Welshlassies MF quest by 40

evab_2

Well done WL, excellent achievement and best wishes for the new year.

setmefree2

and well done

Welshlassie

It has been a busy new year so far.

Yesterday we put a deposit down on a new kombi to replace DHs' current van and give us a vehicle that we can go out in with the dog as my new company car isn't really big enough.

The new van is only 6 years old (a significant improvement on the current T25 which is close on 30 years) MPG is nearer 40mpg instead of 19mpg on the current, that should therefore save us a bit in fuel. We're hopefully picking it up on Thursday. Just organising the cash, it will be going onto a 0% purchases credit card (until July 09) until we sell the other vehicles, which we should do in the next couple of months.

My company car is due 2 March so a new 09 plate, silly thing to get excited about but I've never had a new car before. Getting a VW Polo Bluemotion 2 that will do 88mpg Extra Urban so this will also save me a huge amount on fuel especially as I have a 72 mile motorway round trip every day to work and my current car is 60.1mpg extra urban.

We have a few things to get sorted to the vehicles so they are ready to be sold. The van needs the cushions covered, which I am half way through, so plan to get those finished this week. It will then need a good valet and will be going to a friends garage to get some mechanical work that needs doing done, and a new MOT. My car needs the glove box lid replacing and the door mirror respraying and fitting so these are being done Wednesday. It then needs emptying and valeting so we can photgraph it so it can be advertised nearer the end of Feb.

We have spent less than we planned on the new van so it means once the current van and car have sold we should have a nice surplus to put in savings, and then more again once the beach buggy goes.

We also have to sell the beach buggy, but the wrong time of year presently so will concentrate on that once the other 2 have gone, and get it ready to start touting around the shows in the spring.

I have decluttered a pile of stuff that needs to be listed on ebay, so will sort that once the covers are done.

I also need to get our home insurance renewed, and find cheaper contact lens, I've been meaning to do this for months, but after signing up for the MFiT-T2 challenge I want to streamline our budget as much as possible to maximise our chances of achieving our target, which is to reduce the mortgage from £190k (which is what it should be my Dec 09 when the challenge officially starts) to £160k. I already have around £15k sat in savings accounts ready to pay off in Dec 11 when the current mortgage deal runs out, so will need to find an additional £15k over 3 years, a huge challenge! :eek:

I have now finally managed to get back into my online mortgage access and we are officially sub £192k, which I am really chuffed about as it means we are now actually paying off money we borrowed to buy the house, not the fees that we added on before we saw the light. :T :j :T

I've had another book sell on Play, not much left over after fees etc, but it all helps. I'm going to relist all my books in the next week or so and if they don't sell by the time my car arrives they are going to charity, they take up so much room and for what I'm making from them, its not worth keeping them as they take up so much space.

We have also just sorted a new accountant for DH business, we will be making another loss this year, so a further tax rebate, and depending on how much this is, will depend if we keep it on account again as we did last year. I maybe nice to withdraw it as it is unlikely we will need it on account for next year.

So all in all we have a busy few weeks and months coming up. Will summarise our forthcoming goals and revisit in a month or so to see how we're progressing against them.

• Make van cushion covers
• Prepare van and car for selling
• Sell van and car
• List decluttered items on ebay
• Source cheaper contact lens
• Get home insurance renewed
• Sort filing cabinet.

Wow didn't realise we had done so much and still have quite a bit to do. Thanks for reading if you made it this far, you are very brave :rotfl:

evab_2

phew I'm exhausted! good luck with everything x

gallygirl

Phew, what a start to the year, keep it up!

StuartGMC

WH
What an excellent summary, great reading!

Watch those insurance deals, do download the PDFs of the policies from those you are short-listing before committing; found some "interesting" clauses when I did a check last year. However, we changed to DirectLine and saved £200 on Buildings & Contents.

Welshlassie

It feels like it has got busier since my last update.

