Discount Duck’s Quest For Mortgage Freedom

South_coast

Well done on the Masters, you must be so thrilled 😀 Booking the trips around the Blue Peter badges isn't being cheap - it means you get three breaks instead of one or two, sounds great to me!

VintageHistorian

Congratulations on the dissertation result! I hope you have a proud feeling of accomplishment!

Suffolk_lass

Yes congratulations - a great achievement 🎉🎉🎉 - very MSE on the campsite savings, well done!

- Maybe consider looking for some binoculars (pre-loved basic ones) on fleabay or FB market (or in charity shops) - they are a great thing to have in the van to spot things with the children but guessing you will need a pair each... around £10 a pair for light-weight ones

Baileys_Babe

Congratulations on your dissertation 🎉
Enjoy your trips away.

Bluegreen143

Just discovered and read through your diary! You sound like you’re doing a amazing job, I’m in awe of your solo parenting, working, studying, mortgage overpaying etc! 

DiscountDuck

Aw, thanks @Bluegreen143 😊

in recent news, I’ve been buying cheap stuff off eb*y to kit out the campervan, including binoculars as per SuffolkLass’ suggestion and have a little stash of card games, colouring books and spotters’ guides in there now. 

Uncle S is happily settled into his flat but going a bit feral due to the isolation of Covid, and has started hoarding things. He has 17 typewriters. I’m worried about him but after the pandemic he will hopefully get straight again. I’ve dropped him off home made meals for the freezer a couple of times lately but want him to be on his own two feet as much as possible, as I’m cooking for mum about 5 nights a week already. 

Things are going tentatively well with BF, but I’m not rushing into anything. Love is what you do, not what you say - so let’s see what happens longer term. He’s being brilliant at the moment though, he came and looked after me when I was really poorly after my first Covid jab. I’d rather have a vaccine and get horrible side effects for a couple of days than get Covid itself. I’ll absolutely be still getting the second dose.

I’m looking forward to getting round the charity shops when I get the chance, they’ll be full of good things at the moment as everyone is clearing stuff out! I’m hoping car boot sales will start again soon too. Our outgrown kids’ clothes are at the College in Loughborough being sold online by the visually impaired students as part of the Sense charity’s student business scheme. It’s taking forever and my garage is full of bags to go to them when they’ve sold the last stuff, but I’d rather wait months and support that business. They only take 10% commission, which is less than I expected. I can’t face trying to drag the kids up super early and manage the pair of them while doing a car boot sale, or having to be at the post office all the time to sell online.

My car insurance renewal inexplicably went up £150 which was a bit of a shocker, but I went through topcashback and then c*mparethemarket and got a deal £170 cheaper plus I’ll get £25 cash back so am very pleased with myself about that. 

We found a load of nice sea green/blue fence paint in the garage so will be painting the garden bench as a free little project. Making the house more practical, lower maintenance and clutter free is my current goal. It’s going to take a while and a bit of saving for some of the jobs like the ancient wiring that needs redoing but will make life easier when it’s all done. I probably won’t be overpaying the mortgage for a while as I’m going to prioritise making the house as practical and low maintenance as possible. The roofer cost a bomb on an unexpected repair recently and I thought let’s just get it all done in one big task list, saving for each job at a time and doing the ones I can myself. 

I’ve also got a slight pay rise at work, so I’m opening a pension for the kids. I did lots of research and the most shocking video I saw on it explained that if you start a pension and pay in £7.88 a day from birth to 18 they’d have a million pound pension by the time they retire. So I’m late off the starting blocks because mine are 10 and 8 but it will still perform a lot better than a bank ISA or child trust fund. My own pension does really well so I’m using the same investment fund and then bunging my £100 per month pay rise totally into their pensions as though I’ve never had it. It’ll be an ethical only fund, as mine is, because I strongly believe in divesting from things you don’t ethically believe in and want my money to not undermine my Christian (just decent person) values. 

Suffolk_lass

Well done DD - have you got any time away this week or the May bank holiday in your van? ours is still SORN'd this month but I'm going to suggest a little midweek break (just 1-2 nights I expect) in May and we have a small CL place booked for 4 households (6 of us) in July, mid-week before the schools break up. They can only take 5 maximum so hoping we might be the only ones there

DiscountDuck

Well I got a bit carried away and booked loads of trips away! We are going to Edale at the end of May, Sandringham in June, two Firework Champions events in July and Dorset in August! 

We joined the Camping and Caravan Club which gave us a great discount on lots of the sites and one where it’s members only. I was surprised how much cheaper membership made going away. We had a referral link from a friend who then got a camping mini bbq in a cool ‘tent’ bag. My dad and stepmum are coming with us to Dorset, they joined for £41 and saved £63 on the fees for the week! Plus because we did it as a referral link like we had done with our friends, we got a camper van style mini bbq in its own storage bag. I do love a freebie. It’s insulated too so doubles up for picnics. 

I’ve redone the back garden and made raised beds with arbour seats in between each two, down the length of each side. It’s lower maintenance than borders and looks nicer than the ramshackle raised beds I had before where lots of them were getting old and rotten. I’m now on the hunt for affordable irrigation systems so that while I’m away I can put the watering on a timer and not come home to find our lovely veggies all parched. 

We’ve got the strawberries transferred to the new bed and got our onion sets all planted. We have started off cucumbers and peppers for the greenhouse and I’m working out what else to grow that we eat a lot of, which is tastier home grown or would be expensive in the shops. We eat a lot of butternut squash but we didn’t have much luck with it last year. I’ve heard parsnips are good home grown, but haven’t done them before and am a bit wary of parsnips and carrots because friends say they’re tricky to grow straight and not get eaten up by carrot fly. The arbour seats have trellis over them so I can grow French beans over them as we adore those. Perpetual spinach will probably get a space as we eat loads of spinach both raw and stirred into curries. 

I’m going to work up confidence to join a veg gardening forum on here. I know it’s stupid being shy about joining things and asking but it takes me a while. 

Suffolk_lass

This one is good!

Bluegreen143

I don’t know about parsnips, but we always have decent success with carrots, particularly chantenay (baby ones) but others too. My kids like to pull them out, give them to me to wash and eat the there and then and I’m always thankful to get extra veg in them so I make sure to grow them each year!