MeandO's mortgage-free musings

I've been inspired by another forum user's recent attempts at making things nicer with what they already have, rather than buying new. (If you're reading Xspender, thank you!), and have decided to go through all the DIY and decorating stuff I have in at the weekend with a view of painting my bedroom and possibly another room. I know I need specialist paint for the bathroom and kitchen, but I have a £40 DIY gift card which will hopefully cover this when it comes to buying it.

My bedroom needs doing, as does the 4th bedroom that I use as an office, so I'm going to see what paint I have and use it up this weekend. I feel a bit stuck in a rut at the moment and I know making house improvements will help.

I also just need some wallpaper paste to be able to finish the wallpapering in the hallway, although will have to purchase 'good stuff' as I had to scrape the last attempt off due to mold forming in the paste and ruining the paper. I've since painted the wall with dampseal paint and am now just need to paper over it. I have the paper already too.

Forgive me diary, for I have been spendy... :(

I've made some purchases for the house with the credit card, totalling around £200. I have also paid my £50 share of DS's birthday party to it as well. His father has given me £25 this month and will be giving me £25 next month to pay his share off. I have just paid £300 of the £370 credit balance with savings (again) which reduces my savings to £520 - not good.

I have to leave work early today as I have a sky engineer appointment as my landline is not working, or I'm supposed to... but they told me last night it's booked for today, yet I've received texts confirming it's tomorrow. :mad: After half an hour of waiting on hold on the phone, they still claim it's today... it'll be no surprise if they don't show though and I won't be happy as I've taken time off to cover the 6 hour appointment window and will have to sit in the house for the entirety.

I'm going to try and use the time this afternoon wisely and dig out some bits for ebay, or do some work from home. I may even make OH's birthday cake as I have everything in for that.

I've had very little sleep due to someone's car alarm continually going off in the street all night which happens most times it's windy or raining hard but yet they still seem to do nothing to remedy the problem. Basically I'm not a happy bunny today. :mad:

Tonight I need to get some groceries and fuel. I'll be heading to tesco as I have a £10 voucher for there which should cover most of what is needed. I'll have DS with me, so there'll be no worry about browsing or spending more time than is needed there - he hates shopping and I really don't like taking him shopping either, but there's no other time to do it.
I also need diesel, but can't afford to spend more than £40, so that is the budget which should more or less fill the car up.

I've chased £160 cashback due, but was been told it won't be payable for some time.

Surveys are almost at payout on one account. I need to catch up with some on the other account.

Ebay/gumtree has seen a couple more things for OH, but, once again, someone didn't turn up for my £4 item at the weekend and didn't bother to mesage me, so I took it to the charity shop on Saturday, along with a couple more bags.

I painted my bedroom on Sunday with paint I already had, so no spend there and a job ticked off the list. I may tackle the bathroom this afternoon, if I can summon the will. I doubt it though! :rotfl:

I bought and fitted a new toilet seat at the weekend too (part of the £200 'house' spends). So that's a second job completed as well.

Just heard - the engineer appointment is tomorrow now after all... grrrrr. :mad:

The cake baking was a disaster.
Long story short, I was trying to make a genoise layer cake - I was rushing at first and messed up the mixture so had to throw it, then had to walk up the corner shop quickly for more milk - the resulting mixed looked perfect but WOULD NOT BLOOMIN' COOK!!! :mad::mad::mad:
It's a slow/low cooking for this type of cake, but after double the alloted baking time, I was left with something that resembled a bad omelette, 50% of which had leaked out of the cake tin and puddled on the bottom of my new oven.
The food recycling bin was fed well yesterday.

So, I need to somehow bake (an easy) cake for OH in the next day, or give in and buy one.

The phone engineer turned up, eventually, but meant DS missed his swimming lesson as he hadn't finished in time for us to go.

OH turned up with lots of lovely chocolates and booze for me for Valentine's Day! My favourite though, a wonderful card, snuck through the door in the dead of night, which he'd written something lovely in. He's not one for showing his emotions or telling me how he feels about me much, but he'd written something so lovely that it made me cry a little.

Last week, I ordered him some 'region-specific edible treats' to be delivered to his workplace for yesterday, but I came to my sense and realised I couldn't really afford it and there's a chance he may not have been there to accept delivery.
Well, he walked in with this box of treats yesterday... they'd been sent to him, despite me receiving a refund for them last week! I'm not sure what to do. Perhaps the nice man I spoke to took pity on me or my other half and sent them anyway! :rotfl:Whichever way it, is, it was £35 of 'free' goods. They can't be returned as need refrigerated post...

Thank you greent. We've shared them with OH's parents who kindly lent me some tools for a DIY job (and were over the moon to receive some goodies!). The rest are currently stored between mine and OH's freezer for later consumption.

Lots to report today and good news for once...

I have been looking for a nice new dining room table as the one I have at the moment is a bit big for DS and I. I have been scouring ebay and second hand furniture stores for an old solid wood one and was lucky enough to get one today on ebay for £20. It was listed at £30 (which was still an absolute bargain, but I made a cheeky offer of £20 and it was accepted!). :j It's an oak, solid wood extending table, but needs sanding down and painting which I can't wait to do as that is my idea of fun.
Similar 'sanded and upcycled' ones are currently going for between £250 - £300 on ebay. :eek: OH is kindly collecting it for me one day next week. :T Once done, I can then sell my current 'modern' table for around £40, or, sell the upcycled one on for a profit if I decide it's not quite right for the room.

Other news... I checked my bank account this morning to see a one off tax credit payment of £491.97 had gone in. :eek: It was unexpected and I instantly thought they'd made a mistake, so got on the phone to them and the lady has confirmed it is correct and is due to me from last year's payment because I went part time halfway through the year. On top of that, because my earnings are much lower than the past two years (as she kept reminding me, I was earning a lot less than I was ), my tax credits will be more than doubling from April, to £189 a month. I was so shocked and overjoyed, I nearly cried! :rotfl:

So, with the £500ish payment, I have paid off the last bit of the credit card; paid for the £20 table; topped up the gifts pot to £50 (£26 transferred); transferred £150 to the ISA/emergency fund; increased my groceries budget to £10 for next week (nothing really needed apart from milk and ham) and paid £130 off the mortgage! This leaves me with £50 which means I will be able to buy DS some jeans before payday now - he's grown out of lots that I bought him just last month!!! :eek: I will also be able to take OH out for a lovely meal for his birthday this weekend, nothing posh, just a nice meal out which we rarely do.

I'm so happy and, quite stupidly, feel quite emotional!!! :rotfl::o
Goodness help me if I ever won the lottery! :rotfl:


As my tax credits have increased, I have texted DS's Dad to tell him he can cut his contribution to DS by £30 a month if he'd like to. I know it will help him somewhat as, although he earns more than me, he doesn't earn a fortune and he's always been rubbish with money. He doesn't pay me a lot anyway - less than £100 now, but we added everything up and agreed it was a fair amount between us when we split. I also took the child benefit that I would be receiving into consideration and split that. I couldn't ever see him not being able to afford to live comfortably. DS has a home with him too afterall.

YNAB has been updated with everything and I feel like I can stop holding my breath quite so much now this month.