Mortgage Free by 50???

hatch_five

Very happy! I was planning to buy 125KG of coal tomorrow when I get paid for £87. This morning the coal company sent me an email about some clearance coal they had on offer at £5 for 10KG. There was a minimum order of £80, so I ended up buying 160KG for £80 instead of the 125KG for £87. It had to go on the PayPal credit card (it will disappear quickly at that price) but I will put the money back in tomorrow after I have been paid. Its always nice when the offer you get sent was actually for something you were planning on buying anyway! That will last us the rest of this winter/spring and probably all next winter as well. The pressure is off now and if another good deal crops up I can pick up some more fuel and fill the bunker, but there is no urgency!

hatch_five

It seems like a long time since I updated. Nothing particularly earth shattering has happened here, although OH has got referred to the local gym by the doc and been given a discounted rate for gym and swimming membership due to her disabilities which she is very happy about- we have crunched the numbers and can find the money for the membership and more importantly the bus fares which are the crippler if you need to use them regularly. DS is currently off school ill with a viral- he is never normally ill so it is very unusual to see him under the weather. I have a grand total of 25p in my current account until payday on the 28th! Luckily the bills are covered and OH has the weekly grocery money put aside so we are fine, but funds mean it will be a quiet few weeks- last weekend my big trip out was to take DD to the park in the village to play, doing a big bake for the family and building a row of cottages for the model railway (actually a very enjoyable weekend, but I am very much a home bird).

Realised at 7 this morning that I didn’t have anything for my lunch today- a root in the cupboard found a tin of chick peas, a tin of jack fruit and a tin of boiled potatoes with a tikka masala spice mix. This has all been bunged in the slow cooker and I will steam a bit of rice to go with it and that’s my lunch for the week. It smells delicious, and if I am feeling naughty I think there might even be a chuck out naan bread in the freezer I could stick in the oven to go with it, although probably not as healthy if I have naan bread with it…

Sarahwithlove

Is your other half not entitled to a disabled bus pass? Have you looked at disability benefits again for them? 

Following purchasing the dvds, do you have any you could sell on Ebay? Or if not them maybe something else? 

hatch_five

Sarahwithlove said:

Is your other half not entitled to a disabled bus pass? Have you looked at disability benefits again for them? 

Following purchasing the dvds, do you have any you could sell on Ebay? Or if not them maybe something else? 

I did look into the discounts for disabilities, but none of the ones listed as being eligible on WY Metro's website apply- we still have the £2 single bus tickets until the end of March, but after that the price jumps to £3, so a day ticket at £5.50 is actually cheaper. With two trips a week, that works out at £44 a month, plus the £14 for the discount gym membership. It doesn't sound a lot for many people, but trying to find an extra £55 a month is not that easy- OH's health will benefit from this though so its something important for us to cover and we have rejigged the budget to cover it.

UC is going up next month, but only by about £5 a month as far as I can tell and I am also getting a pay increment, but by the time that has reduced the UC, we will probably be not much better off than now and all the bills are going up (water 29%, Council tax 10% etc.). Luckily my mortgage is only going up by about £2, but it does feel like we are being battered a bit by everything going up a lot more than my wage is!

I take all my DVDs out of their cases and put them in paper sleeves and then they go in a drawer, numbered and catalogued on a spreadsheet so I can find things (3000+ discs, and yes I am aware its a manifestation of my autism...), so not really wanting to sell any of them. I do have other items I could sell, although the changes to eBay's selling rules has rather put me off lately. I do need to go through my collections and find duplicates of things to sell, I probably have hundreds of things I could part with without noticing (who actually needs ten sets of 1970s British Army web equipment, when you can only wear one at a time?!?!)

hatch_five

Rang my Dad last night- him and my mum have just got back from a holiday in Gibraltar and he mentioned it would be their last holiday abroad, my Mum has Parkinsons and it was a difficult trip. Apparently, Mum fell over four times, and due to storms, they had their flight cancelled and when he contacted EasyJet they said he could either wait until the next weekend for a flight back or get a refund. Understandably, he took the refund and as soon as that had been processed, EasyJet wiped their hands of the whole thing and told two pensioners that they would have to arrange their own accommodation, and he had to organise the return trip himself. After going to a local travel agent, they managed to get a flight back the next day- with Easy Jet! Apparently, the plane had spare seats, so not sure why they told him originally there was no flight back for a week! In hindsight, he shouldn’t have taken the refund, but I completely understand why he thought that was the best thing to do in that moment. I have told him to look into putting a complaint in, perhaps through an ombudsman, as Easy Jet just seemed to want to wipe their hands of the whole thing as quickly as possible, regardless of the fact that they were leaving two 70 somethings, one with a serious illness, thousands of miles from home! In the end they were something like £800 out of pocket, plus the stress of trying to sort everything out (Dad’s laptop failed and he was shocked to find out that internet cafes don’t exist anymore!). Mum is understandably exhausted by the whole thing, so it will probably be a few weeks until she is well enough to leave the house again.

