Making savings before it's too late

tori.k

You can kinda have the best of both worlds Lessonlearned, I bulk buy for cost but minimised the product range. I only buy an unscented bathroom products thats used by the whole family, so refill one bottle rather than have half a dozen half used bottles in the bathroom, we use the old fashioned safety razors so the blades can be easily recycled, im the same for household cleaning I only use four products a little bleach, disinfectant washing up liquid and washing powder.
I'm really lazy at heart but like a clean house and worked out a long time ago that I would rather take 10 mins to wipe over my cooker and bathroom each day then spend hours cleaning it each week. which means i dont have the cost of heavier duty products like oven cleaner.

lessonlearned

Some great tips there Tori. Thanks. Yes I like a clean house too. I'm steadily working towards a more Minimalist Me.....makes cleaning so much easier if everything is streamlined. As you say a quick wipe down every day is much easier than a mammoth cleaning session. I'm getting there and the beauty is my new home has a better layout and more storage than my current house.

I will have to resist the temptation to fill it with "treasures". :rotfl: save my money instead.

Once I've settled in I am hoping to sell some of my stuff. I know I should probably sell stuff first but I'm not sure yet what I want to keep. I would hate to part with things now that I might need to then replace later.

I am pretty good at DIY, recycling things, repurposing stuff etc so hopefully I can save money on furnishing my new home by reusing and repurposing what I have before I go out spending lots of money on new stuff.

I really do need to watch the pennies for a while and keep my renovation and decorating budget as low as possible.

Good news is I managed to get the life insurance I need for my new mortgage for £20 a month cheaper. Every little helps. Lol

moneyistooshorttomention

Bit puzzled why you have life insurance on a mortgage LL???

I've never done so - as someone who is single and childless = no-one would "suffer" if I'd died partway through paying a mortgage off. The house would have been sold, outstanding mortgage paid off and the residue would be my Estate that I was leaving as I had decided I would.

I know my father had this sort of arrangement whilst they had a mortgage and, in those circumstances, it made perfect sense (ie as he had a wife and two children that would have needed to carry on living in the house and therefore he wanted the mortgage paid off on the spot if anything happened to him).

But I tend to feel there's no point in our circumstances.

lessonlearned

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Bit puzzled why you have life insurance on a mortgage LL???

I've never done so - as someone who is single and childless = no-one would "suffer" if I'd died partway through paying a mortgage off. The house would have been sold, outstanding mortgage paid off and the residue would be my Estate that I was leaving as I had decided I would.

I know my father had this sort of arrangement whilst they had a mortgage and, in those circumstances, it made perfect sense (ie as he had a wife and two children that would have needed to carry on living in the house and therefore he wanted the mortgage paid off on the spot if anything happened to him).

But I tend to feel there's no point in our circumstances.

Because it's a condition of the mortgage offer nowadays. Times have changed. Financial Institutions will not take the risk, probably because the housing market is more volatile now. Pretty much standard procedure these days.

lessonlearned

And.....I do not think life insurance is a waste of time for me, even though I am now to all intents and purposes single.

I would not wish to saddle my children with any outstanding debts, mortgage or otherwise, even if they are now grown ups and non dependent. They have enough to do supporting themselves and trying to make their way in the world.

I want to die "neat and tidy" ......But hopefully not just yet. :rotfl:

[Deleted User]

yay, the last day of the month and I am in positive territory. I don`t owe anything to anyone and have managed to put a couple of hundren into safety net, lived on cash but my cash purse is very low. Tax will be due in july so a pinch point or two and that safety net may well go back down again but I am pleased as I have £32 excess in my credit card


Offer was accepted on a house but all is still tentative

tori.k

That's great news Kittie, crossing everything that its a smooth transaction for you.

lessonlearned

Well done Kitty.

Did my month review and was delighted to see I have spent a lot less on food this month, despite splashing out and giving a nice posh dinner party for 7. So well pleased.

July will be expensive, full survey on new House to tomorrow and need to pay for a course of acupuncture......and I must go to the hairdressers......

Hey ho. Swings and roundabouts. :rotfl:

moneyistooshorttomention

lessonlearned wrote: »

Because it's a condition of the mortgage offer nowadays. Times have changed. Financial Institutions will not take the risk, probably because the housing market is more volatile now. Pretty much standard procedure these days.

Crikey - I hadnt realised that:eek:

I don't know whether that sort of thing would possibly be area-specific. Unfortunately my current area has had pretty static house prices since I've been here (as anticipated - but ) - so I can see there could be circumstances where it might apply here.

But in my home city - it would be just total "waste of space" to have that. There's no way it would be remotely necessary - as I sold my last house for about £170,000 and I saw it was sold on 2 years later (with a cheap new kitchen and ditto bathroom in - but nothing else as far as I could see basically) at around £210,000. So - basically £10k odd spent on it and it got about £30k just by "sitting there" and so in some areas paying out a premium just-in-case house prices dropped would be a requirement that would be totally "surplus to requirements" and thoroughly resented.

Now wondering whether I'd have had to "scout round" even there if I'd taken on a mortgage again to move - though question didnt arise - as the gap between what-I-had and what-I-intended-to-have was just too big for a mortgage to cover it and I'd be digging my heels in re paying for insurance that was totally not necessary just to suit some "blanket countrywide requirement".

EDIT; Trying not to think about acupuncture right now LL. I've had a few bits of it before - and I'm very needle-phobic too! One of my elbows is being a bit "awkward" at the moment and I've been "waiting for it to go of itself" for a few days now and it still hasn't. So I'll "wait it out" a bit longer - but have got nasty suspicion an acupuncturist or two is lined-up. Agh! another NHS bill and I don't fancy the treatment either. But I've realised my arms have gone "bingo wings". I wondered why it felt like the sleeves on a couple of currently-too-small for me items of clothing were also feeling tight and that must be it - ie I've got bingo wings now and didnt have then. So I need to do arm exercises and get my arms back to normal/as slim as normal and it probably wouldnt be wise to start on those exercises till my elbow feels normal again.

[Deleted User]

£75 just won on premium bonds, yay, will go straight into safety net savings. I am planning for the new house, must be careful to not let money drain out. I have to get up to the flooring stage because of getting the removals to put furniture in the right places. I`ll be using wardrobe boxes for a fair while, until I get simple plain white wardrobes built in time. I will have the boiler replaced and moved in a year but will now replace all the radiators with nice modern, future proofed, aluminium


I am expecting just over £1000 for my survey, including re-building cost. Money well spent tbh, will give lots of problem areas for future maintenance, I expect that