Bricks Not Books

f0xh0les

Lots to think about.. . but it is an 'eating an elephant' problem rather than a 'swallowing a frog' problem. Maybe try for a smaller more achievable amount first, rather than a whole £450 a month. See how many £45 savings you can realistically save from the budget, and remember that every overpayment counts and has an impact on future interest.

Have a play around with other significant dates - when DS is 15, when you are 51, or 55 instead.

Just remember your pay will go up, money will appear, tax rebates will arrive, great aunt Lavinia (thrice removed) might leave you a surprise bequest, or you win the football pools.

Try not to panic about DS, it just shows how good a mum you are. If he's going to bleugh, he's going to bleugh. At least we have washing machines these days.

Happy New Financal year for tomorrow .

Jessy103

I hope DS is OK and all sickness is banished from the house for long time! ❤️

With regards, to be MF when I'm 50, I don't think it will happen, it's an extra £900 a month, which is bonkers! However, I will do what I can but I think its important that we live our lives too. Especially when like yourself, you have children. You need to spend time with them and make memories with them. Would it hurt to try and pay a bit extra each month, no, but you shouldn't stress about getting that extra £450 each month and as Foxholes says, you never know what's round the corner with payrises and unknown rich relatives! x

South_coast

Would it help to work out the total you'd need to overpay and then just chip away at that amount, rather than think of it as a monthly figure? That way you wouldn't be "ahead" or "behind" as it's the total you're aiming at rather than splitting it into equal instalments. I can't decide if that would be more motivating, or less 🤣!

Merlin's_Beard

Haha to be mortgage free at 50 I'd have to OP £1000 a month every month and that's at my current interest rate, which was fixed in 2022. Not gonna happen. As others have said it's important to be flexible with priorities and to look at all your presents and futures, not just one! Technically paying into pensions/ISAs and OPing mortgages IS the same goal of financial freedom, and it's important to remember that as well as remembering to live for today as well.

VintageHistorian

Thank you everyone! It's definitely more of a "if only" series of thoughts rather than a serious consideration. I was just surprised at how much I kept having to increase the monthly OP amount by until the amount left on the mortgage was very close to my 50th birthday.

@f0xh0les I'm a millenial, my pay only goes up if I change job 🤣 But the distant relative with cash is always worth a consideration. One reason to keep the family tree not only updated but visible online - makes it much easier for the heir hunting lot to track me down when the right time comes (although since my parents are both still up and running it would actually go to them 😅)

@Jessy103 But you've already been mortgage free once so you already have a taste for it 😉

@South_coast I think you're right about potentially viewing it as an annual amount rather than monthly. Money does often come in dribs and drabs. In some ways I find a monthly target easier to manage mentally because if I'm getting close to hitting it repeatedly I know I'm on the right lines. An annual target only becomes urgent in December 😅

@Merlin's_Beard Absolutely, and I don't want to drop out of adding to my ISA. My pension pot is lagging as I graduated in 2008, when the financial world was burning down and no one was hiring, so I missed out on a few years of fulltime work and thus pension building. I can't afford to cut out the savings contributions in favour of the mortgage, it just won't work in the long run. I still remember the horror of someone at work telling me they'd stopped paying into the workplace pension during maternity leave and never started up again. All those matched payments from our employer, completely missed 😱

Anyway, food budget thoughts in the next post.

VintageHistorian

Food budget

I'm having a think about some ways to try and bring the food budget down a bit and currently there are three main hotspots that could be dealt with.

1. DH's lunches

Before the pandemic I was often making sandwiches and a nibbly salad box for Mr VH to take to work. A bit time consuming but nothing serious. During the pandemic he wanted to take in something that could be held in a wrapper and was very quick to eat with minimal mess, so he started taking in Cornish pasties. At the time the individually wrapped ones were pretty affordable but they've shot up in price so now we buy a multipack once a week and he decants one into a lunchbox each day.

At £3.50 for a pack of 4 they're not terribly expensive but they don't last the week and frankly I can easily see them edging closer to £4 a pack by the end of the year. At one point Mr VH asked me to buy some pasta sauces so he could take a cooked pasta into work but that soon fell by the wayside, I suspect because he finds standing in the kitchen to boil pasta very boring and time consuming.

If I want to combat this then I think once a month I need to be organising it. It's not a huge problem for me if I need to cook some pasta on Sunday and Wednesday lunchtimes so all he has to do is pick the lunchbox out of the fridge. There's plenty of options with jarred sauces and I can even chuck some cooked chicken in to bulk them out.

2. DS's lunches

I'm a bit embarassed to admit that DS still has those godawful toddler puches stirred through some cooked rice for his lunches 3 days a week. It's a hangover from his pre-nursery days. I still do it as the rice has vegetables in so I can tell myself that combined with dinner he'll have had his 5-a-day, but they're stupidly expensive for what they are and we need to wean ourselves off the convenience. It would help if he liked eggs as I could do eggs and toast or an omlette but he hates them, so that's one easy lunch route sealed off.

Luckily with our upcoming holiday I've said we'll just give him the same picnic things we're having. He's not been very keen on cucumber or carrot sticks but I'm hoping if he sees Mr VH eat them he'll be more willing to try and enjoy them. That combined with a sandwich and a few mini cheddars will be enough, and then my supply of freezer foods mean he has a home cooked dinner often.

Point 3 coming later!

VintageHistorian

And…

3. Food waste.

Another big one, I'm just not very organised. I know roughly what we're running out of in terms of cupboard staples but I have a bad habit of buying things for one recipe and then leaving them until well past their best before. I'm also terrible at using up eggs, and I persevere with using some things even when I know the quality has gone down and more will be waste.

Tesco ham is a case in point, I get a packet of the honey roast wafer thin for my sandwiches but recently I've had a shorter than expected date AND the slices are smelling "off" just two days after the pack has been open, even if the use by is still days away. But I keep buying it and only making 2 sandwiches and binning the rest.

I need to find myself a system that reminds me of what best before/use by dates are coming up and actually make myself use them. Eggs are the big annoyance for me, I know how to bake I've just been quite lazy about doing so since Christmas. Once I'm back in the habit of at least making cupcakes on a Sunday then I'll have less waste and more cake. And if I need to spend a little more on better quality ham then I need to accept it. Or better plan my in-work lunches and my work-from-home lunches so I don't need ham and can make something else.

So much to consider but nice to get it all down, if only as a reminder in 3 months time when I'm puzzling over the same issues and cursing poor quality pig meat.

Merlin's_Beard

It is so difficult to remember when things go out of date - you'd think they had an app for that!

VintageHistorian

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81953817#Comment_81953817

There probably is, but then I'd have to remember to fill it in 😅