Student Loan - GONE!

After 11 years of diligently paying my student loan through my salary every month I have finally made the final payment of £500.33!  Feels great to finally be rid of it, although I'm aware that the interest rates are more or less peanuts.  Can focus my efforts on the mortgage now...yipee

M
x

Monthly food budget

As part of our new, mortgage busting budget I have set the food budget element at £250 to include food, drink, toiletries, cleaning stuff and pet food (for two cats).  I have been refining the way I tackle the monthly shopping as it is a million times more difficult with a little one to consider.  What is working for us at the moment is this:

• One large online shop to include all the essentials to last the month.  Using mysupermarket.co.uk the cheapest supermarket for us has been ASDA for the last two months.
• Weekly (ish) top up shops usually from Morrisons or Lidl depending what we need.

This month the 'big shop' cost £144 and I've done one top up shop at Lidl which was £13.  I'm happy that with three weeks left I've got £93 and fairly full cupboards!  Hopefully I can keep up the good work when I'm back at work (5 weeks left...) as the meal planning can be a little time consuming.

M

x

Going to try making one of these...

We are going to a christening in a couple of weeks and staying overnight in a small cottage.  I didn't want to lug our large plastic high chair around so I started to investigate the possibility of making a fabric high chair that would attach to any normal chair.

I've seen a few of these around but they cost about £15 upwards so my mind began to whirr and I knew I could make my own from the stash of fabric I already had.

I found this wonderful tutorial on this fabulous website.  Just need to find the time to make it now!

M
x

You give with one hand...

No sooner do I 'free up' about £100 of my pre-tax salary as I'm now paying my student loan direct than I get a reminder from work about paying the new work place parking levy.  It is almost £30 a month to park at work.  I've got no choice but to pay it with dropping off and collecting Little J.

Grrrr...

Cost neutral Christmas - is it possible

Yes, I've gone and said the 'C' word!  I LOVE Christmas and spend months planning and organising gifts, decorations and I even run the office secret Santa each year.   We dont really go over board.  We set a spending limit for close family and as we now have little J we have agreed with some friends that we will just buy for the little ones now rather than each other plus other halves as well.  I don't want to cut back on our real tree (this may be a mistake in hindsight with a 'soon to be walker' in our house) or the nice food and drink we buy so I've decided to try and make it cost neutral.

I save £75 a month for birthday and Christmas and have built up about £300 so far this year.  My aim is to use the cost neutral Christmas so I can put this extra cash into the overpayment pot.  So far I have:

£220 cashback from credit card
£65 Nectar vouchers
£10 Morrisons vouchers
£2 Coop voucher
£44.25 Quidco cashback

Total - £342.25

I'm rather pleased with this, although we are limited to some shops/websites with some of the vouchers I think we could probably manage most of the festivities with this!

Roll on December!

M
x

What to buy for a first birthday?

It is fast approaching Little J's first birthday and I'm stumped for what to get her (or what NOT to get her).  A lot of people subscribe to the idea that they are too young to remember it so don't waste your money.  I partly agree with this and to be honest we already have too many toys that we have been given or purchased from charity shops.  I've already had several friends and family ask what she wants as well...

I've been looking on several websites but can't come up with anything that isn't a variation of what we already have.  Any ideas for a first birthday gift (preferably slightly educational!) would be greatly accepted.

M
x

Nectar bonus!

I got two statements for my Nectar card this week.  One for my current card and one in my maiden name.  Both had a considerable amount of points on them and but I never realised that I had two accounts.

I contacted the nice people at Nectar via email and within 48 hours they had arranged for my points from my old card to be transferred to my current one.  I now have a balance of £65!  The temptation is to buy something nice for myself but in my new 'lets pay off the mortgage' state of mind I know I should put it towards something sensible like Little J's birthday present or Christmas.

I also never knew you could collect points from Amazon or eBay.  We buy loads of stuff from these sites so I need to get a bit more savvy with things like this!

M
x

Student loan - nearly there!

I received a statement from Student Loans at the weekend and with it came a letter explaining that I had nearly finished paying it off!  They have asked me if I can set up a direct debit rather than having it taken from my salary as I will overpay what I owe if I don't.  What an old fashioned and archaic system they have!

I have a little over £500 left to pay so I'm hoping that can be sorted out and paid off before Christmas.

M
x

Who needs bleach when you have the sun?

This weather is lovely isn't it?  And what a lovely discovery I made yesterday.

I was hanging the washing out (a rare occurrence these days) when I discovered one of little J's t-shirts still had bean stains down the front of it.  I hung it out anyway thinking I would pop it back in the wash basket for the next load of washing or give it a little soak.  Low and behold when I got the washing in later that day all the stains had vanished.  Amazing!

If only we had more weather like this.  All our clothes would look pristine!

M
x

New life, new budget

Now I've discovered that I'm returning to full-time work in October I have started to think about our new budget.  I'm amazed at how well we've coped on statutory maternity pay and the last two months with no pay at all.  I did save some money while I was pregnant to cover the bills etc but I've managed to open an ISA with what we haven't touched.  This made me wonder what we used to spend our money on...

I've been doing a bit of research into budgeting and I am quite taken by zero based budgeting.  The gist of it is you allocate all your pay to different categories and technically have nothing left at the beginning of the month.  You have to factor in your 'fun money' and haircuts, dentists etc but I like the idea of it and think it could work for us.  This way I get to choose the overpayment we make on the mortgage rather than it just being whatever is left over at the end of the month.

You can read more about zero based budgeting here.

M
x

Say yes, yes, yes to second hand!

We were incredibly lucky when I was pregnant and was offered lots of bits and pieces that friends and family who had older children were getting rid of.  Not to look a gift horse in the mouth I readily accepted anything and everything.  So much so that practically the only thing we really need to buy for little J was a pram and car seat!

I know that some people would shudder at the thought of hand-me-downs for their brand new baby but it honestly saved us a small fortune.  And the little ones wont remember or know if their tiny babygros they wore twice were preloved!

From memory, here is a list of things we have been given so far (we are still getting things now!):

• Clothes (lots of!)
• Vests
• Babygros
• Socks
• Blankets
• Books
• Bumbo
• Toys
• Teddies
• Baby shampoo
• Growbag
• Leapfrog learning table
• Baby walker
• Door bouncer
• Cot mobile
• Stair gate
• Potties (wont need these for a while but every little helps, eh?)

Thanks to everyone who gave us stuff - we realise we have been very lucky.  To return the favour we will be passing it all on to the next unsuspecting victim!

M

x