The Fun Starts Here.....

Jessy103

Well done on the overpayments! x

allmannerofthings

0% interest loans are something that hadn't occurred to me, so thanks for that Jessy!

I'm really thrilled to have managed an overpayment of £505 today, We usually overpay every other month but managed to put by a bit extra. I really must start selling some stuff on Amazon/ebay/do a boot sale to add to our overpayments. I keep procrastinating.

House renovations are going very slowly. It's really disheartening. The lovely new gas fire we had fitted has a problem that so far has taken three months to sort out, and is still not resolved. We have another tradesman who keeps not keeping appointments/phoning back. The toilet seat has broken, the outside tap is leaking, the dishwasher has died, there's a weird smell all of a sudden in the kitchen that we can't work out and the garden fences desperately need painting. In the meantime we've no carpet in the living room and the walls are half stripped. The whole house needs decluttering and organising as well as decorating and neither hubby nor I are all that mobile to do all these jobs. I feel utterly overwhelmed. Aaargh.

allmannerofthings

Good news! Someone from the manufacturer is coming to look at the gas fire on Friday.

I'm feeling a bit more positive about the house today. I just need to pull up my big girl pants and get stuff done! Although I was all set to carry on painting the fence today and it rained. The best laid plans, etc!

I'm going to work on our budget again and reduce where I can, especially on food where there is huge room for improvement. This week I will paint some of the fence when the weather is dry and work on decluttering/sorting out things to sell or give away.

If I concentrate on making some progress every day/week, it will eventually all be done, right?

allmannerofthings

I popped out for five minutes last August and only just remembered to come back....How's everyone doing?

We've been making regular overpayments of about £250 month, which has us on course to pay the mortgage off in 10 years rather than the 14 year original term. We would like to be saving a bit more than that where we can though, and that's not been happening. The money we were saving towards DIY on the house disappeared into the Christmas overspend, and spending in general has got a bit out of hand. The weekly grocery spend is way too high, too many takeaways as well, and books and clothes buying has also happened - some things essential, but mostly not. In addition, my son and his girlfriend became engaged at the end of last year, so I'm planning to save up a bit to help towards the wedding.

So I'm reining it back in! My husband's payday is 22nd, so between now and then I'll come up with a budget. I plan to use up a lot of food we have hanging around too, and have a minimum food spend for a few weeks, mostly fresh stuff.

I read back through this thread and see that a year ago I was talking about selling stuff to make some money - I still haven't got around to doing that, so that's something else for the to-do list. My husband's got some days off coming up and we're planning DIY and major decluttering, so I'll start putting things aside to sell.

It's good to be back!

allmannerofthings

Just made an overpayment of £1000, the first of this year. I've set a target to overpay £3500 this year which I think is realistic, with renovations to find the money for and also saving to help my son and his fiancee with their wedding.

We've started writing down everything we spend, to try and get a picture of where the money is going. I've done this before for a while and found it useful, if a bit alarming to realise exactly how much goes in the corner shop on snack food :eek: This week we've been doing a few jobs so there has been spending in the DIY stores. We have a few birthdays coming up in April too, including my husband's so it won't be a cheap month.

allmannerofthings

It's about time I was posting here again to keep track of what I'm doing / keep myself motivated.
I've not posted since last July, I didn't realise it had been so long!

We've still been overpaying the mortgage. We took it out in April 2017 and the term is 14 years. Our aim was to pay it off in 10, and we're on track to accomplish that. Ideally we can reduce the term even further, but not at the moment as we also have lots of renovations to do on the house.

Looking back over my posts today, I realise the main thing I need to do is actually get going on things! We've had bare boards and stripped wallpaper in our living room for about 18 months and I've still not got around to selling on ebay/Amazon/at a boot sale, despite repeatedly planning to do these things, I have not done them. Time for some action, I think!

I'm pleased we've managed to keep overpaying the mortgage, but other than that our finances for the last year have been a bit all over the place. We've not really managed to save - in fact, we've gone down our savings a bit, so there's less money in the house renovations fund now. We still have about £5500 for that, and we need to add to it as there is a LOT that needs doing.

I'm in the middle of a major decluttering operation at the moment, we have so much stuff! When that's done it will be easier to do the renovations that we need, and hopefully I should come across some stuff worth selling at the same time.

I also really want to look at our whole budget and see where we can reduce costs.

Today's win: I remembered I have a £20 Top Cashback gift card for Tesco, so I printed that out ready for next time we go there.

Plan:
Continue overpaying the mortgage
Add to house renovations fund
Declutter / organise
Find some things to sell
Reduce grocery spend
Look to see where else we can reduce spending