Cottage Countdown

LeighofMar

Oh how exciting Savingholmes. That will be so nice. We are new to the empty nester thing and I figured we would relate to him as adults now but no, still had to throw in some spoiling getting his favorite ice cream and soda and whatnot. Hope I'm not the only one who does this:D

savingholmes

Every one of us deserves treats from time to time

LeighofMar

OP made of 81.40 today to bring balance down to an even 45,500.00. Electric bill this month was 215.00:eek: Gotta love summer heatwaves in the South. At least it's paid. We did go suit shopping and OH got 2 nice suits, 4 shirts and 2 ties, all for almost $400.00. He was worried that it's a lot, and it is but considering he buys a new suit once every two or three years, I figured we'll just bite the bullet and do it now. So now we are all set for our convention this weekend. My cc is creeping up, but I plan to have it paid off by early next month at the latest because then we will need a new 12v refrigerator, a bag awning and perhaps an overnight stay for our beach trip as I don't like the idea of driving 7 hours in one day. So we might split that up and leave a day earlier and find somewhere to spend the night on the way. Plus I still need to get my brakes done and our decorative fence that I know I've been saying forever. It just keeps getting pushed back, but we will get there eventually. It works out since OH is busy with a business project so he wouldn't have time to put up the picket fence anyway, and I don't drive a lot since I work from home so the back brakes are not an emergency. Will keep plodding along.

Tahlullah

Hi LeighofMar. I have just read your diary from start to finish and what a fabulous result!! You have done amazingly well at paying down the mortgage whilst living your life. I can only dream of paying it of the way you do. Unfortunately, I am one of those people who likes to work in whole numbers all the time, so would struggle to put myself in a position where I would need to make more over-payments to make the numbers neat.

Your 3 pay packets a month would be bliss. Here, one a month is a luxury! And your petrol/diesel costs are so super low! I pay £70 per week for diesel to run my car. A necessary evil as I don't live close to where I work, but this is a good thing!

I will be following and reading your diary going forward, in the hope of some of your positiveness rubbing off on me to make me focus. I lack focus in so many ways, and that includes spending my money on things to make the journey more comfortable. I love your outlook. Not wanting to be at an age where you owe a huge amount on the mortgage which no way of paying it off with retirement looming.

I hope you don't mind me joining you on your journey.

Tx

LeighofMar

Welcome and thanks for stopping by to my crazy ramblings Tahlullah. Don't worry about the focus. We all get there in different ways. I'm slightly obsessive which probably isn't a good thing all the time, hee hee. But we've all taken the first step which is to be on a board like this and see about how we can make these huge plans and decisions to better our futures. OH just asked me this morning, once the mortgage is paid off, should we take less compensation? I told him it's up in the air as who knows what will happen with healthcare in the future, and for us, it's a necessity, not a want. So it's just another reason to secure the roof over our heads in case healthcare goes up, and of course, it will, in the future.
Glad to be of some motivation and I look forward to reading your journey too.

LeighofMar

Last payday of the month. Regular mortgage payment sent out with an overpayment of 97.59 bringing the total to $45,245.86 with a payment date of 5/2029. Oh, this month was so spendy. But I decided to pay 90% of my CC from my different savings pots, the house fund and the emergency fund. I have a hard time ever paying down my savings, but I realized that it makes no sense to keep putting money in savings that doesn't even earn interest compared to leaving it on my CC with 19% interest. So I had a balance of 875.00 on my CC. I took $550.00 from the house fund and $190.00 from the E-fund. I will wipe out the remaining balance with whatever's left over from this paycheck as we get closer to next payday. I know it's a small amount compared to a lot of debt people carry on credit cards, but I can't help feel relieved and that a weight is lifted off my shoulders. Still some PTSD from the recession, I suppose.
In garden news, I bought Nature's cat mace and sprinkled it on my flowerbeds, and so far, no cats have come by anymore, so I'm beyond thrilled about that. I hope it keeps working.
We usually do weekly grocery runs, but I've decided to try for the first time since we've been married (23 years ago) to do a two-week grocery. Our grocer had a digital coupon for free delivery, so I took advantage of that and just ordered double of some things like milk, cereal, snacks etc. My weekly budget is 100.00 and I was curious to see if I did two weeks worth, would it be $200.00 or could I save some money. So far so good. This includes household items and toiletries, meats, veggies, and even my baking supplies which are more expensive since I'm grain-free. $170.00 + tip for my delivery shopper. I'm pretty pleased with that we won't need anything next week except the odds and ends like fresh bananas and other fruit, but I think I've taken care of everything. Meal planning will include Paleo Egg Roll in a Bowl, which is fantastic, fish tacos, grilled chops with cheesy sphagetti squash bake, sweet potato nachos, beef and broccoli, honey mustard chicken salad, avocado lime tuna and if I run out of things to make, good old bacon, egg, and cheese or grilled cheese sandwiches. I hope to make another peanut butter pie and some berry cookies for dessert.
Still managed to add to my big savings pot $33.27 today, so I am happy to be overpaying the mortgage, paying off debt, and still adding to savings as modest as it may be. And as soon as our client makes a deposit today in our business account, I can add to our pensions for this month, and I will be right on time.
Now I'm just waiting for my grocery delivery. I get text message alerts when the shopper has to replace something or an item is out of stock. I have to admit I feel spoiled doing this service. I could never, as a child of the 80s, imagined a world where you could order groceries and somebody else would get them for you and bring them to your door. But at the same time, I admire anybody who's hustling to take care of themselves, and I will be sure to leave a good tip.