Okay, rant over, back to money saving! We are all full of the lurgy (thanks kids) so its going to be a quiet weekend at home, possibly watching a few films as a family if we can persuade DS to leave his room and join us, bit of baking and I have some soldering to do for the model railway electronics- I hate soldering and after twenty years it is still something I have yet to master, but it needs doing and if I put some music on I can crack on with it, hopefully with minimal frustrations! I am on countdown to Easter now- I have the week off and want to re-paper the doorway. I picked up some William Morris wallpaper for £3 a roll last year (normally £70+!!!) and our doorway is looking very manky and tired so I am hoping a simple bit of redecorating will give me and OH a little boost before the warmer weather.

hatch_five

Feeling completely heart broken this morning, our wonderful little cat was hit by a car this morning. Someone took him to the vets, but there was nothing they could do. He was only 18 months old, and such a sweet loving lap cat. OH is very upset as he was very much a 'mummy's boy' and used to curl up asleep on her all the time. The kids are going to be devastated as well when they get back from school, especially DS as he was very close and him and the cat would wind each other up all the time. I keep bursting into tears (not very manly I know, but I loved that cat)- house rabbit keeps hopping up to check I'm okay.

Sarahwithlove

Sorry for your loss. It's never easy losing a beloved pet, it's totally OK to be upset about it. 

Debtfree2026

Oh gosh I'm sorry - it has been nearly eleven years since our first cat Charlie was knocked down and killed and I still remember how absolutely devastated I was.  I've only seen my husband cry twice in our 21 years together and that was one of the times.  I'm so sorry.

katsu

Maybe encourage your other half to go back to the surveys? You don't have to do them for her. If she does them, great, and if she doesn't, it will not matter so she can dip in when she's feeling up to it. Maybe she can aim to make some vouchers towards Christmas for eg as she's got long enough to get a few quid. 

Also what about receipt apps like Shoppix? Again maybe aim for say £20-50 a year towards Christmas. 

hatch_five

Brief update- payday today so I have moved money around and paid a bit more off the credit cards. Its going a lot slower than I had planned, but it is going down so that is something. Things keep happening, like paying for the vet after the cat got hit, that mean the credit card has needed to be used for the odd thing I hadn’t planned for. On the bright side, the emergency fund has recovered slightly since it disappeared on an emergency electrician so there is a little bit of headroom in that, and if we can avoid any more emergencies for a few months, it will grow a bit more! The Help to Save account is building nicely- to the rest of my family, £300 is loose change, but to me it represents six months of being sensible and it’s the longest sustained saving I have ever done so I am quite proud of my achievement!

I have paid the last instalment for DD’s ‘sleeping with the fishes’ trip next month- its not some Mafia thing! She is having a sleepover at an aquarium with Cubs (I’m quite jealous, it sounds fantastic!). DS will potentially be going to the same aquarium with school for a daytrip later this year, just waiting to hear if he has one of the places, so that will be another one to pay for, but to be honest although it always involves juggling money to cover, I want them to be able to go on as many of these things as I can afford and make memories. I do get annoyed with a lot of the secondary school trips though- despite him going to a state school, they run annual trips that cost hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. If it were a private school, fair enough, but they have to know that 50% plus of the school can never afford to go on these trips and it just seems to be unfair and elitist as there then ends up with a clique of kids whose parents have deep pockets (or credit cards) who go on all the trips, whilst the poorer kids are left behind. I went to a private school (assisted place, my parents could never have afforded the fees) and you sort of expect the really expensive trips abroad, but I had assumed it was a little more inclusive at state schools, I was quite surprised to find it really isn’t, at least at DS’s school! Luckily he is very understanding and realises that we can get a week's holiday for the whole family for the price of the school trip for one so he isn't too upset at not being able to go, but it does annoy me.