Getting a mortgage and then becoming mortgage-free!

Kittenkirst · 13 August 2018 at 12:47PM

We are in the last few days of our 'month' as it's payday on Wednesday and both gf and I are at the limits of our accounts (staying out of the overdrafts!) but with nothing else to spend on until after payday. I think of that as being a success (I transfer savings out on payday to avoid the temptation to spend!).

Two small tilly tidies sent late last week to the Mortgage of 2p and 32p. Payday on Wednesday so the usual money shuffle will take place. Planning to overpay £220 ish on payday for August as other than tilly tidies/surveys/eBay we won't make any more overpayments until mid October payday comes around.

Had a fab weekend- kayaking was adventurous. Girlfriend tried standing at the front of the kayak and toppled into the river taking me sat in the back of the tandem in too! It was a bit of a giggle andwe were soon 'rescued' by the instructors who righted and drained our kayak (it was a sit in one) and we were back on our way! Amusingly the little flower the gf picked for me stayed in my hair despite the little dip!

We then had a good gym session and made a 'freezer dinner' of cod fillets (bought with cashback from Shopmium), some veggies from the market and some peri chips (freebie from Shopmium and resigned to the freezer as we weren't keen!)

Yesterday started with yoga for me, gf went to gym and then we took her parents to ikea. They bought us meatball lunch and cinnamon rolls after for taking them and helping sort the last few furniture pieces they wanted. We tried to be restrained and ended up picking up two new frying plans (a crepe style one which we use for bacon, eggs, onions etc & a deep one for normal cooking- stirfrys etc so the trusty old ones have been binned today (they were more 'extra-stick' than non stick, and we eat a lot of eggs!) we also picked up two multi USB plugs- they charge three appliances per plug which is perfect for reducing energy usage and means we'll need less adaptors for the holiday!

Yesterday evening we met up with friends for a Nando's dinner which was lovely, and much cheaper than the steak house (!) they were suggesting.

Off to stand-up paddle boarding yoga this evening and very much looking forward to it! Then tomorrow is a day in the office. Have picked up some YS chicken breasts this morning for dinner and planning to take leftovers in for lunch- thinking of doing chicken with peppers, onions and salsa on top of some mixed quinoa/rice for us both to take in.That way it's healthy and enticing and keeps me out of the Work canteen and away from the chips!

Money from easyJet hadn't yet come through and gf awaiting her confirmation- she's going to tweet them this evening to chase it up as that'll easily cover our hire cars for Australia ::money:

Kittenkirst · 15 August 2018 at 12:27PM

Payday and working from home so the payday money shuffle has been completed and trackers updated on my lunch.

1. Savings have increased by £250 via my workshare saves and the SIP
2. Pension pot has had a healthy increase as I logged into the account to find my old (no longer adding to) one has increased by £1169 and the new one has had £415 added (mine and the work contributions today!) as well as £560 growth :money:
3. Mortgage op made of £227 to round off the overpayments/capital repayment vs interest charged to £710 capital reduction.

Girlfriend asked this morning about making a separate OP from her quarterly bonus- she has had her sharesave payout recently and had an old rebate on a previous agencies deposit owed for her flat so is feeling a bit flusher than normal

The focus on increasing overall net worth and future proofing are going well- £25 DD also sent to the lifetime ISA.

Tonight hoping to book car hires for Australia and sort out the transfers to/from the airport here....not long now!

EasyJet refund received but gf hasn't had a confirmation email yet for her claim for her parents booking annoyingly. Is £222.44 each as compensation which is better than nothing and more than our initial flights:T

Yoga tonight and then thinking of makin something gammon related for dinner tonight- will have a browse for some recipe ideas whilst I finish my cuppa and then it's back to work for me...earn the pennies to pay for Oz.....

MichaelDH · 15 August 2018 at 1:35PM

Hi KK

Still doing great with the OP's I see!

Not long to wait until your big trip now. Bet you can't wait to go!

My brother has just landed in San Francisco after 3 night in New York, 3 nights in Las Vegas and 8 nights in Hawaii. 7 hour wait until his flight from San Francisco to Heathrow, then got to drive back up to Birmingham. He's back to work on Friday, bless him! Hope you guys have got a few days to recover before you are back at work!

Kittenkirst · 17 August 2018 at 8:04AM

Hi Michael thanks for popping back in

just caught up with your thread- great news on your re-valuation after all your hard remodelling work on the house!

It's a working from home day today so I'm sat with a cuppa chilling before logging in for the day. I skipped my 7am yoga class this morning as a I went to a pole stretch class then a pole dance class last night. The classes were fab but brutal on the body so my shoulders and hips are a bit tender this morning. Will still gym after work tonight though- 4 weeks today we will be in Singapore.....:T

Payday has been, which means my work vouchers have been topped up too- they've moved the shopping vouchers to one 'Pure' MasterCard which works much better as means you can use in loads of places- and they give you a monthly rebate of cashback dependent on where you spent.

With a fresh top-up and saved funds from previous months I popped to boots to get some things I had added to my online basket- annoyingly you can't use the card online with boots but this worked in my favour. I bought some sleeping tablets from the pharmacy counter and get gave me a £5 off No7 voucher. I wanted two pieces of Suncare from No7 for the holiday (a spf 50 BB cream for my face and a 50spf sunstick for face too)- the two items are on a 2 for £20 deal (saving £7) and they accepted the voucher (despite it saying not for BB creams!) so I got both for £15- essentially the sunstick was free and gf is super happy. We had a Neutrogena one we bought (70spf) in America and finally used it up- I much prefer sunblock sticks to cream but struggle to find reasonably priced ones.