LeighofMar

What in the world? So I ordered one steak for my beef and broccoli recipe that only calls for 3/4 pound steak, and my shopper couldn't find something like that so instead thought it would be okay to substitute with a 3-pack of sirloin steak for $27.00 :eek: I don't eat that much steak in a year. Then I had ordered a small pack of Tide Pods that were on sale for $2.00. She couldn't find them so substituted the bigger pack that were $6.00 :mad: I got in my car so quick, which of course defeats the purpose of having delivery, and drove to the store, told them what happened and got my refund of $34.00. Then I just chose a carne picada instead and found the sale Tide Pods which I found with ease if she would have just looked to the left. Sigh. Unfortunately, I did adjust down the tip because that's ridiculous. If you can't find an item, you don't substitute it with something that costs 3x more. That's just common sense. But at least I got my money back, so now I'm happy. And so far, I think I might like doing a two-week grocery from now on. It seems more convenient, although we will go back to OH picking them up instead of delivery. Sheesh!

Also on Ebates, I don't know what the problem is with Orbitz not crediting to the account, so I have had to email them about it, and they simply add the money in my account, no fuss. The last one, they gave me 10% cashback. I know most of the time it's up to 10%, but I guess they don't feel like wading back through the logs and seeing what percent it was that week when I made the reservations, so they just give it to me all. I'm not complaining. I already have $126.00 in the account and have three or four more Orbitz reservations that haven't been credited, so by the time all is said and done, I wouldn't be surprised if I have an extra hundred or two coming. :j Those payments will go straight to the mortgage when I get them in November.

Well, back to making my yogurt and then a milk shake for later (dairy free of course) and I'm ready to enjoy my weekend.

savingholmes

We mostly do online delivery as it controls our spending. Where we are, if they substitute - it has to be for the same value or the shop pays the difference. Well done on your overpayments and for tackling the CC.

LeighofMar

$44.96 sent off to the mortgage today. Balance is 45,200.00. CC is totally paid off, so I'm thrilled about that. Our two-week grocery haul seems to be working out well. We are eating all our meals at home and only DH got some takeout last weekend, as I had plenty of food here at home. I think buying groceries two weeks at a time will be the way to go from now on.
Business is still going well but poor hubby keeps saying he needs to retire from the physical aspect of it. I don't blame him. Crawling around attics and crawlspaces in the heat is hard on anybody but at 57 years old, not very enjoyable at all. We have already started on our new real estate project, but it won't officially get going until October. So far, all we've done is clean up some of the exterior and mend the fencing and gating to keep out intruders, litterers, etc. I'll be so happy if we can get this off the ground successfully so that he can concentrate on projects like this and retire from doing electrical service and repair.
Cashed out my little transcription earnings this month 102.00. I'll be using that just as cash on hand for small materials/tools that may be needed that you don't necessarily feel like whipping out the card for.
Now we just have one more invoice to do today, and then we're done for the week, and it's a long weekend for the Labor Day holiday. Maybe I'll finally pick some colors for our bedroom. We like color. We both swore that when we got this house, we would stop with the creams, greys, and beiges and put up some color so since I love warm colors, I'm thinking maybe a nice gradual effect of orange or a gold color. DH already put up teal-colored beams for me on the ceiling and I love it!! So I'd like a nice warm cozy color to complement them. We'll see what kind of mischief I can get into this weekend at the home store

LeighofMar

So much happening. Okay, first things first. 318.60 sent as an OP today. We made it into the 44k bracket. $44,881.40 :j Checking the amortization schedule, we are on payment dated 7/2029. We should be on payment 46 dated 9/2019 and should still owe $60,300.00. Ha! Take that bank. I don't foresee being able to get to 43K by the beginning of October, but October is also a 3 paycheck month, so who knows what kind of damage I could do in that time ? E-fund received $105.00 today. House fund received $100.00. Online savings received $100.00.

Unfortunately, with the Hurricane and the timing, we had to cancel our beach vacation as it's being directly affected right now, and it will take them a while to clean up. But, we decided to make the best of it. I have a doctor's appt on the 20th, and then we will go from there to one of our favorite towns in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. We'll spend a nice long weekend there in our travel trailer, then when we get back, OH has a minor medical procedure on the 27th. He'll need two weeks to recover from that all while our business real estate project gets kicked off. Fun times. But we'll make it work. He's fixing up the deck right now in the back so even though it's small, like 10 x 6, it's still enough for two chairs and a small table so we can dine al fresco when we want. He's so sweet. And he's not a carpenter, but I guess all those years in construction, he learns and takes it with him. What he doesn't know, he figures out. Love this guy.

I took a nice walk in the neighborhood yesterday and was so disappointed that only two streets away, the houses just seem to be in awful shape more because of neglect than anything else. Someone even has a camper that's been torn apart, literally half of it is standing and the other half is crumpled behind it, and it's just sitting there. I don't understand how people can live surrounded by garbage like that. It got me thinking, do we really want to keep fixing up our house the way we want it just to still be close to people who don't care about their property one way or the other? I looked at some houses in the area and there is one neighborhood we would love to move into. But after doing calculations, by the time we sold this, moved somewhere else and then had to restart the mortgage clock, no, that idea got trashed quickly. I realized that our little street isn't fancy, but the people are taking care of their homes on our street, and it's clean and quiet and that's enough. You can't see the other horrible street from where I live, so I don't need to sweat it. And we'll just do our best to keep adding curb appeal and be content with our little area.

I ordered the two weeks of groceries for pickup tomorrow. Meal planning off the top of my head but I have chicken thighs for a creamy chicken mushroom skillet, barbeque drumsticks, zucchini pasta, roast beef sandwiches, meatballs with spaghetti squash and sweet potato nachos. For dessert, OH wants a second peanut butter pie. The one I made lasted 4 days only. And I'll try my hand at a paleo lemon cheesecake, nut-free.

That's enough rambling thoughts. Off to calculate how close I can come to my goal of being at $40,000 mortgage balance by the end of the year.