A blissful home

A question about : A blissful home

After lurking around this board for the past 4 years I decided that it was time to take the bull by the horns and start my own diary.

A bit about me, I have a mortgage of just over Ј82,000 with a current term of 19 years. I live on my own, with the exception of a sleepy snugglepuss , and work full time. I have recently split from my partner, while together we always overpaid on the mortgage, so i'm a convert to the benefits of overpaying. Now the mortgage is my sole responsibility i'm even more committed to making overpayments, both for the security it will offer me as well as the money I can save in the long run.

At the moment i'm overpaying by Ј100 a month, although i'm hoping that this diary will help me to keep focussed on the task at hand and keep me motivated when the going gets tough.

Hopefully some of you wonderful MFW's out there might also be able to give me some tips too

Best answers:

• Here's my SOA:
  Salary: Ј1643
  Monthly outgoings:
  Mortgage - Ј454
  Council tax - Ј103
  Water - Ј34
  Gas/Electric - Ј66
  Phone bill - Ј14
  Internet - Ј14
  Mobile phone contract - Ј28
  Life/critical illness insurance - Ј25
  Food/household shopping - Ј100
  Car expenses (insurance, maintenance, tax, petrol) - Ј92
  TV licence - Ј13
  Christmas/holiday savings Ј60
  Clothes - Ј20
  Dentist/opticians - Ј20
  Union payment - Ј14
  Charity - Ј5
  Spending - Ј100
  Home/Contents Insurance - Ј20
  Savings/Emergency fund - Ј333
  Total outgoings - Ј1515
  Okay, I think that's about everything...
• good luck!
• Looks like your in control of your finances!
  Make sure you keep us up to date!
• Welcome and good luck . Your SOA looks fine, would probably say combined gas/electric looks quite high as I tend to use about Ј500 pa and have a 3 (now 5) bed house.
  Have you discovered the joys of topcashback, surveys, ebaying, batch cooking etc? And you could try the Ј100pa clothing challenge, which would save you up to Ј140 if you could do it!
• Good luck with your journey
• Thanks for your well wishes everyone
  @museumworker - yeah, I agree that the bill for my gas and electric is a bit high. My monthly direct debit has recently been increased (i'm putting it down to the very cold winter we've had and having the heating on much more than I probably should have ). I'm hoping that by giving them monthly meter readings and being a bit more careful with switching the heating on it should drop back down again - fingers crossed. I love the sound of the clothes challenge btw - i'll look into it
  So i've been thinking that i'd like to be a little more proactive than just making regular monthly overpayments towards my mortgage. I'm currently overpaying by Ј100 per month but by the end of the year i'd like to have overpaid around Ј3000, so that leaves me Ј1800 to find. I don't want to dip into my savings as I feel that I need to put some money aside to give myself a bit of a cushion against any 'occurences' that might take place in the future. So my challenge for this year will be to find as many ways as I can to make the extra Ј1800. As well as saving (where possible) on my outgoings, i'll also be trying to make some extra money by selling things on amazon and ebay, using cashback sites for online purchases, completing surveys etc. It looks like i'll have plenty to keep me busy - wish me luck!
• Hi mortgage girl, welcome sounds like you are off to a good start, best of luck with your MF journey.
• Wishing you good luck.
• You dont give your interest rate but you have little in the way of savings/emergency funds and you need to build up 3 months of income unless you are paying 5%+ on your mortgage
• I've being doing some tidying around the house this weekend (while recovering from the flu and a chest infection ) and whilst clearing out the cupboard under the stairs I discovered a stash (massive understatement) of carrier bags. Our local supermarket doesn't recycle them and there are so many that i'd feel guilty for throwing them away so i'm going to use them instead of bin bags - they'll probably keep me going for a year at least! I cannot believe how many seem to accumulated in my cupboard, in fact i'm quite ashamed . On the plus side, my little discovery has shocked me enough to ensure that I don't forget to take a carrier bag or two with me when I go to the shops in the future.
  Whilst rummaging through my kitchen cupboards I discovered some lentils which have been lurking for ages so I decided to use them up. I had to pop to the shop for some fresh ingredients but for just under a fiver I managed to make six portions of spinach and lentil soup/stew, with some ingredients left over for later in the week.
