MeandO's mortgage-free musings

DS's teacher called me to one side yesterday and told me how amazing DS is doing, he's excelled and gone up 4 levels with his reading practically overnight. I'm so proud of him... :smileyhea
...which softened the blow a little of having to buy new school shoes last night after he came home with holes in his. To be fair, his current shoes were cheap ones that my parents picked up for him in a sale, but they really haven't lasted. So, an emergency trip to the shoe shop later, I'm £50 down. Yes, I said £50. :eek::eek::eek: That's £25 a shoe. :eek::eek::eek: I couldn't quite believe it - for a pair of normal looking, albeit waterproof, black school shoes.
So, I've had to re-jig the budget on YNAB to cover the shoes, but I should still be ok, although it does mean I'll have to work harder to make any money for further overpayments.

Anyway, we then went to the local large toy shop as a treat so that DS could spend his voucher and the money he'd saved. He was short of £4 odd for the lego he wanted (also extortionately priced:eek:), so I gave him £5 from my purse for trying so hard at school.
Tonight, we have lego building fun ahead of us!

I had a grocery delivery last night which came in at £72.66. More than I normally spend, but it has stocked everything right up now.

Tonight I have two items being collected which I've sold on FB - one of OHs for £5 and one of mine for £4. Hopefully they both turn up.

I also had lots of items end on ebay last night. Three items are OH's which have made about £40 after postage, bringing the running total of his pot up to around £55 and two small items of mine which will only make around £8 after postage, but it's two more items cleared and a little bit of money back. I'm going to list a couple more items of OH's on ebay this week, hopefully they will sell too - there's been no interest in them on gumtree or FB. He has two more items on ebay too, as BIN's. Not sure if they'll sell, but I may list them as auctions if they don't.

I see I've just had another survey pop into my inbox so I will do that shortly too.

As expected, neither buyer turned up last night to collect the items they hassled me about all last week. :mad: I had a feeling they wouldn't. :mad: For the sake of one £5 and one £4 item, I might just give them to the charity shop and let them benefit from it.

I've received a refund of £10 from Next for an order they couldn't fulfill (2 x small items for gifts), so I've used the £10 to make an overpayment, adding an extra 21p to round the outstanding mortgage total down.

Mortgage total now: £77,760

Total overpaid this month, now £112.53. I need to find another £17 ish to beat last month's overpayment, although I'd be elated if I could get rid of that £60!

I've managed to free up £60 which I was saving for something I now don't think (hope!) I will need to pay. If I do, it will have to come out of the' house' saving pot. I've made a payment of £35 to the credit card as I gave up trying to sort yet more classic YNAB issues with dropbox over the weekend and subscribed to the new version at a cost of around £35.
There is around £100 balance left on the credit card from a couple of other spends, but this is manageable.

The remaining £25 has been sent to the mortgage as another overpayment, bringing the amount over paid this month to £142.53, beating last month's OP total. :j I will attempt to get it to £150 before the month is out. I'd like to pay off the odd £30, but I think that might be stretching things a bit.

The mortgage now stands at £77,730

I helped OH clear some more stuff out from his attic at the weekend and have listed lots on selling sites. We've arranged for sales and collections of £35 tonight, £5 tomorrow and another £10 item which will be collected later this week. That's boosted his house repairs pot up nicely. There are a few more items with no interest yet, but I do hope they sell for him.

Today I have transferred £500 from my emergency savings and purchased the same in premium bonds. The interest rate on the account means that I earn s*d all interest on it over the year and as this is a risk-free strategy, I thought it would be a good idea. Fingers crossed, I may be lucky and win a little too!
I've left £320 in the ISA. I feel a little tetchy about transferring it all across, so will leave a small amount in there. Hopefully, as my savings build up, I'll be able to purchase some more.

I sold another item for OH last night for £20. It went within minutes on ebay, leaving me thinking I should have asked more for it, but OH was pleased with £20 and it's another item cleared. I've listed a couple more things for him too.