Getting it together...one £ at a time!

[Deleted User]

Hi Homegrown,

Fingers crossed with the remortgage, it sounds rather positive.

Have a lovely afternoon xx

Homegrown0

Thanks Purplemum - it's just a standard remortgage to fix the term for 5 years and we got a better rate with another lender. It's always nerve wracking going through the whole process, always paranoid they say no! But we have had the offer and it's a done deal I think. Just final paperwork to sort.

I'll be glad when it's sorted so that i can arrange a BT with the credit card that just started charging interest last month!

Hope you have a lovely evening PM.

Homegrown0

Hope you're all having a good Saturday night? I'm sitting with a beer in my hand (leftover from christmas) and chilling.

Been a busy day but thankfully low spend. £1.20 parking over all, £13 On two new pairs of school trousers and £7 On a new jumper (much needed!). That's it!

Tonight I plan on working out a meal plan and shopping list for tomorrow. We have a play date tomorrow now which will end up costing about £15 but I don't mind that to keep them busy for a few hours with friends.

Days until pay day: 4...(still!!)

Bonus is that I'll only have 28 days until my end of February pay! Phew!

doingitanyway

Well done on the LSD.

I'm also meal planning tonight as tomorrow will be a cooking ahead day

Beer and chill is sounding good

Homegrown0

Morning all. It's Monday again - how? I feel like I JUST breathed a sigh of relief that the weekend had arrived and now it's over in the blink of an eye.

Not a lot to report money wise - groceries yesterday were £50 in Aldi and £26 in Sainsburys. This is a normal weekly shop for us and even though I was trying to keep it down in cost, we had run out of softener and night pull ups for my son which aren't cheap. And quite a few other food items. So it just had to happen.

Both cars also were running on fumes, so £20 had to go into each of those to take us to pay day. I borrowed from the bills account to cover the extras here so when I get paid and transfer the money to our spends account, I'll just transfer it less what I've had to use.

Not ideal, but that's what January does to us!

Windows
We have been talking about ways in which we can replace our windows and doors this year. As you know, our savings are minimal at the moment and we are concentrating on paying down the existing credit cards and putting the rest into savings for holiday spending money, incidental, emergencies etc.

However, we have an opportunity to get them done (2 doors and 10 Windows :eek:) relatively cheaply as husband's good friend fits windows (and is good at it) and may be able yo negotiate the materials at trade price. We priced it up before with a national company (who we would never buy from!) And they quoted £10k which is laughable :rotfl:

We are going to get him out to measure up and give us a proper quote to see if it's doable.

Not that I'm trying to justify myself etc, but our windows are 39 years old (original to the house), drafts whaft through daily and there's a large crack on three of the windows thst runs right through the whole window (I.e. not just on one side of the glazing).

It would make an immeasurable difference to get them done before next winter. Plus it would be one more thing ticked off the never ending list of improvements and repairs needing done to the house!

We have worked out what our limit would be financially that would allow us to both pay the windows over the coming year but also continue to pay overpayments to the CC.

Im certain that with the plan I have created in my spreadsheet, we could have the whole thing cleared by Christmas 2019.

Anyway, it all depends on the total cost but I think it's really worth exploring despite the fact it'll be temporarily increasing our debt.

In other news...

Days until pay day: 2 :j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j

teafor2

Morning HG, sounds like you've had a lovely weekend. Shame they go so quickly isn't it.

I get my shopping on budget most weeks then remember I need one or two of the 'big' items that pushes the cost up - there's always a big item though so maybe I should just put the budget up rather than feeling I've gone over most weeks :rotfl:

I'd definitely do the windows if you can. It's amazing what a difference it will make. One of our friends works for a window company that's local to the area so not as expensive as the main ones to start with, but we still managed to get mates rates. Windows are like doors, you don't realise how many there are in a house until you start to paint them.

Thanks for pointing me to Shoppix - I put the code in, hope it was of benefit to you? Have a good week. xx

Homegrown0

Thanks teafor2, we will definitely be doing it if we can manage it. We have lived with the draft for 4 years but the levels of moisture on the inside of the windows every day isn't good. Also im pretty sure it's contributing to my husband's night time wheeze. I'm hoping we can get it done for under 5k then it will be manageable but I'll get them to measure up and see what they come back with. They'll definitely do mates rates for the labour cost so it's just the cost of the windows that will determine it.

Apparently getting grey windows pushes the material cost up by around 50%!! We were loosely considering grey but not actually not that bothered, especially for 50% more!

You're right with the shopping budget - there's always something. If these requirements came in a few days (I.e. payday) then it wouldn't be a problem because in the first shop of the month I tend to buy the bigger stuff that's running low but can't predict everything. At least we have the funds somewhere to use when we need it.

Only a four week month in February so hoping to make some decent savings there, especially since it's a no council tax month! Think ill be splitting the money (£247 per month over feb and march) between savings and overpaying the credit card.

abba1772

We replaced our windows nearly years ago

we got quotes from a couple of the big named windows people what a waste of time one sales rep was here for 6 hours !!!!!! :mad: the same rep quoted us £24k for 9 windows and two doors :eek: then after a couple of hours was down at £6.5k.......ended up asking him to leave as he was wasting my time.

Ended up going with a small company who did them for £4.5k which was great until last year when hubby broke my door with his OCD and we found out the company went bust taking it's 10 year guarantee with it :mad:

I love the look of the grey but that's a big increase in price Homegrown

doingitanyway

If you have someone who can do the windows it sounds like a good idea.
My journey has shown me that sometimes things turn up that are not necessarily part of the plan but it makes sense to do them anyway as they are opportunities that don't always come again.
When it is the right time (whatever that is) financially maybe he has moved to another country. Who knows. Go for it if you can

Homegrown0

Abba - we had a similar issue with a big name supplier that is named after a pretty big hill I told him I only had an hour as it was my lunch break and I had a call straight after with a client. He told me it was a waste of his time being there because I was supposed to put aside 3 hours for his visit and based on that number of windows and doors it'd be roughly 10k. He told me to call him directly when I was able to spare the min 3 hours for a proper meeting (he was so rude!). I told him I wouldn't be calling him.

Sorry to hear your door is broken and what a pain that the company has gone bust. Is it fixable?

It's a crazy price increase isn't it? And that's just the manufacturers own cost, not an inflated retail cost! Madness.

DIA- you're right, there's never a right time. It's the first step of our house renovation plan because literally everything in the house needs done. It makes sense that the windows and doors are first. No use getting a beautiful new kitchen with an old scraggy broken window with rotten wooden window sills. Plus, we need to seal our house up better. I wonder if we'll see a difference in our gas bill?

I'll talk to my husband about the figures tonight and he can arrange a time for his friend to come out and measure up.

In other news
I was paid today - two days early and £20 more than normal! Strange - everything including my tax code is the same, except the amount of tax on my pay slip. I won't lose sleep over the £20...If they try to reclaim that at least I know I can afford it!

Spent some time today mapping out our finances until November, plotting when pay days occur in the month and how much we can free up to save. It's all looking positive (famous last words).

I have also taken note of key dates, for example my company does an annual salary review in June and an annual bonus in December so I've marked those down so I can keep those in mind nearer the time.

All money moved to the correct pots and ready for February to do its worst!