My New Frugal Life

Newfrugallife

I have also mentioned in my previous posts that I have now registered as self employed. I have been keeping all my income from the dog sitting and any expenses, to be fair there arent many at all, but I will claim part of the house hold bills (theres a set % you are allowed when working from home). I will claim any mileage when going to clients house, any treats, poo bags and I bought two stair gates Oh and extra cleaning products as one dog had some accidents on my carpet! All my insurance and advertising is taken care of as Im a member of a particular dog sitting website (they take a cut of my payments) and the owners provide all the food.

But you might be interested to know how much Ive earned so far:

October - 32.80
November - 8.20
December - 32.80
January - 368.96
February - 402 so far

And I have one booking for March worth 340 already, but Im never counting on it until its done and paid

SuperSecretSquirrel

Wow! The doggy income has shot up for you the last couple of months - well done!

Newfrugallife

This is what we have done with the extra income so far:
I give a proportion of it to my hubby for his fun spending money
We have used the extra money for family days out, restaurant and cinema
I am saving chunk of if to build up a buffer fund and once it gets to a certain amount that I feel comfortable with we will start mortgage overpayments!

Im very excited as when I started this diary I wasnt 100% sure that we will be able to do that as we only just managed to pay the bills/ food on husbands salary with only a small amount to spare. But now things look much brighter Realistically I wont be making overpayments for few months yet as will need to see how the dog sitting business goes and the money is better in savings, but it certainly on the cards for the future.

I have also saved the 160 this month as its a free council tax month (with another 160 to be saved next month)

And I have submitted another computing assignment which is due 15/02

Newfrugallife

I have not updated for awhile on how Im getting on with my surveys....

I only do 2 now:

One poll I have £24.70 need to get to £40 to with draw. I have been doing these since November!!! Once I get to 40 I wont do it anymore.
You gov I have 1850 points and need to get to 3150 points to withdraw £50..... im very close to giving up on this!! Also been doing it since November...

Good thing my dog sitting business is going well

I have received my score back for computing assignment with 77, very happy with that!

I have 4 dog free days so catching up on cleaning and we are having family day out to the cinema

Speak soon

Newfrugallife

Newfrugallife wrote: »

I have also mentioned in my previous posts that I have now registered as self employed. I have been keeping all my income from the dog sitting and any expenses, to be fair there arent many at all, but I will claim part of the house hold bills (theres a set % you are allowed when working from home). I will claim any mileage when going to clients house, any treats, poo bags and I bought two stair gates Oh and extra cleaning products as one dog had some accidents on my carpet! All my insurance and advertising is taken care of as Im a member of a particular dog sitting website (they take a cut of my payments) and the owners provide all the food.

But you might be interested to know how much Ive earned so far:

October - 32.80
November - 8.20
December - 32.80
January - 368.96
February - 402 so far

And I have one booking for March worth 340 already, but Im never counting on it until its done and paid

It looks like Im going to close February at £467.60p very very very happy with this!!!!

Have exactly £400 worth of bookings for March, but only £60 is confirmed so far so Im not counting on it yet...

Also the large February and March bookings are from the same client (business trips and March is the last one), so I realise that not every month will be that good! Will be saving as much as poss

Newfrugallife

Newfrugallife wrote: »

Ok so in a quick nutshell we have a large mortgage of £221,528 and its not great as its on 34 years term. Also due to a change in circumstances I will be stay at home mum starting next month, so we will have to manage on husbands salary.

But I have been a budget queen while paying our debts and am very confident I can do this again and not only "manage on one salary" but save and overpay the mortgage as well! I will use this diary to run a pretty tight ship and record my goals and achievements!

At the moment I'm still playing around with the budget, but will be back once I finalise the figures.

Since this is actually mortgage free wannabe diary I thought I would give a quick update on my mortgage. With leaving my job and becoming one salary household I couldnt even think beyond surviving the first few months. But now things are looking better so I will start thinking about the overpayments again pretty soon! Also in September I will be changing the mortgage as a fix coming to an end so im thinking of saving a lump sum to trim it down before switching the rate and then start on regular overpayments.

Mortgage February 18 - £220,114 so only down £1,414 as its over 33 year 7 month term so looks like it goes down by £282 a month. We can try to do a lot better than that and any small overpayment will help us along

wishingthemortgaheaway

We have a lot in common you and I, except our mortgage is tiny in comparison. I gave up work over 12 months ago now, and, although I have a little, part time job, the income pales into insignificance compared to my previous salary.

