Let's go fly a kite..

thriftychick

Mortgage amount: £43,850

A bit frustrated today that the mortgage payment hasn't gone out and we are being charged ~£7 a day interest (5.89%).  Had a look on the MSE mortgage calculator and it said approximate monthly payment will be £643 a month so, we've paid £300 overpayment today and will tidy it up on Monday when the DD goes out. 

On the plus side, it's another sticker and another coin in the jar    @savingholmes, it is our take on the marbles jar (great idea).  I really need visual tools to motivate me so, I used the £100 from Nationwide Fair Share.

savingholmes

Well done 

thriftychick

Mortgage amount: £43,340
Interest amount: £207.65

Mortgage payment went out today for £714.93 which was higher than expected .  Did a small tilly tidy of £2.72.

We have received two letters from HSBC with differing amounts quoted for the mortgage payment, neither of which were the amount actually taken.  I suppose it is hard to get an accurate figure with interest rates fluctuating and overpayments being made.  Going forward, I think the plan will be to pay £1k on the 20th (payday) and wait until the DD goes out before tidying up.  This month, we have paid £2,017.65 in total which is £17.65 more than planned.

In the past, we have always had either a 5 year fix or 2 year fix so, the volatility of a tracker will take some getting used to!

savingholmes

That's a lovely amount to have paid off in a month.

thriftychick

Mortgage amount: £42,340

Made an OP of £1,000 on payday, we'll wait and see what the monthly payment is before we OP anymore.

Thinking about budgets and savings at the moment.  On the budget front, food is the main spanner in the works.  Over the last couple of months, I've been monitoring how much I've overspent and I think I need to allocate an additional £18 per week to groceries .  Looking at my till receipts, it seems to be meat/fish/dairy which are the main culprits.  I only buy one meat and one fish item a week but they are definitely rocketing up in price (I shop at Aldi).  I did a stocktake yesterday so hopefully, I'll be a bit more organised for this week's shop.  
On the up side, we are using less petrol so I have reduced that category by £40 per month...swings and roundabouts.

We have been looking at making our other savings work harder and after the BoE rate decision on 3rd August, we will move our long term savings (not a huge amount) into a higher interest paying account.   We also have savings pots for various things which we put about 10% of our income in monthly.  Looking for marginal gains.

savingholmes

Marginal gains add up. Well done.

thriftychick

Mortgage amount: £41,555
Interest £215.04

The mortgage payment went out today of £590.85.  Made an OP of £409.19, only a 4p tilly tidy.  We allocate £2,000 per month to the mortgage in total, £1,000 OP on payday and then top up after the payment is made on the 1st.  Another sticker on the chart and a coin in the jar.

We have been fiddling around with the budget to try and get the food budget to work.  We decided to seperate food and alcohol and then halve the alcohol amount.  We now have a budget of £60 per week for food which seems doable.  I went to Tesco and bought a month's worth of alcohol in one go as they had their 25% off offer on and also wanted to get it before today's tax increase.  Hopefully, this will work better.  The money freed up will go into cash savings for early retirement.

savingholmes

Love the jars

thriftychick

Mortgage amount: £40,200

Got paid two days early due to pay day falling on a weekend   Sometimes it does work in your favour.  Paid £1,355 off the mortgage this morning before I even got out of bed.  It still amazes me that you can transfer money so quickly now.  Remember when you had to write a cheque, post it off and wait 3 days for it to be processed.  Try telling kids that these days and they just won't believe you 

savingholmes

Apparently America is still cheque based.

Well done on the OP.