The Last Leg; 6 years later, debt free in 2021

Baileys_Babe

enthusiasticsaver said:

Baileys_Babe said:

Thankfully we are all different. I have no idea how I would spend £200 a month on myself. A family member cuts my hair so that is a big saving. I guess more of my spending comes under various pots in our main budget, but I will be honest I am curious what you spend your personal money on in case I have missed something or I decide it would work better if we had personal money.

Out of our personal money of £200 each DH spends probably all of his on his hobby so that is £200 a month but if he had access to the main current account there would be less curbs and he may well spend more so this way I know he will not dip into the current account.  I get £200 a month and spend some on hair, clothes, nail appointments sometimes or books or days or meals out with friends.  It is looking healthy at the moment but it is nice to know I have access to a chunk of personal money should I want a new phone or ipad or walking shoes or whatever. 

Thank you for  sharing @enthusiasticsaver it looks like all the relevant categories  are covered in our main budget

Sarahwithlove

For my mortgage I had to give 6 months worth of statements. Can you pay for any of it in advance or change your money up in advance etc go try and avoid it being on statement. Maybe try the mortgage boards on here they might be able to advise better 

greensalad

We wouldn't want to take that much in cash, and I'd be worried about converting it onto a pre-paid card in case something happens COVID-wise and we don't go. I'll ask on the mortgage forums closer to next year, maybe they'll have some ideas. Surely the banks have to take into account large purchases? As long as they're not regular and have been saved for... We'd be going into mortgage application with 0 debt. 

greensalad

Just picked up an evening monitoring shift at work (keeping an eye on our site during high volume periods to make sure nothing goes wrong). It's from home and I get a £100 bonus plus the time in lieu off, so perfect really! £100 is pre-tax but better than nothing.

I can't wait until Black Friday this year. There are usually lots of shifts going because we have people in overnight to keep an eye on things and you get unsociable hours fees and free McDonalds lol

Baileys_Babe

Monitoring shift sounds good, bonus and time off in lieu, what's not to love.

greensalad

Successfully made more chutney today. A big jar for us and a 4th smaller jar, which means I'm all done on chutneys to give out to family. I've got loads of jars left though and tomatoes still growing so who knows, I may end up making more (possibly a different recipe?)

I also ordered onions and garlic and my job for the weekend is to start digging out the beds ready to plant these up. I've got a slanted planter in the back garden that has three rows. At the back I've just pulled up shallots, and the mange tout is over now so I'll take the bamboo trellis down. The middle row is 4 gigantic Hispi cabbages which I'll be picking weekly to have with our sunday pie, so they'll be gone by the end of the month. In the front I have three courgette plants but only one was successful this year. I'll take out the almost-done courgettes on the big plant and then the whole lot will get pulled up.

To plant out I have some gorgeous white onions called snowballs, and three varieties of garlic. I also got some red onions but ideally I want to put them in the bed which still has tomato plants so I'll hold back on those. Onion and garlic chutney next year maybe?

greensalad

Oh, and we got our next bit of HMRC LISA bonus so housefund is now £4,538.82, up from £4,311.79. 10.7% of the way there!

greensalad

Had a very productive Saturday today and feeling pretty good about it. This is despite the horrendous hayfever I've been having all day meaning I'm struggling to breathe.

Woke up and did a cat visit this morning. Everyone's decided to go on holiday in September which is great for me, the bookings keep flooding in and I think I'll end up with about £250 by the end of September which is not quite as much as my normal August bank holiday would be but still far better than I had hoped what with corona killing everyone's plans.

Me and OH worked in the garden for a few hours and it looks much tidier and "winter prepped". We cleaned down and put away all the furniture, dug the tender plants out of the pots and gave it a good sweep down. The big job was digging out the veg bed of its summer crops ready for autumn planting. I harvested the last courgettes, cucumber and one cabbage. The only thing I've left in the bed is two cabbages which we'll have each Sunday until the end of the month (picked the one for tomorrow today and it's lovely). Sadly one cabbage failed. I harvested potatoes which were also an almost-failure. 6 plants produced very few potatoes and most of them are like marbles but there are a few that are new-potato sized so I will have potato salad for lunch tomorrow. Tomatoes are still going, and I saw someone taking a photo of them today! (They're out front)

I planted red onions as overwinter crop so should get 36 lovely red onions come June next year (if they all come up of course!) I've ordered snowball onions and three varieties of garlic so will plant them as they arrive. If I have any space left at all I'll plant some kale. 

Paid off our credit card bill (the rolling one we use for all spending) and have managed to put £1,900 through it this month (mainly bumped as we paid for car servicing plus a few chunky spends) This is good as we have a year to spend £10k to get a free companion flight with Virgin (if they still exist come next year!) so it means we're on track to reach the card spending. 

Cleaning wise, managed to get the whole downstairs cleaned which is the habit I'm trying to form; downstairs on Saturday and upstairs on Sunday. Which means dreaded bathroom scrubbing tomorrow, my least favourite.

No further money saving really but hopefully as pet sitting money rolls in I can start to top up the house saving fund and get a little ahead.

greensalad

First cat booking payment came in, I'm keeping the cash back in case I need to top up our groceries budget this month and also because the Moneybox LISA pending payments are confusing me and I want them to "settle" a bit before I go and put any more money in (I can't work out what's a pending bonus, on what money, and what's just not hit the balance yet! I hate the way Moneybox works!)

greensalad

Want to start using my diary more as a daily thing rather than only updating when I have money saving type stuff going on, so:

Today

Did a cat visit. Easy peasy one as the cat hates me and no litter tray, so it's a case of going in and putting down food. Love these bookings as they take literally 5 minutes tops.

Need to sort out my bike, tyres won't pump up. I want to do my next few cat bookings by bicycle to save the petrol in the car so need to get this sorted. I only dragged it out of the shed yesterday.

Need to get ahead on laundry as yesterday I got all the sheets done but the basket is overflowing. Sunny day, should be able to get three loads done and dried if I stay on top of it.

OMAD day (one meal a day diet), so we've got pesto pasta with mozza and rocket for dinner and I'm starving now but looking forward to it.

Booked Ocado slot for Thursday but their site is playing up so can't do full order. Did our meal plan though for Thursday - Wednesday. 

Tomorrow
Hopefully my Virgin card statement will have been drawn up (it's due today but it's sometimes late) so I can pay a big chunk off. More cats bookings but other than that nothing special happening.

The future
Waiting for Moneybox to settle all my payments and bonuses so I can double check I've got as much as I think I have in the house fund (which I've been tracking in YNAB). Should get paid £250 for a web job soon as we're due to wrap up and release. That'll go straight in house fund. On-call next week so that's another bit of bonus cash plus the monitoring on top of it for another hundred quid.