Bricks Not Books

Clearly starting a diary is a lot easier than continuing it XD

That said, haven't got a great deal to update yet as it's still early in the month. Slow but steady wins the race, and all that jazz.

Main MFW thing we did this week was make our first mortgage payment! Because the money was drawn down in 7 December we've had 3 weeks of interest to pay on top of the regular payment, but we were both made well aware of it in good time so had the extra money set aside. Feels good to see the first payment go out!

In OP news - mainly starting the steps towards having money to OP by the end of the month. Cashed out just over £1 from Qmee last week, and cashed out on Quidco as well. Still waiting for that to show up in my savings account, once it's there it'll be earmarked for OPing. Need to do a TT this evening as well.

Currently my penny and 5 penny jars are still in storage boxes as I can't really unpack anything until we move in to the house properly. The random jar I've got at the moment is about half full of various coins, but I won't know the impact until I can unpack and get the jars set up properly. When I was living in London I could generally bag up around £17 every 5 or 6 months as I also saved 20p pieces, would be nice to be able to go back to that as it was always a nice surprise to see I'd saved so much from coins that most people forget about.

This weekend me and the OH went to IKEA. Mostly for a browse as I'd never been before, but we came away with some plates, glasses, a bath mat (ready for when the bathroom gets done), and some bits my Mum asked us to pick up for her. Drove over the house, switched the central heating on for a bit, collected post, cooked two mini Waitrose pizzas in the oven, and after lunch and washing up we packed up and drove back to OH's parents. I'll be driving over on my own next Saturday as OH is working, so I might get a bit more painting done. Starting to get to the point where we can't do much else until the bathroom is done (starts 23 January!) and then we'll have a bit of a rush between bathroom being finished and us moving in! We're getting a shower in the corner of the main bedroom removed (not an ensuite bathroom, literally a shower built in to a small square corner of the room), once that's done we can paint the rest of the room (including where the shower tiles currently are) and get carpet put down. We don't need the living room to be up to scratch before we move in, just need the bathroom done and that shower corner removed and made good to get the bedroom done.

In wedding news I've bought my dress (Monsoon, 10% off code!), and we bought a ton of paper napkins to use at the reception when we were in IKEA. We've also picked our rings, so need to order those next, and we've booked our honeymoon! A week at an AirBnB place in Yorkshire. We were considering Italy or Malta for the honeymoon, but it would have been more expensive when we'd rather spend the money on house things. Also we both find flying very stressful, and since this will be our first week off work since Christmas we'd rather keep stress to a minimum. Much easier to drive up the day after the wedding and have a nice relaxing week driving all over the county, visiting lots of heritage properties. Started to make a list of ones we should really see, and checked out prices. So far getting National Trust or English Heritage memberships won't save us any money, I can't believe how much a Joint National Trust membership is now! Might save up for life membership, as that might save money in the long run once we have kids, but for annual one it's a lot of money.

Right, time to get laundry in the machine!

Thanks for the tip savingwannabe! I've joined a few buying/selling groups on Facebook so I can keep an eye out for things, but we've also got a furniture fund saved up for some new things as well. Everything else can save up for and then keep an eye out for a bargain

Paid off 2nd council tax bill and the gas and electric as well. Still don't have a proper understanding of how much gas and electric we'll be using, but the standing charge was a bit of an eye opener! I've got a Google Calendar diary entry to do some comparison site searching in September, but then we'll have been in the house for a few months and will have got to grips with usage.

Popped down to the house yesterday to check it was all okay, Gentleman Caller was working so he couldn't come with me. Picked up the post (100% spam, but at least all the "Return to Sender" stuff I did appears to have worked for named post), checked everything was still standing. Gentleman Caller has set the heating to come on for 2 hours in the early hours of the morning as it's been feeling quite chilly and damp recently. It's clearly working as the house felt a lot nicer when I stepped through the door. Still a little cold as the heating had been off for around 5 hours by the time I got there, but definitely not as cold as you'd expect after the freezing week we've had.

I also bought some more stock bits for the kitchen - a few tins of soup and some dried pasta. I need to start remembering to add one thing to my shopping basket each week, otherwise our moving in day is going to be a big shock to the finances. I'd like to start building up some storecupboard basics in the coming weeks, hence the pasta! Also need to sort out a fridge-freezer so I can start buying a few things to be frozen as well.

Did some work on Textbroker this week, not at the 10Euro payout just yet, but I'll cashout closer to the end of the month and put the money towards the OP. Also received £27.98 from Quidco, and I put in an expenses claim at work for £12.52 (mostly milk and teabags for the office) so once that gets paid in I'll add that to the pot as well. Together with the £30 standard OP we've budgeted, we'll have an OP pot of at least £70.50 at the end of the month! Still two weeks to go so I'll see what else I can sort out in the meantime

The vendors didn't even know who the energy supplier was XD They've held the house at arms length for the past 8 years, I was surprised they knew where the stopcock was for turning off the water!

Textbroker is a website where you can do writing assignments for people. There are points where there's no jobs on it, and it pays in Euros rather than ££, but it's quite interesting to see the stuff people want written.

Have a good week savingwannabe!