My New Frugal Life

greent

See, to me, check and stripes aren't fussy - I was thinking large floral patterns in bright colours!!
x

Newfrugallife

Arghh was out walking the dog and I've seen a house for sale round the corner from us. Exactly what I want... price in excess of 500,000 AND the drive needs doing AND needs rendering/painting the outside hahaha.

On the plus side I was calculating the stamp duty wrong... yes it is 5%, but it's no tax up to 125,000 and then 5% on remainder I think. Not sure but this website calculates it for you:

https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/tools/house-buying/stamp-duty-calculator

Even if we sold for top value and borrowed up to our maximum, we would still be £21,750 short plus solicitor fees (say £6k?), plus £15k stamp duty, plus moving costs say £1k, plus doing up the drive £5k. Nearly £50k short.. PLUS painting/rendering outside! Forgot about that

I don't know why I keep thinking about this. When I wasn't working I literally not thought about moving or doing up the house and I'm not exactly on a massive wage now.

In other news I have sorted my wardrobe! 3 Black bags full went to the garage, but amazing surprising news are that I do not need to go shopping! I have enough tops that I'm happy with and found an extra pair of black trousers... Also found some shoes. The wardrobe looks amazing and it felt so good to clear it. One annoying thing was that 3 items I bought recently (in October) didn't spark joy, they didn't wash well and looked a mess basically! I need to be careful what I buy, but it's hard to tell what would happen once they've been through the wash a few times.
And one item, an old hoodie, which has holes (puppy chewed it) actually sparks a lot of joy still so stayed hahaha...

gallygirl

Newfrugallife wrote: »

In other news I have sorted my wardrobe! 3 Black bags full went to the garage, but amazing surprising news are that I do not need to go shopping! I have enough tops that I'm happy with and found an extra pair of black trousers... Also found some shoes. The wardrobe looks amazing and it felt so good to clear it. One annoying thing was that 3 items I bought recently (in October) didn't spark joy, they didn't wash well and looked a mess basically! I need to be careful what I buy, but it's hard to tell what would happen once they've been through the wash a few times.
And one item, an old hoodie, which has holes (puppy chewed it) actually sparks a lot of joy still so stayed hahaha...

Oh great that it's worked so well . Once you get rid of the 'noise' from unwanted stuff it's great to rediscover clothes you'd forgotten about.


Now....... plan a new walking route to avoid that house in future :rotfl:.

Newfrugallife

Payday tomorrow, such a good short month which has allowed us to overpay our mortgage by an extra £100 from the food shop fund.

All funds reset tomorrow:
Food fund - £400 (plus £86.68 rolling over to make another mortgage overpayment once it reaches £100).

Savings this month - £200 to emergency fund, £200 to family savings, a further £150 to emergency fund as its a council tax free month. So not quite £700 as I miscalculated my pay... but still very very pleased with that.

Our usual £100 mortgage overpayment.

Personal money, a £100 to savings and a £100 to premium bonds, leaving £200 for personal spending in March.

Newfrugallife

Allocated my various pots and managed to squeeze £50 from the budget so now my emergency fund is £1,000. I'm so so happy about this and feel like we finally taking off with our savings and overpayments. Obviously it won't be as good as this month all the time, but we have made a fantastic start.

I will update mortgage total once the main payments goes out tomorrow/ Monday.

I'm still not sure whether to stop emergency fund at 1k and build family savings up/ overpay mortgage.

Family savings will be on going and obviously if we have a holiday etc.. they can get wiped right out...

I'm keeping quiet about house improvements for now as that's somehow coming from the family savings also...

In personal savings my first target is to save for next years season ticket.

Newfrugallife

Main mortgage payment gone out and now stands at £214,994

Just trying to play around with the figures and I think I get charged £11.39 a day interest. We overpay by £100 a month, so just under a third of monthly interest, in February however we overpaid by £200

gallygirl

Newfrugallife wrote: »

Just trying to play around with the figures and I think I get charged £11.39 a day interest.

So that's just under 50p an hour....... so for every chocolate bar or packet of crisps you resist you're an hour closer to mortgage free .

Newfrugallife

Not been feeling great mentally since Friday. Tried to go to bed very early and slept as much as possible over the weekend as sleeping seems to help. Just feel so empty today... trying to cheer myself up with how much we saving etc, but I noticed a long time ago that money doesn't actually make me happy. BUT If I don't have money it makes me even more unhappy (so obviously better to have and not think of quitting my job etc etc)
Hope I will feel better soon

Newfrugallife

I was very very tired when I wrote that message on Monday, not been sleeping well at night due to various things (hence trying to catch up on sleep at the weekends)! But now feeling a bit better.
It's funny how small things seems to make me feel better, like my sushi Tuesdays haha (boys are at football so no cooking for me). Also walking the dog early morning and it's finally lighter now, he even been off lead couple of times in the morning.
One step at a time

Newfrugallife

Not been on here for awhile so time for a little update.

Food shopping budget going very well, so far weekly shops in Mach were - £56.34, £62.93, £79.26 and we have £288.15 left in the account, this does include the previous months which rolled over (I only pay to the mortgage once we have a round £100). I recon one more shop to go until payday on 29th. These shops do not include alcohol as we rarely drink and not including pet food as I get that separately. I recon I spend about 60/70 on pet food a month.

Our council tax gone up by £7 to £173 that is a lot.... grrrrr

Had to sort annual pet insurance, £28 each for the cats and £34 for the dog (so over £90 as I can't remember the exact pence). I only buy accident insurance, as I had normal insurance for the cat in the past and it did not pay out when he was ill. At least with this I know if there's an accident they are covered and if they are ill I will self insure.

From pay day I will be over paying mortgage by £200 a month as I'm moving the £100 I put in emergency fund towards it (as that's now at 1k).

In other news, mentally I'm still so so