Time to get my house in order!

Thick_n_Thin

I’ve had a couple more ebay sales and had £15 from surveys so I have managed to pay an additional £40 to mortgage. Currently mortgage is £56,145.  When OH is paid on Friday we will make another overpayment of £150 to take us down another bracket into the 55’s and then when our monthly payment is taken on the 1st we will be nearer 54! 

Quite a bit of expenditure coming up this month so still need to keep budgets tight. January is always an expensive month and this is no exception. This month we have the following...
Gas & electricity bill - £334
car service & MOT - £239 ( hopefully no work required)
car insurance renewal - £446 is my renewal price but will shop around and hopefully get a better deal, I’m going to pay this outright to eliminate another monthly DD. 

Now for the big one. My car PCP finishing at the end of the month. We have decided to make the balloon payment at the end and keep the car so this is £10,600. We have already gone down to one car since the redundancy’s so once this is paid at the end of the month we won’t have any monthly car payments. It’s a decent car with low mileage as it was always the 2nd car so has no wear and tear and it’s a lovely car to drive and we have had no problems with it so far, fingers crossed!

Grogged

Nearly two steps down on the mortgage - great going!
Buying the car sounds like a good idea.
Will you also benefit from the February/March council tax saving, or do you pay over 12 months?
ATB, G.

Thick_n_Thin

Grogged said:

Nearly two steps down on the mortgage - great going!
Buying the car sounds like a good idea.
Will you also benefit from the February/March council tax saving, or do you pay over 12 months?
ATB, G.

Yes we pay over 10 months so looking forward to having our 2 free months, that’s almost £300 in total so will pay one of the big bills, also have £110 from water as well as that has been paid for the year now. 

Plans for today, I have 2 roles to apply for this morning and then I think I will watch the inauguration this afternoon.

MovingForwards

That's a suitably impressive reduction to your mortgage.
Definitely keep your car, doing any repairs / maintenance as and when required helps give it a longer lifespan. Don't keep having PCP / HP or what other variants are around as it's not cost effective.

Good luck with the applications 😊

Thick_n_Thin

MovingForwards said:

That's a suitably impressive reduction to your mortgage.
Definitely keep your car, doing any repairs / maintenance as and when required helps give it a longer lifespan. Don't keep having PCP / HP or what other variants are around as it's not cost effective.

Good luck with the applications 😊

Thankyou moving forwards. 

I’ve just paid an additional £150 overpayment as planned, once that’s cleared we will be into the £55’s I really need to get back into surveys as these can be a little money spinner if you let the amounts build up for a few weeks but job hunting is taking up much of my time now that when I’m finished I have no desire to spend any more time on line. I’ve been for a run today and that’s my 3rd this week, also 3 weeks no alcohol as I’m doing dry January. I am determined not to put anymore lockdown weight on so I’m dedicating this time now to getting fit and overhauling my lifestyle so when I get a new job I’m not aghast at my appearance!

MovingForwards

Have you worked out how much you're saving by doing dry Jan? When facing figures and money not spent, it helps focus on not buying something or having it as a payday / monthly treat instead.

Pace yourself with running, don't want you stopping it or saying I'll do it tomorrow. There's also plenty of free classes online for yoga, Zumba and other things which may be of interest to you.

Totally agree about the surveys, I've not done any since I cashed all mine in. 

Thick_n_Thin

MovingForwards said:

Have you worked out how much you're saving by doing dry Jan? When facing figures and money not spent, it helps focus on not buying something or having it as a payday / monthly treat instead.

Pace yourself with running, don't want you stopping it or saying I'll do it tomorrow. There's also plenty of free classes online for yoga, Zumba and other things which may be of interest to you.

Totally agree about the surveys, I've not done any since I cashed all mine in. 

I have a tracker called Dry days to track all my alcohol free days, at the start you enter your typical drinking habits and it works out how much you have saved, units saved and calories ect. So far it says I’ve saved £243 in January, which I think is more at the excessive end, probably when I would have 1 alcoholic drink on a weekday and then maybe a bottle of wine each night at the weekend. I wouldn’t drink like this every week but would definitely spend maybe £15 per week on wine for sure. One thing I have noticed is that I am sleeping much deeper. Last night I slept for 10 hours straight and didn’t wake up through the night at all and this is becoming quite typical. Normally I would wake 1-2 times in the night and struggle to get back to sleep. It’s also triggered other positive actions, I’m eating better and exercising more so it’s having a really positive impact. I don’t think I will never drink again but dry January has really challenged my routine of habitually drinking in the house which is what I want to break.
I went for a run this morning in the blizzard and it was actually quite nice.

South_coast

I've cut right back on alcohol in the last 6 months or so and now only drink at weekends and I can definitely tell the difference in my sleep on drinking nights as opposed to non-drinking ones!

MovingForwards

Even £60 pm saving is good and it's giving your body time to rebalance. Booze always interrupts sleep and a lot of other things. 

If you can find a new routine now, it will make it easier to keep to it when working again. I'm impressed with your blizzard run 😁

Thick_n_Thin

Car now paid for, so big hole where our savings once where but a big chunk of cash saved each month and will make it a lot easier to live on one salary whilst I don’t have a job. I need to rework our monthly outgoings again as I need to start up my savings pots again as they are empty and I don’t want to be dipping into what little we have in reserve to pay the bigger bills when they come in.