Light the fire...

woodfired

Hazelnutty wrote: »

It's so satisfying, isn't it, when you've had a good use-up of the fridge? Ours is pretty naked now as we've been eeking out the budget until payday, which thankfully is tomorrow!

It is lovely Nutty, I love spending the day in the kitchen seeing what I can concoct from past its best fridge bits. Ours is mostly empty but has quite a bit in the way of HM ready meals which is always handy!

woodfired

So we saw the accountants yesterday . The good news is the shop made £40k profit in the last year, the bad news is a big old tax bill to go with those profits. Thanks to some jiggery pokery, we have avoided paying a payment on account towards next year's bill, however, the damage is still close to £7k :eek:. So I have paid £5000 straight away, taken a good chunk from savings and repaid £2000 that the other company owed us. This leaves another couple of thousand that I will pay in the next few weeks. I have learnt that they start to send a few letters before they get too cross but then I generally cough up before they start shouting too loudly! :rotfl:

I was really happy about how my savings were looking and then they get wiped out in one fell swoop. Damnit! Ah well, looking forward to next month, they could potentially be back up above £9k if we are careful (currently £6400). The other thing I haven't counted is that DH's business still owes him circa £7k in back-pay which I am going to start reclaiming.

In other financial news, we should get below the £200 000 mark for the combined business loan and mortgage this month. We are currently well under but the interest hasn't yet been applied to the mortage account. I'll look forward to checking on Friday and updating my sig!

woodfired

OK, so a little late but I did say we needed to know the tax situation before I firmed up any plans for this year. Now we know where we stand with that we can start to plan.

Savings: Target = £20 000
Currently stand at £6400. We are owed a further £7000 from one of our businesses.
This leaves a further £6600 to find, assuming that we can take the cash owed out of the business (relies on the order book remaining full!) We also have to pay the remaining £2000 of the tax bill.

Mortgage: Target = £115 000
Slightly aspirational target this one! Current balance £124 300 (ish - waiting for interest to be applied). Our regular overpayment should leave a balance of £117 055, according to the calculators, so another £2000 to find (although only 11 months left of the year in which to do it!)

Aiming high for 2019! :beer:

woodfired

Good news today. Firstly, Ralph's (kitten's) insurance is going to pay out. £901 on its way to us. Secondly, I won £100 on the lottery last night :j
I don't really play the lottery all that much but printed a ticket by mistake the other day at work and decided to keep it instead of voiding. It turned out to be a winner!!
As I'm a firm believer in things coming in threes, I'm now hoping there is another windfall on its way somewhere! :rotfl:

So now I'm wondering what to do with the cash. I've put Ralph's treatment on our 0% CC. DH thinks I should pay that off but I'm happy to pay it back £100 a month and keep the lump sum.
Other options include: use it to pay part of the tax bill; stick in high interest account (still have some 5% availability in nationwide) or finally OP it?! I think it will end up being mostly the former, with a small OP thrown in.

In other news; following on from my 2019 goal setting, I made a small OP of £118.12 to start me towards that target and to round down the current account to £500. Most of the bills have come out for the month so that leaves plenty left over.

Cheap eats today: breakfast was a going-OOD fruit scone at the shop (naughty but nice!), lunch was more of my veg broth (I never got round to putting chicken in as we were enjoying it too much in sandwiches with stuffing ) broth is still lovely without it. Dinner is HM chicken nuggets and HM chips using frozen-on-last-day chicken breasts (shop again ). Sorry, I bet you're sick of hearing about the dratted shop, but it really does save me a fortune when we use up the stuff that is going off!

Children are desperate for a snow day, it is really cold here and has snowed quite a bit but not enough to close the schools (yet!). Will be a bit of a nightmare if they do close, children will have to come to work with me as both sets of grandparents are away in sunnier climes! There is talk of much snow overnight so it will be interesting in the morning!

Finally, I have eventually been given a date for a scan on my neck but it isn't for another three weeks :mad: I can't help but worry about it, especially when I'm a bit tired etc and so really hoped it would be soon. Never mind, at least I finally have a date.

woodfired

Month end finally! Found an error on my spreadsheet the tax payment hadn't saved and so we are £1400 worse off than I thought when I set my goals . I had to go back and amend my figures above. Very annoying and makes our saving/overpaying goals that much more challenging!

At then end of January the figures don't look to bad. We have spent £383 on food shopping and the other notable spend is on the house at £270. This included a new wardrobe and lots of storage items etc so not too bad. Food shopping isn't too bad considering how long the month has been, it goes on forever!
Next month I have set a target of £300 for food shopping, the shop I have planned tomorrow is really just fresh, drinks and a few snack/lunchbox items. My freezer is crammed full and I have loads of store cupboard stuff to use up so I need to make the most of these in Feb. I have got a huge piece of beef (nearly 5kg!!) from the wholesalers. I intend to freeze half (or more) and use the rest for a roast this weekend and sandwiches next week so should keep us going for a while.
I have also planned a few veggie meals such as bubble and squeak and homity pie so these should keep costs down (and be very tasty!).

woodfired

Celebrating today, the combined mortgage and business loan total now stands at £199 450!! :j
We have made it below £200k!!

