2022 - Moving forward

jwil

It's good to see what others are doing to cut back so hopefully we can all pick up tips from each other.

How much do they say a FF costs to run? 

jwil

I've had a busy morning this morning.  I cooked up a big batch of mince and veg, and so have enough for 3 meals this week - cottage pie, pasta bolognese and burger in a bowl.

When I was prepping the potatoes for the mash, it occurred to me that I could save energy, time (and washing up) by also prepping the roasties, putting them all on to boil at the same time and then removing the roasties after a few minutes, leaving the rest of the potatoes to boil until ready to mash.

We took little miss for her flu vaccine.  I got DH to drop us in as I wasn't sure if we could park anywhere close by and it saved us having to walk in the rain.  That was nice and quick and easy.

The kids have sorted through another two boxes of toys, and a box is to go.  We're getting there slowly.  DH and I have been arguing as he finds it difficult to see things going.  I keep telling him not to buy them stuff!  Because he's also hoarded pretty much everything he's had since he was a kid, he just doesn't get it. 

Family keeps giving them stuff now, says it's ok as it's just come from charity shops, but they don't need/want it.  Little miss in particular says she wants stuff but then loses interest almost immediately.  I keep asking them not to do so but it still happens.  Quite frankly it will be on a conveyor belt out of the house again back to charity.  I keep things we can genuinely make use of, but I dislike 'ornaments' generally and have no use for them.  I don't have anywhere to display stuff either.

It's wet today so TD is on and I'm trying to catch up with everything that hasn't quite dried over the last couple of days.  At least partly dried stuff doesn't need much.

jwil

7 parcels posted today, another pile of stuff gone, yay!

I've got a hectic week this week - 2 evening meetings, away to London for the day on Saturday and meeting friends on Sunday.  I've agreed with my boss that rather than messing with TOIL I will take an hour off on the days that I have the evening meetings.  It means I'll be able to potter around for a bit or have a long lunchbreak so that will be nice.

I still haven't done my new budget, but was going to start looking at it earlier.  I logged into the mortgage account to find out what our new payment is going to be, got distracted looking at what offers were available for us, sat comparing them all, and came away having fixed for 10 years at 2.07%!  Not entirely what I planned to do, but will save us £16 on what our new payment would have been and gives us certainty.  I can still overpay 10% capital per year, and we only have 14 years left, so my challenge now is to clear the mortgage by the time the 10 year fix runs out.  I've worked out we'll have around £26k left by the end, so I need to try and overpay £26k in 10 years.  It doesn't seem that unrealistic and in the unlikely event I manage to get to more than 10% capital I'll bump it into savings to pay off at the end of the deal.  Fingers crossed!

doingitanyway

All sounding so positive over here. Your week sounds busy but nice 

NeverendingDMP

Good news on the mortgage front. We last fixed a couple of years ago but that rate sounds good to me all things considered. Especially if you know you have it set in stone for 10 years. Good luck with the overpaying 

beanielou

You are on a roll 
7 parcels away & a great 10 year fix.
Woohoo

SusieT

That is a very good day I did a long fix and rolled secured loans into the mortgage before the interest changes started to hit (although I know they will have been priced in). I saved a lot on interest and am going to overpay as much and early as possible since the interest saved will really add up and reduce the term. 
It will be really good for you to know there is a set payment and that at the end of it you will either be mortgage free or very very close to it

pennywisepoundstupid

Well done on getting the mortgage on a fixed rate.

another_casualty

All good stuff @jwil😼
Regarding fleabay , do you accept PayPal ? They're trying to phase that out  from what I remember ..

EssexHebridean

I think that's a very sensible decision on the mortgage - interest rates are only going in one direction right now, and assuming that those who know about this stuff and reckon these things generally go in rough 10 year cycles are correct, it will be a while before they'll be reversing the trend, so you ay well find yourself in 5 years or so with an absolute stormer of a rate.