Also picked up other things for the holiday- boots own diahorrea relief, boots rehydration salts, some effervescent vitamin boosters just in case, batiste for hair, new shampoo for me as I've used my last TIGI up yesterday (replaced with £1.99 decent one instead!) etc so starting to feel more prepared.

I also 'treated' myself to an embroidered tee for £18- it ties at the middle and shows a bit of tummy so will try tonight with my holiday shorts and jeans to make sure I'm comfortable but it's very pretty!

Also managed to spot Shopmium have a cat food offer on Harrington's- our boys both enjoy it so I managed to get the different flavour 2kg bags for £2.75 instead of £5.50. As gf also has a Shopmium account I paid in cash and got her 4 also. All cashback claims submitted and confirmed

so 16kg of cat food for £22 which is a massive saving :money: just need to work out where to store it!:rotfl:

I was super pleased as our tesco never has anything on the Shopmium deals(even if they had it the week before!!). I got the cat food a few hours after it appeared so not sure if that has anything to do with it but we'll have happy furries for quite some time now!

7p OP made as a tilly tidy this morning making August total so far a nice £241.93

off to read some more diaries and get some inspiration on OPs for the remainder of the holiday countdown!

Kittenkirst · 18 August 2018 at 11:28AM

Gym session was great last night, however I had an awful nights sleep due to a bad back playing up. Today's yoga and trip to see my brother have been cancelled due to the pain so instead I've managed to list my old suitcase on gumtree (as got a new lightweight one from Argos with my pure card- it's fantastic so gf is going to get one also as we will be changing hotels sometimes nightly so want our luggage leightweight as possible).

Also posted my old sleeping bag, roll mat and camping pillow on gumtree too. Fingers crossed for some sales- will put that towards the Singapore slings in Raffles (Singapore). Did some research and it's a princely £18 per drink in there so think we'll just be having the one ;P

Going to FaceTime the brother so can still have a chat and see him, feel bad about not visiting but my back couldn't handle a 4 hr round trip today.

Today's plans have been changed to investigating a new phone for me and the cheapest way to do it- I've got very used to paying £10 a month for a phone so not sure I want to change.... and also looking at currency conversion rates to get the best deals for Singapore dollars and Australian dollars.....as well as bookings the hire cars today :T

Kittenkirst · 20 August 2018 at 10:48PM

Hire cars now booked for the relevant sections of our holiday and planned our holiday money & budget.

Also booked a sunset kayak around magnetic island too :j

NSD as worked from home today-50p Tilly tidy today- and made some bodycoach chocolate banana strawberry muffins to take up north with me tomorrow for work. Used two bananas from work that I put in my lunch bag and forgot to eat, some of the 50p yellow sticker strawberries from the weekend and also some of the hot chocolate powder we didn't like from Whittier's. Pleased with the using up of stuffs and looking forward to it with my coffee mug in the morning. Frugal & tasty :money:

Kittenkirst · 30 August 2018 at 11:13PM

Sorry lovely MFW-ers, I have had a broken phone situation which meant I was unable to put any updates on.

I've managed to part back up my phone and then transfer to gfs old handset so it hasn't cost a bean, fortunately!

I have lost all whsapp messages and any photos since December tho

In OP news gf decided to put £200 of her bonus aside as a sneaky additional OP, so we overpaid it straight away, this brought us to £18.5 away from our year end target if £3k. By freaky coincidence, or kismic fortunes, I had a transaction for Quidco clear for £18.04- it's been promptly withdrawn , and topped up with a small amount to mean we have now officially hit our 2018 overpayment target

:j:j:j:j:j

Busy_Mee1 · 31 August 2018 at 6:53AM

Well done Kittenkirst - that is some good going hitting your year end target in August. Best set another one then

:T:T:T:T:T:T:T

Kittenkirst · 31 August 2018 at 8:26AM

Yes indeed BusyMee! So pleasing to have hit so early, especially with having paid for the majority of our upcoming holiday :heart puls:

We have officially overpaid £3000.58 this year so far! :j:beer::T:j

We've discussed another target for the end of the year but agreed we will review funds post Australia and set it then

In smaller news we had a fab but speedy weekend for SW4- gf loved her first festival day and loved all the garage music and Capital extra stages. I rather enjoyed the drum & bass surprisingly.

Gym and yoga has been a bit sporadic as I've been waking up with a pretty painful back- hoping to gym tonight after work.

We've taken advantage of Shopmium having free Maggis Fusian noodle pots which are in the larder for any last minute lunches to take to work. I've also recommended a friend to shopmium so he gets the free Nutella and I'll get a referral credit (£4) if he uses it. It all helps!

We also utilised our free coffee from Starbucks and have usd up our Starbucks filter coffee (bought on offer) which had a free latte offer so that's in my bag for this weekend as we're planning to go shopping for our holiday clothes top up (with vouchers!).

Also scored £10 off my yoga membership for taking two friends with me who were interested in trying- think they enjoyed but found it tough.

I've been quite strict about packing lunches for work too which is helping the funds stay in the bank, and was given some free apples by one of my suppliers (I was shocked when he said he leaves them to rot on the ground :eek: ) so he brought me a nice big bag. Planning to cut up and freeze this weekend.

We have two weeks until our big trip- majorly excited- so we are trying to run down the freezer and cupboards of anything fresh (spuds, onions, all the frozen stuffs) so last night I had some rather sorry looking potatoes as jacket spuds with some leftover vegetarian chilli from the freezer. Tonight we have got the rack of lamb (YS obviously) out and thinking of making a nice spicy dry rub to accompany it.

themadvix · 31 August 2018 at 11:40AM

Well done on reaching target Kittenkirst - that's fab!

We have a big bag of apples to process too - just got to find some containers for them for the freezer!

Getting a mortgage and then becoming mortgage-free!

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