Despite having moaned at length over the past 10 years about advertising on personal blogs, the rise (and fall) of “Pay Per Post” and networks of that ilk, I took the decision this morning to drop an adsense advert on my blog sidebar. I am aware that this makes me a giant hypocrite, that some… read full entry »

I recently mentioned on twitter that I had successfully secured my domain with a .uk TLD, taking my total up to some 43 domains. Domains are cheap — little more than a bottle of wine — why worry about owning a healthy collection, right? Except that therein lies a problem that I’ve clearly been ignoring… read full entry »

After having a good moan about my financial / housing situation post-split from Karl, which ended on a jokey note about a project £15k, I thought well… actually, why don’t I start a new project? And why aim for £15,000 — that would mean I’d still need £5k from the bank — why not aim… read full entry »

My housing status is basically an unstable mess. I have no idea where I will be living in 6 months time, and part of that is because Karl and I own an equal share of this house and one of us will have to buy the other out at some point (or sell up and… read full entry »

One of the first things I did this month after starting my new job was to set up a new bank account. It’s not that new work necessitates a change of banking details, I’m just slightly paranoid that my old details are splashed all over every invoice etc from self-employment. Plus, a better rate of… read full entry »

One of the ways I was hoping that we would pay off our mortgage (let’s pretend I’ve updated that page recently) was to sell the mounds of crap I have sitting around the house on ebay. Of course by crap I mean treasure … kids clothes, old PC parts, DVDs, books, that sort of thing…. read full entry »

Before I even look at the figures, I’m feeling a little more confident about this month. There were a few ‘cheats’ but I’ve mostly stuck to a £100 cash budget for everything. Let’s see what that tallies up to… Joint account expenditure Non-negotiable outgoings Mortgage: £412.97 Childcare: £222.00 Energy: £99.00 Internet: £11.49 Phone: £60.61

I figured that if we’re going to be serious about this mortgage free in 5 years thing, I should be looking at where our money is going before we look at how much we can start moving over in overpayments. This is made slightly more time-consuming by the fact I have the joint account AND… read full entry »

This week I was reading through Jax’s post on her new blog – The challenge – and my mortgage statement which, quite by coincidence arrived on the same day. Through Jax I also found Mortgage Free in Three. To say I was inspired is an understatement. I’ve decided that we should be aiming to pay… read full entry »

Where to bloody begin?! So it starts off completely unrelated to houses. I get a phone call at work, close to 4pm, from Karl. Sounds like he’s having a heart attack. Mumbles something about Isabel; my God the adrenaline shot through me. In that split second I thought of everything terrible that could happen in… read full entry »