  Looking at my food budget, I think I can reduce it from Ј100 to Ј75, or maybe even less. So i'm going to focus on batch cooking healthy, nutritious meals at the weekend and see how I get on. Any savings I make can be added to my mortgage overpayment pot (i'm trying to keep that extra Ј1800 I need to make at the forefront of my mind). I did actually have Ј20 spending money left over from last month so i've added that to the pot
  Think that's all my news for the weekend. Hope everyone has a great week.
• Hi mortgage girl.
  I'd like to subscribe to your diary. Our SOA's are very similar and i'm on my own too. Will look to your diary for some new ideas and inspiration
  Do you have a slow cooker for batch cooking? If not Argos have one on offer at the mo, for Ј6.29
  https://www.argos.co.uk/static/Produc...LOW+COOKER.htm
  Good luck with your MFW future
• I like the sound of that slow cooker - want to try one and that isn't too much to spend. Can also get cash back from topcashack - every little helps!
• Hi linz - just on the way to seek out your diary, i'd be interested to follow yours too. It's always useful to have a look at what other people are doing as there's often many good hints and tips to be found. Thanks for the advice on the slow cooker - I haven't got one as i've got a massive le creuset pot that was given to me by my Nanna and I always tend to use that. My Mum swears by her slow cooker and suggested I get one but i'd be too paranoid to leave it on while i'm at work and as I do most of my batch cooking in my other pot i'm not sure if it would be worth getting one. Ј6.29 is an absolute bargain but I think i'd just be buying it for the sake of buying it if you see what I mean?
  Right, off to go and see if I can find you
• My monthly mortgage payment has gone through along with my Ј100 overpayment so i've updated my signature Hmmm I think this mortgage overpayment lark could become quite addictive
• Nice going Mortgage-girl. And thanks for looking up my diary
  I joined Bingoport a while ago but have never built up points on there as I tried to see what I was meant to be doing but the site is so confusing! If you could point me in the right direction for earning points for Amazon vouchers that'd be ace. I'm slowly saving Amazon vouchers from surveys/clicks for a new mp3 player
• I've managed to make some fabulous savings on some essentials this weekend so i'm feeling quite pleased with myself, in fact, as sad as it is i'm almost doing this I had a spend Ј20 get Ј3 off voucher for Mr T's so I decided to stock up on cat food for the snugglepuss. When I arrived I discovered that it was already reduced as part of a 3 for 2 offer and I was still able to use my voucher so I ended up getting 9 packs (54 tins) plus 3 boxes of cat biscuits for just over Ј18 - a saving of around Ј13! Cereals were also on 3 for 2 so I stocked up on porridge oats and probably have enough to keep me going now until the end of the year, perhaps even longer!
  Today I have decluttered the dining room which has been a bit of a dumping ground since I started decorating the hallway in August. Since finishing the hallway, the clutter has been getting on my nerves so I decided to bite the bullet and blitz it, the result being that now I have a dining room again I also made up a batch of soup to use up some left over celery and spinach that I had in the fridge, it's the first time i've made it but it was very lush and there's a few portions left over to freeze too.
  So overall it's been quite a thrifty weekend and it's only Saturday! Right, off to go and make a well earned cuppa and catch up with some diaries.
• Hmmmm well it's been a slow start to the day so far as i've been quite happy lounging around in my pj's, drinking tea and browsing mse. But there's quite a few things that i'd like to get done today so i'm hoping that a to-do list will get me motivated.
  Things to do:
  * bake bread
  * make yoghurt
  * washing will do later in the week as load is only tiny at the moment
  * ironing
  * finish planning and print out
  * plant onion seeds (a bit late with this one - oops) broke shed padlock in the process but thankfully Dad fixed it
  * online surveys
  * bingoport
  * visit grandparents
  * list something on ebay
  * do a workout
  Right, better get started!
• I think Ј75 per week for shopping is quite doable, it's what we spend for me and DW and the two boys, we don't batch cook either so it's fresh each day, but we could save more if we did.