Are We Still Scrimping and Saving

The last few posts since my unexpected foray back into Blogland have been about growing and sowing so I thought on this bloody chilly indoor job day (Hands up who ordered arctic wind with it's cousins, hail and snow for April?) I'd just write a post to answer a few questions that have popped up quite a few times in my email inbox recently, namely ... 'are you still frugal/money saving/clearing/the clutter/setting yourself challenges', and then there is THE BIG ONE  'has Lovely Hubby retired from the day job yet?'

We've recently had some large expenditure to equip LH's workshop with the machinery he needed for his future enterprises, so the bank account went down quite a bit.  Why is the 'needed' in italics I hear you asking .... well I'm a girl.  Who really needs a lathe and a big sucky up thing for sawdust or whatever, and different types of saws on different types of stands that all weigh a bloody ton and take up so much room, surely a Vitamix would have been better  ;-)

Then to top off everything we decided to do something that is long-term sensible but immediately shock inducing ..... we bought our future retirement property.  There will be a day in the future when this hillside five acres will be too much for us to either be able to manage or to want to manage. When that day comes we now have waiting a brand newly built ground floor 'semi detached apartment' ...that's a flat to you and me ... but I love the brochure description of it.  We completed last week and it's now officially ours.  Between then and now it will be rented out long term, firstly to pay off the small mortgage that we had to take out against our house to pay for it and then to give us an income to supplement LH's pension.

In true Challenge style we've given ourselves just TWO years to pay this mortgage off. 

SO to answer the questions .... yes now our splurging is done we are back to frugal living, yes we are money saving in every possible way and boy oh boy are we clearing the clutter.  If it's not nailed down and in reasonably constant use it is going to be sold at a car boot sale this year.  We will pay off this mortgage as quickly as possible, just as we paid off the last one, so that the rent from the flat will be in our account and helping us to keep our heads above water.  Because to answer the final question, Lovely Hubby has now reduced his working hours by one day a week and will be going down to a twenty hour working from home week at the end of June. 

Okay I can hear you asking "why the pictures of pastry and pasties?" ..... well it was just one of the money saving things we did at the weekend.  I took one of the four yellow stickered packs of pastry out of the freezer on Friday to defrost, made an enormous pan of vegetable stew on Saturday, we both had some for lunch, then strained out some of the vegetables and added them to a chopped onion that had been fried with some curry powder to use as a pasty filling for that nights tea, and then whizzed up what was left of the stew for soup on Sunday.

I can see lots more meals like those coming our way, but then it's always been how we like to eat ... and if it means that we can be mortgage free 'again' in two years or less it's very good in my book.

Sue xx