chuck at the other credit card to go towards the dresser/scooters etc. Then my extra money next week should pay the rest of it off.

We had the mortgage advisor round. We can afford a house value of £360k which would cost £900 so way less than we were budgeting for. The house we saw wouldn't be ready for 18 months apparently which means we can still weigh it up against others and pay off the debt this summer like planned.

Everything heading in the right direction!!

Must rein it in a bit though. Feel like we have been a bit speedy this last week.

Crunchy xx

TalesfromtheAvenue

All sounds good (apart from the sickness bug!).
Sounds like exciting times ahead!

Ave
x

JoJoC

Nice to hear from your crunchy, although I'm sorry to hear you haven't been well. Glad you're on the mend.

We all have spendy weeks. As long as it doesn't turn into a spendy week every week, I think you can write it off as a week that you needed to spend more than normal.

Are the kids happy with their new scooters?

Glad your house plans are coming under budget - is it a new build you're looking at? 18 months sounds like a good timeliness to save and to take stock of what you want/ need to consider your options.

crunch_time

Morning all!

Sun is breaking through! Manged to dry two loads on the line yesterday and currently have one out on the line right now!!

Right, we are forgetting about houses for now and focusing on smashing the debt once and for all. Sticking to the budget to make future adventures happen. Simple pleasures. No more big purchases for now. Making do and being frugal.

Been playing with my spreadsheet this am. So two more payments of £850 each towards the loan and it WILL be paid off!!! So that is a loan free date of 28th April 2017!!!!! 3 years early!

Dresser will be paid off the other CC next friday when i get paid.

Then on 26th May we will pay off the table and chairs!!!

Just leaving the rest of the 0% card from June onwards. I'm not going to make a plan for this yet as I hope i will have slushed it down even more by being savvy and over budgeting for things like childcare.

But to have less than £2k of debt by the end of May is going to be amazing!!!

Crunchy xx