I am overpaying, I aim to pay off £400 capital a month, which is and overpayment of around £175 which can be a struggle, but what I remember is

1) every little helps
2) they were many many reasons for me giving up my job, all positive, the fact my mortgage won't be paid of as soon as it would have been is perhaps the only entry in the 'reasons I shouldn't have resigned' column.

You are doing brilliantly. I'm loving reading about your adventures to stay on the straight and narrow.
Thank you for sharing.

Wish.

Newfrugallife

Thank you for your message Wish! Yes I totally agree with your reasons. Im not even that worried about our mortgage per se as I look at it as if we are paying rent.... which we are so fortunate to actually own the house be it in 30 odd years Me and my husband are in our 30s so it doesnt feel too bad.

I need to work out a proper overpayment plan, say a % of my earnings, but at the moment I still feel that my income is not guaranteed and trying to save as much as possible. Once I have more clients and see how my income changes over the months I will pay of a chunk of my mortgage when Im due a rate change in September.

Newfrugallife

Newfrugallife wrote: »

I have also mentioned in my previous posts that I have now registered as self employed. I have been keeping all my income from the dog sitting and any expenses, to be fair there arent many at all, but I will claim part of the house hold bills (theres a set % you are allowed when working from home). I will claim any mileage when going to clients house, any treats, poo bags and I bought two stair gates Oh and extra cleaning products as one dog had some accidents on my carpet! All my insurance and advertising is taken care of as Im a member of a particular dog sitting website (they take a cut of my payments) and the owners provide all the food.

But you might be interested to know how much Ive earned so far:

October - 32.80
November - 8.20
December - 32.80
January - 368.96
February - 402 so far

And I have one booking for March worth 340 already, but Im never counting on it until its done and paid

I haven't been on here for awhile! Mostly because it's all been same old but now I have some very happy exciting news so thought I'd update

I FINALLY reached my op survey payout!!! Omg it took me since November to reach £40 payout and it's now on its way to me :beer:
I am not doing anymore surveys ever, and have given up on YouGov!

My income from dog walking been as follows:
October - 32.80
November - 8.20
December - 32.80
January - 368.96
February - 467.60
March - 461.12
April - 195.60
May - 109.12 so far

I already have bookings for June, July and August but I'm taking some time off in July also did my first tax return and honestly it wasn't too complicated as I've been keeping proper records.

The reason April and May looks a lot less is because I have been declining some bookings due to the fact we got our own puppy! I know I know..... they are expensive and all of that, but now I'm at home it was now or never situation. And if I ever do need to go back to full time work I will send the dog to daycare (before I started doing this I didn't even know such thing existed, and it's cheaper than having another child )

My uni studies also going well, I have now passed my first module, I got 73% which is a B
My second module is also very nearly finished, I need to submit my last assignment next week.
My third module, I have 2 assignments to go with the last one due in September so unfortunately I have to study over the summer. I have already picked my second year modules too :j

Mortgage amount is - £218,857 down £1,257 from February

Newfrugallife

Hello, it's been nearly a year since I've created my new diary!

I know I've been rubbish at posting and initially I didn't know how we would manage financially as I've just left my job and needed time to figure things out, etc.

Whilst things have been going reasonably well, I run a small business from home and we are managing fine, even have a little bit of savings and can afford birthdays and Christmas we didn't actually make any overpayments to our mortgage 'this year.

I feel now that we know we can afford to live, is the perfect time to become more focussed on actually overpaying our mortgage and I will need to post more regularly to help me achieve this.

We have recently secured a new mortgage rate, which I'm very happy about as was worried about the rates rising. We got 1.93% for a 5 year fix, which is pretty good. This rate becomes effective from October and I will be able to make overpayments then.

The reason we wanted to fix for 5 years is because this will take us to nearly the end of our sons secondary education and we might be thinking of moving after that. Also we wanted security of the same payments each month and the rates will only be going in one direction.....
I would have actually secured it for 10 years but we might be downsizing after our youngest leaves school so didn't want to be tied in for so long!

I will create a signature so I can update each month, this is how things stand at the moment with some of my funds being a bit depleted due to summer holiday, house and kids spending. I want to keep our emergency fund at £500 mark.

Mortgage overpayment - 0
Emergency fund - 500
Christmas/ birthday fund - 200
House/ other fund - 300

Mortgage balance - 218,423 for 33 years

I don't actually know how to calculate the effect of my future overpayments but will be keeping track via my online banking.

So that it! Gloves off and huge mortgage I will be coming for you