Chapter 3: the large London mortgage

lessavyfav

Hello!

Oof, what an expensive week it ended up being: 2x uber trips, 3x dinners, a takeaway, rounds of drinks yesterday..bit of a write-off really.

However, this week looks to be much quieter and of course it's payday on Friday. I am still hopeful we'll have £100 or so leftover the day we get paid, which we'll sweep to our renovation fund. Just kicking myself a bit as we could have had an extra couple of hundred quid if we were just a tiny bit more disciplined / not lazy. Must. Try. Harder.

I've made a meal plan this week and we have plenty of stores in the larder so there's no real excuse to go out and buy extra bits. The meal plan this week:
- Jamie's chickpea chard pork
- Corn, avocado, pepper and quinoa salad
- Aubergine and courgette 'cannelloni' (vegan recipe i'm going to try)
- Turmeric, cauliflower and chickpea salad
- Spicy tomato prawn spaghetti
- Cold soba noodles with veg
- Thai red curry chicken with rice
- Roasted veg frittata with green bean and feta salad.
- Carrot and bean patties with tomato stuffed in pita bread, maybe a side of chips depending how hungry we are..
- Breakfasts will be overnight oats with berries and nut granola, yoghurt and granola, etc.

Plus we have baked potatoes, half a loaf of bread, half pork fillet, cheddar cheese, eggs, a couple of avocados, pears and I'm going to make a tomato sauce as backup for those lazy days.

I don't think we'll be invoicing as much as we'd hoped to this month as there have been delays in work. Going to really push my OH to get some things out the door so that we can invoice one more job and get paid on par with what we have been most months recently. As of next month we're going to have higher regular costs too, as we've secured office space. Exciting, but scary!

I just potted up some parsley and basil seeds, so fingers crossed they grow as I often waste money on silly plastic packets of cut herbs. I pretty sure I have coriander, dilly and chive seeds somewhere too so must have a dig around the spare room.

I have loads of work to do this week so must get myself motivated!

Hope everyone has a great week xx

lessavyfav

Another payday has come round! It wasn't amazing for wages unfortunately, so next month will be a bit of a stretch to fully fill up the emergency fund as I was hoping to do. We'll see how we go though. Definitely no OP to the mortgage this month.

The car is in for an MOT and has failed on a few things, so that bites the big one. I'm not that fussed on owning a car to be honest but my husband loves it (and admittedly it can be very convenient to have). I think I might go back to see the costs with insurance, checkups, etc over the past couple of years...

Last week I was pretty good with the meal plan and everything was delicious, but we decided to treat ourselves on Thursday with a pub dinner. It was very pricey though, regret!

This week's meal plan looks like:
- Roast chicken with carrots, cabbage, potatoes and gravy (undecided if i can be bothered with yorkies!)
- Use leftover chicken in sandwiches
- Leftover chicken in an asian style soup
- Salmon with broccolini
- Pea, courgette, feta frittata
- Lemon and spinach polpette with spaghetti
- Carrot burger patties (leftover) with salad
- Pork fillet with saga and marsala sauce

One of my food apps has £1 lunches this week, plus I have £5 credit about to expire on another food app so I'll be using that for when I'm in the city. Going to try to avoid any sort of takeaway or meal out this week too.

One thing on my mind lately: I keep thinking I need to have more revenue streams. The only way for us to earn lots as we're currently doing it, is by working longer hours, so if something happens to one of us or we want to go on holiday, that means we're earning less. But I know we could probably put effort into other things that generate passive income or easy profits along the way...we just haven't had any time to focus on this side of the business yet. Basically, the idea of FIRE is becoming more and more attractive to me!! (But drip feeding £100 into an S&S ISA is not going to get me there any time soon, haha)

lessavyfav

Ayyy, it's been a while since I last updated.

A few good months of work and we have plenty more in the pipeline but with much slower paying clients – cashflow may prove to be tricky if I don't chase.

I have suddenly had a burst of energy to redecorate some of the house – the bathroom is on hold for the moment but I've decided to re-do the spare room in a relatively budget-friendly way, still with a nice finish. The idea is to remove the current built-in wardrobe and replace with IKEA carcasses and have some custom doors made giving us slightly more storage, and definitely more functional with drawers inside. I've bought some curtains off Etsy which are being custom made extra long out of lovely washed linen (this room has no curtains which I always forget until someone stays over!). Beyond that, one wall is cladding so my mission is to remove the current blue paint and then go over it again in white. We already have new radiators, light switches and sockets, so it should look really nice once it's all done – probably nicer than our own bedroom!

I also really should think about sorting the garden before summer arrives! We wanted to do this last year but I'm not sure where time went!

MS things I've done lately:
- Called up Virgin Media and got a reduction in our monthly contract – had been paying £46.74 per month! Got this for £10 less per month. I know there are cheaper deals but I couldn't be bothered dealing with closing accounts, organising days when the new place comes, and being forced to pay for a installation of a phone line we will never ever use.
- Swapped our energy supplier. We were with bulb and happy because it was a renewable energy provider but it was getting pricey. Found another renewable energy provider and it's looking to be about £10-12 cheaper per month too.
- Got an American Express card for the cashback. I ummed and ahhed about getting a credit card again after all these years without one but am glad I did it – paid for some long haul flights and a few other things and have already almost reached £100 back (had saved for tickets so have paid balance off already).

Things I need to do to improve:
- Remember to use TopCashback more! I keep forgetting but have put a couple of things through and am due about £30 soon.
- FOOD SHOP. I find this so hard and yet I don't know why. We are spending in excess of £400 on groceries and cleaning products every month with just two adults! That doesn't include dog food! This should be much, much less.