Ruby's Bought a House, Now I want to Own It!

badmemory

No only about £2.50 a month but I suspect that will keep increasing especially if they are allowed to increase their profit %age.

ruby_eskimo

Had a busy but slightly productive weekend getting a few odd jobs sorted around the house before doing the long Sunday night drive to the parents house.  Managed to:

- Fix drawers in Kallax unit (the fronts have been falling off for months now...)
- Decluttered one sock drawer so it actually closes, just need to do the other one now
- Started a bag of clothes donations
- Washed all the makeup brushes that have been sitting in a pot under my dressing table (will declutter some of these once they're dry)
- 2 bags of shredding completed 
- Sorted all the holiday bits I've been buying over the months into stuff for the immediate trip and stuff for future trips
- Washed the cover on the dry soon
- Tidied most of my dressing table

Doesn't sound like a lot but has made a difference to the clutter in my head and the clutter that's been all around me.  Just need to try and get some more stuff out of the house and to stop bringing more stuff in!

ruby_eskimo

I feel like I'm kind of abandoning this thread and I don't really want to!  I want to be more engaged with my finances and actually try to make more of dent on the mortgage / set us up in a good place for when we next move (and have to take on a bigger mortgage!)

So I'm taking August as a re-set and here are my goals:

Mortgage | Goal: Make £5000 in OP's this year | Current: £3122.16: We have been making regular OP's each month so the total payment is equal to what we were paying on our previous mortgage if that makes sense.  We're on track to hit about £4.5k this way but I want to stretch a little bit and see if we can make it to £5k.  Also this may take us very close to being under £200k when we reach the end of the year.

LISA | Goal: Max out this year | Current: £1382: Have a bit of a way to go on this and we're over halfway through the year.  Really need to knuckle down and try to get this done.

Car Fund | Goal: Hit £10,000 this year | Current: £8623.52: This is my car replacement fund.  Both cars I've had, I've paid cash upfront for them.  Not that there's anything wrong with my current car *knock on all the wood* but I want to make sure I'm in a position as when the time comes to be able to also pay cash for the next one.  Knowing that I'm going to have to buy probably a slightly bigger, or at least taller car to help me ferry aging parents around in, means that I'll be looking for something a bit more expensive than my current one.  Hoping to hit this by the end of the year.

Tech Fund | Goal: £1000 | Current: £111.07: Earlier on I managed to side-hustle enough money to pay for a new phone handset.  So I'm going to try the same to help me replace my aging laptop.  It's going to take a lot longer this time so not going to hit it this year but it's still something to aim for.

No Spend Days | Goal: 15 in August | Current: 1: I really need to stop buying stuff and I know I say this every few months but I really need to do something about it now.  I've "had" to buy a few things for our upcoming trips but it means I've had packages coming every day, I keep adding "fun" things to these orders and then just have the urge to buy things.  I found myself wandering around H&M the other day with an armful of stuff that I didn't need.  Just before I joined the checkout line I woke myself up and went and put all the things back.  But it was a close call.  Yes treats are nice and I have a treat pot of money to help me pay for those but I don't really need anything else right now.

Emergency Fund | Goal: £10,000 | Current: £7867.96: This took a little hammering to pay for the work I had done on my car in May and I really want to re-build it back up and hit the target (hopefully!)


In about 6 weeks time I'm due a bit of a bump in my salary as I hit the 5 year anniversary of starting at my current band so will catapult to the top.  I've worked out that it might equal an extra £150 a month which will go a long way to help some of these goals.

In other news the weekend is going to be spent putting my house back together after over a week of both of use being sick (such fun times!)

South_coast

Good to hear from you, Ruby 😀!

I'm not sure what you need from a laptop, but I got a new one a few months ago for £220ish (Argos) and it's perfect for my very light use (mostly Shop & Scan and surveys I can't do on my phone 🤣), so you might be closer on that target than you think? 

Hope you are both feeling better, and well done on the H&M wake-up call - it only means more decluttering to do at some point in the future!

ruby_eskimo

Thanks @South_coast, definitely both feeling better although the lingering cough is annoying to say the least.  That's a really great deal for a laptop!  But I need mine for work as well as although I have a laptop that work have issued me, I can't have all the software I need installed on it (very long and boring story) so I spend my days switching between the two.  Therefore need something a bit chunky and able to cope with all the stuff I have to do at work at the moment, which might be about to change but more on that when there are more concrete plans in place.

Weekend was spent picking up a few little bits and pieces (like medication) that we needed for the trip and getting most of the house back into some sort of order.  Even managed to make a massive dent in the shredding pile and I'm determined to get through it all by the end of the week. 

Spent Saturday night with my book club which is always great fun (and yes we talk about the book...) and I didn't have to spend a penny - host insisted that we didn't need to bring snacks, we had drinks in the house that I could take with me and a friend gave me a lift so win win all round.  

ruby_eskimo

The shredding has been completed 🥳🥳🥳🥳  For me this is a massive achievement as this was a box that's been sat under my desk for YEARS and just had things thrown in it as and when.  So a big source of clutter is now gone and I'm filing things and getting rid of them as they come into the house now 👍

Had my hair cut last night which did cost me in the £50 range but it was budgeted for and I only really go 3 times a year and never pay for any other grooming, preferring to just get on with it myself.  Plus I can't think of anything worse than being covered in hot wax and literally having hairs ripped out of you.  I'll keep my safety razor and shaving bar thank you very much.

£11.64 cashed out of Prolific and transferred to the tech fund this morning and the credit card has been paid (again from the budget).  Have worked out how much money I'll have left at the end of the month so have taken £120 of that and transferred it to the car fund and the rest I've put in my LISA pot on Monzo so I can still access it if I need to top up my fun money.  If not then it will all get transferred over on pay day.

ruby_eskimo

Spent the weekend stressing out about our trips coming up and packing for our cruise.  An upside was that I managed to sort through our travel box and declutter a bunch of things (43 to be precise, including a few clothes bits as well) that I don't need and never use.  Also managed a complete no spend weekend apart from the little top up shop of necessities for the rest of the week which doesn't count.  Feeling very motivated when it comes to money at the moment but very overwhelmed in every other aspect of my life 😆  Just need to make it through to Thursday and then I'll be in holiday mode 😎

ruby_eskimo

*waves manically* Hello, we're back from Norway!  Here's a pic that pretty much sums the trip up:



Was absolutely spectacular and still feel very overwhelmed at the beauty of everything we saw.  On an MSE note, we spent way less than I budgeted on this trip (like over £1000 less) so we've added that to the USA pot which is now very nicely padded out in case anything goes wrong 👍

Will be back towards the end of the week with an update on the goals.  Although will say I cashed out £13 from Prolific this morning which has been added to the Tech fund. 

Merlin's_Beard

Looks absolutely magnificent! Well done on the extra money in the US pot as well.

VintageHistorian

That's a beautiful shot. Just needs a nice hot chocolate to really seal the deal XD