Chapter 3: the large London mortgage

lessavyfav · 31 December 2017 at 12:04AM

thanks getmore4less, i think that's a good idea — we worked this kind of thing out when we first got the mortgage but haven't looked at it since. I've also got a banking app that lets you save for goals by ringfencing your money for whatever you fancy..i just started one for holiday, emergency, clothes and upcoming gifts. Once you pay into it, you see how little you have to last the rest of the month :eek:

Just paid another £125 of my CC off, so that's just 10.1% left till it's out the door and no more money will be heading in that direction! I've had the CC a little over a year and not once used it, so I'll probably close the account once that's done.

Did a bit of a freak out like i thought I might with getting a few extra bits for NYE..I can't help myself, it's a fear to run out of food! The fridge is jammed with food an alcohol that should last beyond the night. Am aiming to be v low key in January, need to drink less, spend less and run more.

lessavyfav · 3 January 2018 at 9:34PM

Happy New Year! Hope you all had a good one.

I enjoyed celebrating mine with friends and the OH at home with a low key but lovely dinner. I think I still managed to overspend as we have loads of leftover booze and food but hey, that'll last us a while at least! Mind you, I am trying to avoid alcohol at the moment.

Have started off the New Year okay (she says, 3 days in). Managed to send over another £100 to the mortgage and ring fence some of my money for things like EF, holiday, clothes and gifts. As I hadn't been working for a month, my most recent pay felt long overdue and needs to stretch a bit — although I get paid weekly I'm going to try not touch it till the month's end. This leaves me with very little so I have to watch my 'extracurricular' activities.

So far doing this by...
- Yesterday I bought lunch but skipped on the usual coffee, and today I brought in lunch from home (was delicious!), again skipped the bought coffee. Tomorrow is leftovers, and I will also skip the coffee.
- I have a bunch of change that I found with £15 worth of pound coins so I will spend lunch time depositing that and might treat myself to a nice snack with some of the leftover change that was in the piggybank (yet to tally how much is in there).
- Hopefully work will have the fruit bowl stacked up again!
- I am testing to see whether it's cheaper for me to pay-as-i-go (and force me to only take one train and walk the rest of the way so I can get my 10,000 steps in), zone 1-3 monthly has gone up to £153 which seems ludicrous being so close to work.
- I need to get back onto selling things on ebay, loads of stuff i don't wear that could fetch a bit of money.
- Finally applied for a Boots Advantage card, which is coming through the mail. I didn't think I shopped there very often but every little bit counts!
- Eat less meat. This is something I'm always working on, and do okay with it but at times in winter get a bit carried away. I have some great vegan and vegetarian recipes in my repertoire now though, must continue to do it more often!

Alright, that's me for the evening. Hopefully will be back in a few days time to report my spending habits and try to keep myself on track....

lessavyfav · 7 January 2018 at 9:01PM

Ahoy-hoy! Sunday evening already..got dinner bubbling away (a nice chicken and squash thai curry - yum!) — it should last for 3 meals!

I've been pretty good over the past few days, spent under a fiver on Friday's lunch (which was average tasting, tbh), and instead of going out to the pub or getting takeaway Friday evening, I bought us yellow stickered M&S pizza, salad and dessert - grand total of £6.34, plus we already had wine and beers in the fridge. Win.

Yesterday was also a cheap day, just went out with the OH for a long walk and stopped by the pub for one, but made all meals and coffee at home and watch a film on Amazon Prime. Today we treated ourselves to a lunch out but nothing to expensive and - importantly - no alcohol! Had to get a few bits of stationery for the business (so that goes on company card), plus a birthday present for a friend's baby, but OH and I were pretty chuffed with ourselves to not have been tempted by all the nice things in the shop.

However, in not so great news, I just had a peek at our joint account and tallied up the grocery/alcohol spends for December and it's embarrassing (close to £400)! This doesn't even include the money spent for NYE since that ended up coming out of the account Jan 1 which takes us to almost £350 for January. Errgh, it really makes me sick and I know I need to scale back, so the plan is to bring lunch in a lot more than I had planned on doing - at least 4 days this week. I am about to make some falafels and pop them in the freezer, plus some homemade hummus, and this week I have friends coming around for dinner but am making something vegan so it'll be cheap (already paid for with the latest food shop) and delicious. Have just made a meal plan too, all that's needed is some yoghurt for breakfast and milk for homemade broc and stilton soup.

Although sale time is probably a good time to stock up on clothes, I think I'm going to just get my jeans mended (hole in crotch, this always happens to my jeans! anyone else?). I saw them for £67 on sale somewhere but resisted — how virtuous of me.

We were also planning to go visit the family abroad for about a month (other side of the world) in March but I think we're going to give this a miss. I really want to go back to enjoy the sun, see family and friends but I feel like mortgage and renovations, plus new business need to take priority..that sounds like quite a jerk thing to say as family and friends are so important but it's only a short term thing. Hopefully by the end of the year we're further ahead and can justify it!

Right, time to check on dinner. It smells de-lish.

lessavyfav · 9 January 2018 at 9:14PM

Signature updated, things are going a-okay!

I sent off £200 to OP the mortgage this afternoon, although my aim was £400 per month so need to make sure I make this up. I think by the end of this month I'll add a bit extra to get us back up to speed.

I'm very excited to have nearly paid off my CC too, with just two payments to go till it's £0!