This morning I have overpaid another £188 to bring the balance of the residential mortgage to £123 999 . This was £135 900 when I started my diary in Nov 17 so a capital reduction of
£11 901 in 14 months :beer:. Sometimes it feels like our overpayments aren't having much effect, especially when I don't make big overpayments like some do, however, doing the sums occasionally gives me a boost to keep plodding on.

In other news I have been food shopping this morning, spent £70.75 which was slightly more than I thought but I did get my Mum a nice bunch of spring flowers (£5) and I picked up a few bits that weren't on my list from the yellow sticker bit. I also stocked up on kitten food as Tesc0's is Ralph's fave. I suppose if I stick to this weekly I will come in well under my £300 budget. I also get a 5p off a litre of fuel voucher that will be needed this weekend.
DH and I then had a nice lunch at home before a crisp and snowy walk around the valley. I am now laid in front of a roaring fire with a cup of tea. Happy days.

Tonight is date night for us, to celebrate the end of a (mostly!) dry January and the mortgage achievements. Nephew is babysitting and we are going out for dinner. Happy Friday folks!x

woodfired

Morning Folks. Saturday and I'm on a use-it-up mission. There were 3 eggs left in the basket this morning (OOD 3/2/19) so two were had for breakfast with the last of the ham and some sliced new potatoes from yesterdays salad.
I am attempting to use up some freezer stuff too, so have defrosted two packs of butchers sausages (from shop, frozen on last day) and a pack of shortcrust pastry that has been there longer than I care to remember!! These have been turned into homemade sausage rolls that are in the oven as I type and smell amazing. I added some apple slices to half of them so will see how they turn out.
I had a handful sized amount of sausage meat left so flattened it, popped a spoonful of apple sauce in and rolled it up then rolled in breadcrumbs, a bit like a scotch egg type affair. Have no idea what it will taste like but didn't want to waste the last bit of meat. The final egg was used to seal edges and as a wash. Nothing wasted and a little bit of wriggle room in the freezer.

I have remembered that I still have loads of party food in my outside freezer that didn't get used at Christmas. It is my birthday in a couple of weeks and we usually have a takeaway with my family to celebrate. I might suggest a buffet using the party food, it will save on the cost of a takeaway and will declutter my freezer!

In the Esse is the huge piece of beef I got this week. It has been in since mid-morning and I intend to roast it slowly all day. We have been invited round to BIL to watch the football this aft so may do hot beef sandwiches when we get home and then do the roast tomorrow evening. It will be quicker and less effort. I placed some sliced onions under the beef so they would be exceptional in a beef sandwich!

woodfired

What a gloriously crisp, cold but beautifully clear morning. It's showing up all the smudges on my south facing windows! :rotfl:

Yesterday's beef split into 8 portions large enough for a Sunday roast with loads leftover for sandwiches every time. 7 have been wrapped and frozen with the rest ready for tonight's roast. This means it works out at £3.75 per chunk, not bad when it will feed 4 of us with leftovers.

DD requested sweet treats yesterday when she saw me baking sausage rolls so I sent her for more eggs and made a large batch of buns (fairy cakes) and some oaty biscuits. Not good for the waistline but very yummy. The sausage rolls turned out really well too, as did the sausage bon bon thingy.

Lunch today will be left over salad bits including spanish omlette, sweetcorn fritters and arancini, with some leftover sausage rolls. Then roast beef and all the trimmings for dinner.

Plans today include relaxing by the fire, a crisp walk with the children, a bit of business admin and eating cakes! :rotfl: Happy Sunday.x

woodfired

Hmm. Wondering what to do.

I had a feeling one of our sub accounts fixed rate came to an end this year but as T£B have messed up their online system I can no longer see any details, just an overall outstanding balance. Anyway, last night I happened upon our offer for our mortgage when we fixed again a while back. Anyway it turns out that the small sub account fix ends this month and the main fix ends at the end of October. I hate having two sub accounts as its hard to allocate overpayments without breaching the 10% limit and the smaller amount always seems to be on a higher rate for some reason. So I wondered if it was worth trying to get rid of the smaller amount altogether? It would mean leaving it to run onto the SVR of 4.74% :eek: but then I could make unlimited overpayments. I would like to reduce it as much as possible but then fix the whole amount in one go in Oct if there is any balance remaining. Two fixes ending at different times is just a pain.

So I called T£B this morning who said there is £12227.38 remaining on that sub account. My plan would be to pay a lump sum in early March, perhaps £5000 or £6000? Then direct our regular OP and any additional smaller amounts to that sub account. A calculator tells me that we would need to OP £6000 then regular £500 monthly payments to be somewhere near clearing it by Oct.

The problem is that this plan would leave us with little in the way of savings and we would not really be able to replenish them quickly with OPing so much monthly. :undecided

On the other hand we could realistically be under £110k by the end of the year which would be AMAZING!!! :rotfl:

I don't know.

FloppyDisk

Would be lovely to get the one account off your to do list - can you commit to those OPs? Any extra month on that SVR would hurt!