Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

SandyShores

Its a really good plan Kajikita.  My grocery budgeting has definitely lost its way, for instance I went to the sons of Morris the other day to pick up a quick meal on the way home and ended up spending over £30!  A few of those a week, plus a big shop for the staples and the budget has gone before I know it.  I also hate having to shop after work if its for anything more than something like a pint of milk.  I'll be looking at monthly to start with, and to stop going over budget, but then I will definitely start looking at those potential savings - I think we'll crack this budgeting lark.

KajiKita

SandyShores said:

Its a really good plan Kajikita.  My grocery budgeting has definitely lost its way, for instance I went to the sons of Morris the other day to pick up a quick meal on the way home and ended up spending over £30!  A few of those a week, plus a big shop for the staples and the budget has gone before I know it.  I also hate having to shop after work if its for anything more than something like a pint of milk.  I'll be looking at monthly to start with, and to stop going over budget, but then I will definitely start looking at those potential savings - I think we'll crack this budgeting lark.

It’s amazing how much effort and headspace it takes though! I am only able to engage in this review atm because I have been off work this week and am mentally rested. 

I am hoping I will grow new synapses / mental muscle fibres to keep the momentum going on this once I start it …..

KK

KajiKita

I have a crumb of tangible progress to report on the mortgage ….. 😊

The ‘office’ was a muddle and it was putting me off working in there so I have just tidied it all, filed all the relevant paperwork, put my next tasks into tidy piles, taken out all the recycling etc. 

As I did this I found January’s annual mortgage statement from Acc0rd and realised that they have done the classic trick of, due to us OPing by a little tiny-teeny bit, reducing our monthly repayment by £6.23! Argh! 

Fortunately, I spotted this today whilst still off work, so *immediately* rang them and got them to not only change it back to the £1648.50 pcm that it was before but also round it up to £1650. (The guy on the other end of the line casually said that he does this too 😊). Annoyingly, and shockingly, I discovered that only Mr KK’s name was on the account so he had to authorise the account! I was not impressed - this has now been rectified!! 

But, this means we are now OPing by £7.73 by default every month!! Whooop! Feels like my mortgage snowball has moved from being a ball bearing to a golf ball in size - so chuffed! 😊😊😊

KK

KajiKita

Oh Wowsers …. Looks like I have a taker for the bed in the spare room …. (her FiL is just about to come home after heart surgery). Looks like the rest of my morning will be spent clearing that room!! 😂

KK

KajiKita

Bed in the spare room is gone!!! 😊

In the short term I need to clean the floor of dust and load stuff back in to the room.

In the longer term - re-home c. 3 almost new, unwanted, duplicate double duvets (don’t ask! 🙄😂) and start looking for an old dark wood, solid wardrobe we can turn into my craft cupboard!!!! 😊❤️🌞 Excited now 😊

Also managed to do c. 90 minutes in the garden, finishing the bed I was working on yesterday, lightly weeding and surface-ruffling the garlic / shallots bed and clearing about half of the path between those two beds before the bed collectors arrived 😊

KK

SandyShores

Great work!!!

If you can't sell the duvets, I re-homed some on a local fb gifting website - they were very gratefully received.  Or you can pass them onto animal shelters, or if all else fails the Dun of the Elm have a recycling box in their shops for bedding of all kinds.

Craft cupboard sounds very exciting

badmemory

Or you could do with yours what I have been doing with mine for years.  My garage is quite narrow & I have no intention of ever having to scrape ice off my car or even worse clean bird muck off the windscreen.  Due to a problem with a hip I need to be able to open the driver's door to the max.  So I have a duvet hanging down the passenger side of the garage to minimise scrapes.  I attempt to get really, really close & a couple of times have got so close I've got wedged (easily sorted) but it is nice not to have to worry.  Unfortunately with it being a detached garage the duvet does tend to get a bit on the dark side & so gets changed when the house duvets do. Oh the uses we put things to.

KajiKita

SandyShores said:

Great work!!!

If you can't sell the duvets, I re-homed some on a local fb gifting website - they were very gratefully received.  Or you can pass them onto animal shelters, or if all else fails the Dun of the Elm have a recycling box in their shops for bedding of all kinds.

Craft cupboard sounds very exciting

FB gifting site ….? Not come across those. I was thinking the local hospice shop might take them. I was going to try tomorrow.

KK

KajiKita

badmemory said:

Or you could do with yours what I have been doing with mine for years.  My garage is quite narrow & I have no intention of ever having to scrape ice off my car or even worse clean bird muck off the windscreen.  Due to a problem with a hip I need to be able to open the driver's door to the max.  So I have a duvet hanging down the passenger side of the garage to minimise scrapes.  I attempt to get really, really close & a couple of times have got so close I've got wedged (easily sorted) but it is nice not to have to worry.  Unfortunately with it being a detached garage the duvet does tend to get a bit on the dark side & so gets changed when the house duvets do. Oh the uses we put things to.

You have a garage that gets used for storing your day to day vehicles …. How … intriguing …. 🤔 

In this household, garages are for storing old motorbikes, newer motorbikes (think ‘95 vintage), jeeps, champs, jerricans, old mortar shells, tinkering etc etc etc ….. 😂😂😂😂😂

I thought we were doing well to have installed a driveway, so I can at least park inside the property boundary not on a muddy bank opposite the front door! 😉

KK

badmemory

I am really posh!  I have an automatic garage door from when I conceded defeat to a bad back & the strain of an up and over lift.  It was so close to the road that it needed it to be roller shutter or risk a badly parked car getting hit. I suspect I am looking at having it rebuilt in the not too distant future, wider hopefully, longer unlikely due to the slope. Building regs here we come!  I am lucky to have nice neighbours so even if it is possible if they don't like it I won't do it.  But I would love to have solar panels on it.  A person can dream!