I've been pretty good with the food — for today's lunch I made falafel, hummus and even the flatbreads from scratch! so much better than supermarket bought, and healthier as I actually know what goes in them. Got some more veg in the oven roasting to bring to work tomorrow although I think the OH might be getting tired of it. I did treat myself to a chocolate bar today, but hey, 50p won't kill me and I'll try to make sure my bought lunch this week is cheap.

I'm hoping the rest of the month will be pretty low key with no big expenses coming up, although it's still only 1/3 of the way through the month so you never know. Must. Try. Harder.

lessavyfav · 22 January 2018 at 9:01PM

Checking in again!

Moneywise we've been a bit up and down. Managed to get £20 off a Farmdrop order, so although it was pretty expensive to start with, we've got some lovely produce at reasonable prices. I've been pretty good with bringing in leftovers, but more like 3 days a week and the occasional morning croissant..I need to do better.

I need to do my accounts up and pay myself this weekend (my favourite, PAY DAY!), so will make sure to inject the OP a little more this month. I need to keep reigning it in. I'm not going to beat myself too badly though, am certainly doing better than I was November and December, but never quite feel like we have as much money in the bank account as I'd like.

One thing I have been making a conscious effort over is not buying things I don't need like hair and beauty products. I have loads, and it's quite satisfying trying to get every tiny bit of cream, oil and shampoo out. I've also gone very eco so all my cleaning products are natural and plan to keep it that way. Trying to do our bit..

lessavyfav · 23 January 2018 at 10:24PM

I've had the night to myself while OH is on a course, and have put it to good use. I finally looked into my pension plans to see if I can consolidate them...turns out in the (not even) 7 years I've been in the UK, I've had 4 plans (who knew?)— all with hardly anything in them really, but I guess it all adds up and should come to around £5k-ish. Now that's nothing so I need to REALLY ramp this up and will start doing so as of payday this weekend! Bring on payday btw, feels like ages ago.

I've also signed up to a crowdfunding investment platform as I'd like to play around a little more in that area, and the great thing is you can invest in things you believe in, even if just small amounts. I can't imagine committing a lot of money into it, but hey, if something goes well it could be a nice profit...in years to come!

Didn't spend any money on coffees, lunch or snacks today, (or anything for that matter). There's another small win

FloppyDisk · 24 January 2018 at 11:55AM

Hi Savy, I will be hopefully be joining you with a £400k+ mortgage soon so you're not on your own! Not sure how old you are but it is never a bad time to be thinking about pensions, does your employer pay in if you do?
Good luck cutting down the lunches and snacks, that has always been mine issue but I am getting better slowly!

lessavyfav · 25 January 2018 at 8:18PM

Hey FloppyDisk, thanks for your comment! And congrats on new home ownership - as much as it's gutting to see your savings suddenly depleted (the worst are all the fees and stamp duty), there is something very satisfying when you get those keys and walk into your new home. When are you moving in?

I'm approaching my mid-30s so my current pension balance is abysmal and according to many websites I should be saving at least £800 a month to catch up. Just not possible right now. Also I'm self-employed so no company matching unfortunately! My OH is also self employed and has never worked anywhere that paid him a pension so we're both needing to get our butts into gear. The goal this year is to consistently add to my pension each month starting from next pay, even if it's just a couple of hundred at first.

It's nearing the end of the month and I'm pretty happy with how I've gone with snacks and lunches, I also haven't been going out loads either. Tomorrow's a treat day with work peeps - hopefully the guys don't go overboard as no doubt we'll do a bill split (I work with a lot of big guys who eat a lot and are happy to drink a pint or two at lunch..)

Turns out my experiment to pay as I go travel on Contactless hasn't saved me money and it'd be cheaper to get a monthly Oyster. It's not a massive difference and has encouraged me to walk more (to avoid having to pay for the more expensive train nearer my place), but will go back to buying a monthly from Monday.

February is already looking quite busy, and possibly expensive plane tickets to buy so it won't be a great month moneywise, but I've just done a breakdown of what I'm paying myself and every penny has a place to go (other than my very fuzzy 'entertainment' budget). Although I forgot to add CC payment of £125 (the penultimate payment!!!), so I'll try to scramble for this money elsewhere!

I've also signed up for a bit of a side hustle which costs me no money, but will require me to put some time and effort into it, but my aim is to get started on that in Feb. It won't make me rich but may give me some passive income after a while which is where I really would love to get to in life!!

Tropically · 26 January 2018 at 10:42AM

I really like some of the crowdfunding opportunities, but I think I over estimated my own risk tolerance. I recently lost £500 in a crowdfunding investment where the company's debts were bought by another company and the share price went to £0. On the other hand, I have had debentures from Abundance and have had them pay out every time. I would say to not put anything into crowdfunding that you are not prepared to lose.

Good luck with the side hustle! How is the contracting going since you quit?

lessavyfav · 27 January 2018 at 6:11PM

Ooh I hadn't heard of Abundance before (or debentures for that matter) but I like the idea of being paid out! I only put about £60 in via Seedrs and will probably only revisit it for small amounts throughout the year as I've just had a look over finances and realised I should really be trying to pay off the money owed to my mum and dad!

Contracting is going really well. I have good hours, no stress and a good day rate. Wish I;d done it sooner!

Just did a bunch of boring accounting things, plus paid myself today..now to get through the next month! Next pay in late feb looks to be a nice healthy paycheck, my biggest yet (so long as I'm not sick or given the flick).

Very low key weekend ahead, which means little to no spending. Did an Ocado food shop for the week and we are already quite well stocked so it's not too pricey, even with beers.

Off to take a look at flights to Australia now - there goes the budget!

Chapter 3: the large London mortgage

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