Lumiona's MFW Diary

Hettyhound

Oh my that is a bit worrying but you do sound like you have plan and a buffer. I know what you mean about accepting money but it’s obviously something they want to do and have probably had their own discussions about whether you would accept.

It’s not sad to do the rounding of accounts, I do it too! I scrabbled around to find £12 just to bring my mortgage below £63,000 after my DD had gone through and hadn’t quite dropped below that magic mark. It’s also had a £4.87 to round things nicely

Lumiona

Things are looking up for me at work which is good, my employer has enrolled me into a professional qualification apprenticeship which should increase my future earnings and has given me reassurance that my job is as safe as it can be.

It means that we are still on target for our £8599.50 o/paymt this year.
Currently: £176.08/£8599.50 = £8371.19 owed.

It's been a spendy year so far, £10k off the mortgage in Jan when re-mortgaging, booked a holiday to Florida for the end of the year and recently swapped our 15yr old car for a new lease deal.
Despite all that I still aim to make the full overpayment allowed at the end of the year by keeping day to day spending low and on a budget.

I'm great at budgeting (thanks to past redundancy) and have been tracking and analysing our spending since 2015 so have a great idea of our fixed costs and variable outgoings. I also follow a lot of minimalist blogs which has pretty much eradicated my spending on stuff and I try to use all the money savings tips and cashback where I can.

Lumiona

I feel like I'm an expert money saver but I'm sure there's more I can do, any hints or tips would be welcome this is where I'm currently at:
* all monthly spending is on a cashback credit card and repaid in full by DD
* switch suppliers when due for insurance and energy and use quidco
* grocery shopping in aldi/lidl and use bodycare for toiletries
* have a few current accounts running for cashback, rewards and interest
* don't shop just because and rarely eat out, I prefer to cook a decent steak at home.

Lumiona

Not much to report in the o/payment since my last post been sending small amounts to get the current account to the nearest £50.

However here is where I am in our goals this year:
1. Build our savings back up to £10k. This is my comfort blanket should anything go wrong, we used our last lot to put a lump sum down during our remortgage in Jan this year. DONE
2. Pay off Holiday & Spends £6000, we will have this by the due date of Oct, maybe dipping into the Savings for about £1k.
3. Pay off £8599.50 (due in Dec) overpayment limit on our Mortgage. Currently Paid £387.23, £8212.27 Due. This is likely to come out of the savings to rebuild again next year.

Lumiona

We've had a couple of spendy months:
* New car, deposit of £1500 (less £1100 sale of old car) = £400
* Car Insurance £370
* Home Insurance £135
* School Uniform £175 (eldest goes up to High School this year so decided to make a start on it)
* Passports x2 £151
Also our weekly shops seem to have gone up so need to watch that.

July "should" be easier as we have no annual expenditure due out but it coincides with the start of school holidays so I'm aiming to pare it down for the first half of the month to allow for some days out at the end.

On the plus sides, I have stopped drinking. It was far too habitual, every weekend without fail I'd have some wine or a cider. I never really got drunk and usually only had 2 glasses but it was a habit that I needed to break so 1 month later, I feel great, wake up much fresher.

We are back on eating more healthier too, I have a tendency to cook beige freezer food, it's almost a default, mainly because it's easier with the kids. Now it's lots of fresh fruit & veg and we drink loads of tap water.

So, July Goals:
Eat more nutritionally
No Alcohol
Purchase necessities only

Easy, right?

Lumiona

Wow has it really been a year?!
I've purposely not posted as I haven't been able to make much headway into overpayments bar small amounts to tidy up my accounts. 
Spendy Updates:
* Florida was fab, worth every (expensive) penny. We nearly booked for Easter rather than Xmas and now glad we didn't do that. The kids are getting older so it's our last trip to Disneyworld.
* We had to change our lease car in Feb due to 2 break in attempts for the keys, the second they blow torched the UPVC lock and handle. It had to go and we got a replacement which cost again in deposit but the new car is £60pm cheaper and a hybrid so cheaper in fuel.
* CV19/ Lockdown. We've both been very lucky to have still worked throughout lock down, but we wanted to increase our savings should anything go awry.

I finally hit the savings goal last month and have started good lump sum overpayments, this month was £725. 

Lumiona

Latest Update: 
Paid off 23% of o/p =  £2111 / £8209 this year, I've budgeted another £1690 over the next week which should bring it down considerably. I should have enough for the 10% at the start of the mortgage year next year.

Lumiona

Goal reached!! 🎉🍾 paid final sum of 10% overpayment today. It feels really good. 

We paid a huge chunk last month and they dropped the monthly amount by £32. I called the bank to keep the payments the same and they wanted to do a full affordability check !?! and charge a fee, cheeky buggers. Meh, I'll keep the smaller monthly payments, thanks. (Seems ridiculous to a finances check considering we were paying our monthly sum fine plus 10%)

No resting now, start to save towards the next overpayment when it resets in Jan. Hope to do the full 10% annually from then on.

Yay, properly back on track now. 

Brindlebabe

Well done with paying the 10% this year! Such great progress!!

Lumiona

Thanks Brindlebabe 🤗.
Lockdown and spending less has certainly helped.
I've been working 4 days for a few years but I'm thinking of going FT as I'm WFH for the foreseeable future and my work/ life balance has improved. The extra income will come in handy.