770k reasons to be mortgage free

LadyWithAPlan

nice shiny diary Good job on the focus and tracking - from what I have seen with other successful MFW diaries the more they track the more they win

StrivingForSimple

savingholmes said:

Operation declutter/giveaway sounds in full swing. Well done. I feel so much better having let stuff go this year. Plenty more left to let go of though.

There’s nothing quite like a nicely decluttered space is there? I find my stress levels quite different in a clutter v uncluttered room. Unfortunately I do live with three people who just don’t see mess and even for myself putting things away straight away isn’t the natural thing to do in my brain so it’s something I am still working to rewire. 

I love the warm fuzzy feelings of decluttering and of giving items away too so that’s what keeps me going. I do try to sell some items (the extra money is nice to add to savings) but I’ve found items don’t really sell well where we live now compared to where we were before so I try to only list items that I think will sell quickly. 

We don’t have a huge amount of storage in our new home - it has larger rooms / square footage but very little storage and we no longer have a garage/shed/loft so we just don’t have room to keep items we don’t use which is fine with me! 

StrivingForSimple

Not much to report on the money front today. The positive side of that is that no money is being spent and whilst the current account is low, it should be enough to cover us until payday. 

Food shop to be done tomorrow so I need to put together a mealplan for the week. I’m just getting a roast on for an early dinner so I’ll do a quick clean out of the fridge and look at what we’re left with or what needs using up. Oh and I need to put something together for teen’s packed lunch tomorrow so will tackle what too. 

Savingtomove

You are off to a great start.  Nice to hear how someone with similar mortgage amount gets on.  It feels a little never sanding at times!! 

savingholmes

Well done on the ongoing decluttering. I am surprised now by how little I need. But if I move somewhere smaller - I will need to get more radical. Most of what I've let go of so far is things that were unused / rarely used. 

StrivingForSimple

Savingtomove said:

You are off to a great start.  Nice to hear how someone with similar mortgage amount gets on.  It feels a little never sanding at times!! 

Thanks for stopping by! Yes it’s a big amount, thankful for the large income too but we don’t want to be dependent on it for too long as to me that’s just too much risk. 

StrivingForSimple

savingholmes said:

Well done on the ongoing decluttering. I am surprised now by how little I need. But if I move somewhere smaller - I will need to get more radical. Most of what I've let go of so far is things that were unused / rarely used. 

I don’t know how you’re tackling the decluttering, but once I’d got rid of the stuff we don’t or rarely use, I started questioning items that we hadn’t used for a set period of time- ie “ have I used this in the last 6 / 12 months?” and if not, “do my plans in the next year include using this item?” 

Last time we moved we stayed in a rental whilst buying our next home. We moved 4 times in two years due to having to move out of our rental twice too. I was decluttering as we packed up each time, and yet I STILL found items we didn’t need as I unpacked the final time. 

StrivingForSimple

Money update
Current account on it’s last legs. DH under strict instructions not to spend anything. 

Transferred interest from a savings account to the mortgage account - £88.32

Current position
Mortgage offset savings   £7908.66

Dinner is an early one- quick leftovers with jacket potatoes before we go to a school event. Also making a cake to use up some old plant based milk and spread and need using up- not too much of a chore, so there’ll be some Victoria sponge for pudding for a couple of days. 

StrivingForSimple

Payday! Very excited to make our first big OP savings this month. 

Monthly budgeted OP £3500.00
Extra OP from extra income/commission/left over amount ££s in current account, interest on savings £1624.89

Current position
Mortgage offset savings total £13033.55

Will have the opportunity for a further OP later in the month if we can keep to budget and if we don’t have any unexpected expenses come in that I haven’t budgeted for. 

StrivingForSimple

Planned money saving for the month-

• Keep on top of groceries spending
• Leave the car at home- walk/cycle as much as possible
• Keep the heating off- a real battle with DH on this one as our house is freezing (literally get ice on inside of our windows over winter), and it’s worse for him as he often has to work from home. We have a good amount built up in our energy account as usage over summer was very low so we should have enough to see us through winter with our monthly payments added in. I’d love to get the usage down though and save some money in the area