DH's old van went bang on the Monday, which was a pain as he had a gig on the Wednesday he needed it for, so we ended up picking up the new van on Tuesday. Luckily the old van just seems to have spat a spark plug, but still needs paying for to be ready to have it sold.
The new van has something wrong with it, but we can't work it out just yet, could be the timing or it could be the turbo. We've spoken to the original owner (who is a mechanic) and he swears its not the turbo, so keeping fingers crossed its just the timing. We're able to drive it, it just doesn't have any guts on motorways. Its going in on Tuesday to be sorted hopefully.
To top all this off on my car, the drivers window fell into the door at 70mph on the motorway this morning in the rain. Thought the electric window clip had gone again like it did back last May. I managed to get it into our bodyshop guy who has said its just come off the runners (after I'd had to source and buy the window clip, hopefully can get a refund), while he was sorting the window the locking mechanism has snapped, so now trying to get one of these. :eek:
That's the 3 so hopefully nothing else can go wrong with them before we sell them. I've had a fab price to have a full valet when we're ready to have the car done, he has just done the new van and it looks brilliant. :j

I've managed to renew our house insurance, slightly more than last year, but actually better cover, so can't complain too much, and £68 through Quidco that has tracked. :T

I've started the painful process of listing things on ebay (have a whole room of things to go), 4 things listed tonight, hopefully will get a few more items listed over the next few weeks, this extra will all go towards the house savings.

I'm drip feeding matured mortgage savings into the mortgage at the moment and have £1200 to go in over the next few months, so still bringing the balance down just not with "new" money. This should take us until around May to get it all in (£50 twice a week), so will see what the household savings are looking like at this time. The vehicles should have sold by then as well so will know how much surplus we have from that to throw at the savings.

I've had a look around for new contact lenses and found the cheapest place to get them from, but will be waiting a couple of months before I order as I've just had my latest 3 months worth from specsavers through and I'm due a contact lens check which is included in my current monthly cost, so will get that done and then order 12-18 months worth in about 6 weeks time, (through Quidco of course).:A

I've made a start on the cushion covers, but they have taken a back seat last few days as I've been so exhausted, but will try to get back to them next week. I've also started sorting the filing cabinet, but need to get a new shredder to dispose of all the old statements etc.

Phew no wonder I feel exhausted :rotfl:

StuartGMC

WelshLassie
Quite an update there to say the least!

Good to hear that your insurance cover is improved, I think it would be so much better if there was a set of consistent items that companies listed for degrees of cover and to show enhancements rather than wading through documents and attempting to extract the detail!

I can sympathise on the vehicle woes, and fingers crossed you're past the worst now!

I've made a start on the cushion covers, but they have taken a back seat last few days as I've been so exhausted, .

Lovely pun, the English Language may be the last thing we have left to offer the world soon :rotfl:

Keep at it you're doing great

setmefree2

Hi WL,

Noticed in your signature that you are saving change. I recently rounded up the SMF2s change and we had £20 in 1p, 2p, 5p. I bagged it up and took it to the bank. It felt like I was getting free money when I got a £20 note back

Well done on all your progress.

Regards

SMF2

Welshlassie

Well MF is on hold for the next few months at least, have around £4,000 to find and I don't want to dip into the Mortgage saving I have in fixed term accounts for paying off when we remortgage.

We've had an expensive few months and car savings/bithday savings have been exhausted so current costs are coming out of the day to day budget until they are refilled (usually happens with gifts this time iof the year, and catch up ;ater in the year, but not with the car costs), DH got caught speeding going down to look at the van so that's another £60 to find.

Have just had a reminder invoice through for the hall & stairs carpet which I was sure I'd paid, but can't find any evidence of paying so must have slipped through the net, for £760. Very anonyed with myself about this as the money was there when it came through originally, I'm normally so hot on these things. I need to sit down and work out where is has gone.

A few of the windows need replacing and we're probably looking at around £1000. They seem to have deteriorated over the cold snap and we're getting quite a draft through some of them, wish this had happened last year as could have used some of my redundancy, but hey ho.

Also want to save up for a holiday for later this year, not sure where we are going to go yet, but looking to get together around £1000.

We've had a few other unexpected odds and sods over the last few weeks and have a few coming up, so MF goal will take a back seat for 6 months or so.

I'll be still keeping an eye on everyone else but won't be updating here for a bit, so this is me signing off.

Good luck everyone.