Now or never

Its_time

I am not sure where the time has gone probably spent upon thinking things through.
DH is in his quieter time at the moment so funds are low, I have decided to leave the sanctuary for a while and only work at it as a hobbie for now.  I have increased my hours to fulltime plus overtime so we now finally have enough money without considering going back to that awful job.  All my hours are working from home which is fantastic.  It's a quiet job for most of the month so I am free to browse the internet, knit, etc.
I've made a plan, it is a long plan but it might be more realistic than any previous ones.  It is a 15 year plan until retirement.
The mortgage should be paid off in 10 years which will be 7 years early plus we will have a good amount of savings by then as well, I have set up an account which we are planning not to touch.  Coupled then with our old age pensions, DH's private pension and my pension from this new job we should be ok as we wont have a mortgage and will have savings as well.
In addition I am paying monthly into the £1 a day challenge and 1p a day challenge, over the year this will amount to approx £1033.00, this will then be our emergency fund.  I am also saving £85 a month for birthdays and Christmas, £100 for house and yard repairs, £75 for car ins, mot and repairs, £100 for days out/meals out and any other treats plus our diesel.
I've been playing with the mortgage overpayment calculator and weirdly it works out more beneficial to us to save £500 a month and pay £350 extra off the mortgage than the other way around, i've double checked it a few times.  So that is what I am going to do.  All the other direct debits are covered, i've budgeted £175 for the horses a month and £50 a week for food shopping for us and lastly £150 for holidays.  None of these figures are set in stone, I am hoping I have over budgeted for them all other than the food shopping.  At the end of the year if there is any more left in these accounts .....well........to be honest I am not sure, if it happens or looks like it is going to happen then I will have to have a think what the best thing to do with it is, would be lovely.  Perhaps it might be a good idea to top up my private pension as it will have only run for 15 years.
Unfortunately the overpayments and savings wont be able to go ahead until the big car has sold but fingers crossed this happens soon, DH has reduced the price and is about to do another advert.
This year I will be keeping all the money DH earns in one account and only taking the weekly budgeted amount from it so when he has the quiet months around Christmas we can use it then, forward thinking.
I've just transferred £83.83 from our top cash back account from last years purchases and put it in the Emergency fund account where the 1p and £1 a day challenges are going.  In addition I have earned over £20 from surveys so far this month and will keep on at that again putting it into the Emergency fund for now.  Most of the shopping comes from Tescos online and is delivered so I am planning to keep all the clubcard vouchers for helping out with our Christmas food shop this year.

lucielle

Sounds like you’ve got everything under control. 

L

Its_time

Thank you @lucielle I really hope so.
Playing around with my wages for this week and after taking into account the pension contribution I am going to be a few pounds short to meet my budget as I was unable to work one morning this week, so I have decided to work Saturday to increase my hours.  This means that I wont be chasing my tail and will remain ahead.  I might work every other Saturday but will have to see how I go.  If DH is working I might as well.  I might have to increase our shopping to £60 a week whilst we are shoppoing at Tesco so the extra Saturdays will cover that as well.  
After work I quickly prepared tea and then had a lovely half hour soak in the bath which was absolute bliss.  When I came down DH told me to sit on the settee with my feet up and made me tea, feeling very loved tonight.

Its_time

So i've gone over on my shopping budget.  I had a feeling I would despite all my good intentions.  This area definitely needs more work.  I havn't batched cooked or meal planed for a few weeks and it is showing.  Tescos delivery today has come to £64.36 bringing our monthly shop to £279.43 with another week left to go.  I really am not happy about this and it needs to be sorted.  We run two freezers one of which has hardly anything in it so it needs sorting, emptying and turning off/selling.  The cupboards need sorting and I need to meal plan from what we have in.  It feels like a lot of work to tackle all at once so it will be small steps.  Usually I go at everything flat out and fall at the first hurdle, hopefully a longer, slower approach will be better.  
I can't understand what's going on as a few years ago I could do our shopping for a weekly £40 odd, unless it is all the price increases now, hopefully there will be some wriggle room.