Adding value before making over payments

MichaelDH

News just in...

Received £3 from PineCone and £30 from Swagbucks (£5 for me and a massive £25 for Drew) so that's another £33 paid to the mortgage this evening. That's £387.01 so far for August, very pleased with that considering it's only the 6th!

If anyone want's to try Swagbucks I have a referral link: http://www.swagbucks.com/p/register?rb=38802866

MichaelDH

Signature updated to include yesterday's OP's

We did a quick top up shop in Asda last night (£12.77) for a few essentials and toiletries. Checked price guarantee this morning and printed off a voucher for £1.64

Can't believe I'm admitting to this... someone had left their receipt on the till so I nabbed that and then on the walk back to the car I picked up a discarded receipt, so checked them this morning too and printed off vouchers for £1.77 and £1.49

So that's £4.90 off next weeks shopping. A bit sad I know, but I'm going to add a tab to my budget spreadsheets to track money off vouchers and see how they total up at the end of the year. I've already added a tab for earnings from surveys and Quidco etc. as I think tracking all that free money will help keep us on track :rotfl:

MichaelDH

Just made another over payment :j

£22.57 (after fees) from Prolific and £5 from SwagBucks so £27.57 in total.

Mortgage balance now at £165,498.64 so we've smashed our £165.500 mini target for August already.

MichaelDH

Afternoon all

It's my birthday today. Been having a little day dream about how nice it would be to wake up on my 40th birthday (8 years to go) and not have a mortgage

Just made another over payment to the mortgage of £46.84, £5 from SwagBucks and £41.84 from Quidco for energy switch plus a few other bits and pieces. Think we are up to £461.84 this month so far so would be nice to get that to £500

Also received a voucher for £5 from Asda today for complaining about the fresh baked bread being frozen! Not much but that's £5 off next weeks shop :rotfl:

Off out to Las Iguana tonight with my voucher for a free main course so looking forward to that.

In other news Drew's new car is being delivered on Thursday so he's very excited about that. Just got to try and sell his current car now. Have advertised it on a few facebook pages for £1,800 but if it doesn't go will probably take it to webuyanycar and get £1,200 if we're lucky.

Kittenkirst

Hope you had a lovely time at Las Iguanas- they have a fantastic menu and getting that voucher means it's frugal too

Happy birthday :bdaycake:

You are doing so well with the Swagbucks and the Prolific, and so good with getting Drew in on it too

Keep up the good work!

MichaelDH

Thanks Kittenkirst!

I had a great birthday. We didn't get to Las Iguanas in the end... there was a fuel spillage up the road from us so all the local roads came to a standstill. Instead we had a takeaway from the local Chinese which was very tasty indeed

Bit of a spendy week being at home as haven't had much of a routine to follow. Very naughty, we haven't done any of the decorating we had planned! We have spent lots of time playing with Oscar and going for walks so not too bothered. Also managed to visit a couple of kitchen showrooms (Wren and Magnet) to get some ideas. The lady in Magnet was very nice and gave us some very good advice about the current trends and not going to OTT with the kitchen unless it's our forever home which was very good considering she was potentially talking herself out of some commission when we are ready to buy. We also has a builder come round to talk extensions and expecting some estimates tomorrow so that's exciting to be getting the ball rolling.

Drew's new car was delivered on Thursday and he's really pleased with it. Very relieved that it's a nice colour, can't remember if I said before but the colour was a bit of a gamble as hadn't seen it on an actual car before, only on the colour wall in the VW garage. Sure my 5 year old Golf will feel ancient when I drive to work tomorrow!

Back on track these week with being frugal

MichaelDH

Afternoon all

Just made another OP of £48.24, £31 from banking some of our change jar and the other £17.24 from Prolific. Total OP's for this month stand at £509.66 so quite pleased with that

We had a builder come round in the week to discuss options for an extension and he's sent us some estimates. The estimates a little higher than we anticipated but not by a huge amount. We've had an architect come round this morning to look at options in a bit more detail. Very worthwhile as his suggestions have made us rethink what we had planned for downstairs layout. Just awaiting his quote for drawing up plans for us to use for planning permission and getting full costings.Next doors planning permission for their extension is now on the local planning site for comments so we've been having a good look at that to see if we can borrow any ideas :rotfl:

Option 1 - Rebuild the garage, extend kitchen in to the back of the garage (doesn't include kitchen or fitting), divide up the remainder of garage in to a utility off the kitchen and a downstairs cloakroom off the hall, with the rest of the space used for storage. £37,200 incl. VAT.

Option 2 - As option 1, plus extending out by 3m on the back of the property to create open plan kitchen and additional living area. £62,400 incl. VAT.

Option 3 - As option 1, but with additional bedroom and en-suite upstairs, and a bit of reconfiguration to improve layout and the the size of the existing box room. £66,000 incl. VAT.

Option 4 - All of the above. £91.200 incl. VAT.

So lots and lots to think about. We've spoken to our FA and he's confident getting the additional funds shouldn't be a problem. I've spoken to a couple of local agents and both seem positive about our plans, and one has said she will come round once we have some plans and check values etc. All a bit daunting but good to at least be making some progress.

MichaelDH

Just managed to make another OP of £25 (thanks Quidco!) so that's £534.66 this month.

MichaelDH

Evening all.

We finished the month with a total OP of £534.66 which we are over the moon with :j

If anyone is interested, this is where the OP's came from:

Monthly OP - £331.92
Rounding up - £1.05
Prolific - £61.90
Swagbucks - £40.00
PineCone - £3.00
Quidco - £66.84
Change Jar - £31.00

Just remembered to submit meter readings. We used £10.50 gas and £41.05 electric, and we pay £78.90 each month, so have under used by £27.35

In other news, I've had a promotion at work, so have a few more pennies to put towards personal savings and my monthly pension contribution will increase. Also hopeful of a company bonus in October or November so fingers crossed.

Good luck for lots of OP's in October fellow mortgage free wannabes!

MichaelDH

Evening all

This months monthly payment (£668.08) plus our monthly OP (£331.92) has now been credited so mortgage balance now stands at £164.720.53.

Total OPs so far stand at £906.58, so this month's mini challenge is to get that to £1000

We've had a surprise cheque from first Utility (who we haven't used for over 12 months!) for £28.99 so that'll be sent to the mortgage once we've paid it in. Hoping some cash back clears on quidco so that'll go to the mortgage too.

Was a bit naughty yesterday, spent over £50 on candles, so going to try and recover that money from elsewhere in the budget to make sure we don't dip in to savings if things get tight this month.