£50k to zero - made it across the finish line

A small woohoo!

The mortgage switch has been done. Our new rate may only save us £2 per month, but because our original mortgage was in two lumps, we get cashback on both of them! £200 will be paid into my current account at the beginning of May. I have accounted for it already - mostly emergency fund, but some of it will cover the fuel for a journey we need to make in May. It was already budgeted for, but will give us a bit of breathing space .

Another baby step today was opening a new savings account. I admit there is an ulterior motive here - I will only be putting £1 per month in it to start with, but the provider has lounges in an area that I go to on a fairly regular basis that offer free refreshments and wifi to all customers. A nice benefit for what is essentially no cost.

Evening diary!

It's been a good couple of days. On Thursday I had a moment of great timing and got a flash sale 80% discount on a month-long membership of an education website I'd had my eye on for ages. £5.19 at the current exchange rate for hundreds of hours of photography & business coaching. I am like a kid in a sweet shop trying to cram in as much as I can while I have access. I can only watch some of the videos at home as I sucked up more than 2gb of data in a day and a half of watching/listening on my commute, but I've got so, so much from it already.
Some of the content is quite MSE friendly as well; lots of presentations covering things like the ways in which we can leak money and some of the emotions behind it; to say I have recognised myself in some of it is a massive understatement! :rotfl:

I had a nice surprise today in that I had a calendar reminder set to apply for my reward from switching to BT mobile; I was under the impression that I was due a £40 or £60 prepaid Mastercard. I couldn't find the link on my account when I logged in, so filled in a query form, and within an hour had an email from customer services telling me that my £95 card would arrive within 30 days :j With this and the TCB payment, my 6GB per month unlimited calls and texts SIM is costing me all of £4 this year Everything else has been ticking over (though First Utility haven't collected their direct debit yet).

Homemade chilli with paprika potato wedges has made us both rather slothful and content this evening, and the rest of the weekend will be suitably quiet and domesticated.

Made it to payday by the skin of my teeth. £1.64 left in the bank and £11.44 in cash.

Technically I have gone very slightly over, as £16.35 got spent in IKEA tonight, but all bar £1.60 was on food and will provide us with six main courses each, and that will come out of the April grocery budget as it won't leave my account until after my pay goes in.

Tomorrow is a big bill paying day. I am getting a bit stressed over the April budget as it does feel really tight, but this is partly due to trying to put back the money borrowed from the emergency fund towards the utilities, and partly due to thinking about the final bills due to come from EDF and BG. All the remaining money has been allocated into little pots, and the discretionary spending pots are pretty small. Whilst I'm happy that big chunks of debt are being slayed, it's definitely going to be a year of exceptional juggling.