Move to Portugal

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Survey Sites
2008-06-08 22:20:00
I used to be a member of every survey site going, however it got too much to keep up with so now I'm just a member of YouGov. Their surveys are easy to complete and unlike some sites you never get half way through a survey to be told you don't meet the profile.If you like doing surveys then why not have your say and join YouGov. So far I've earned £50, the minimum payout, from them and I'm well on my way to the next £50.To join YouGov my referral link is here (thank you) or the non referral link to site here.
More About: Survey , Sites

Still waiting to complete new mortgage
2008-06-08 18:28:00
There was a little hold up in the mortgage change over due to the Building Insurance. It ran out in April and our solicitors still had the old schedule. The mortgage company needed a copy of the new insurance schedule and after several attempts to scan the document and then fax it, I've now sent a photocopy through the post. Apparently the other copies weren't clear enough.We had a letter from the Abbey with our new mortgage payment amount, £953.47, which would be due on 1st July if we were staying with them. This is nearly £150 more a month than the previous fixed rate deal and £100 more than our new deal, so its good that we're changing. I'll just be glad when its all sorted out.
More About: Mortgage , Complete , Waiting

The great mortgage payoff
2008-06-01 07:59:00
The June direct debit has left the bank account, however as we are in the middle of swapping mortgages, I have no idea where we are with the balance this month. It's got a little confusing as we've borrowed more than the balance outstanding. This is because we applied 3 months ago, so the figures were done on the balance then. It doesn't matter, as when the dust settles we'll just pay the extra off the new mortgage as it has unlimited over payments.I've placed the £600 overpayment money in the e-saver for now, so it's ready to go as and when.On a side note part of the bathroom window frame broke yesterday, which means we need a new one. This whole window has needed replacing ever since we moved in and I'm surprised its lasted for two years. The list of home improvements still needed gets bigger and bigger! So far I have:Hall tiles cleaned/restoredChimneys re stacked x 2 Insulation in the roofRemove conifer tress x 2Repair/replace all windows, some have wet rot!Gravel outside ...
More About: Property , Great , Mortgage , Renovation

A typical day chez Move To Portugal
2008-05-29 16:06:00
Lizzie and other bloggers have been posting their typical days so I thought I would follow suit. This is a typical work day for me.6am: Get up - Coffee and Internet together. I read all the posts in my Google reader, read the headlines in the NY Times and UK Times online and empty my email in box7am: Shower and get ready for work, make packed lunches, read work emails, plan my work route and switch on work mobile8am: Take children to school and then onto work, or if dh takes them, another hour blogging or clicking :)9am: Work6pm: Usually home although work mobile on until 10pm!! Sort dinner and put washing on.7pm: Do any work admin/planning I need to do, check my emails, check my eBay listings, Amazon listings, check kids homework.8pm: Blog, read, talk, relax.10pm: Watch TV, CSI, ER, Greys Anatomy, anything dh has recorded on the Sky+ for me. Our guilty pleasure. No adverts and quicker viewing :)11pm: BedI usually fit grocery shopping and errands into my work day as I'm mobile all ...
More About: Portugal , Move , Organisation

May Update
2008-05-23 21:40:00
Things have just been ticking along in our house lately, the re mortgage is currently going through and fingers crossed it should all be completed by the 3rd of June. We're not going to make our usual overpayment on the 1st due to the timing of the mortgage swap over, instead we are putting the money in the e-saver and then making the payment when the dust has settled.My new organising business is up and running and I already have a client who's a friend of a friend of a friend!I've also added some lovely new blogs to my sidebar this month, most of them have a 'simple living' theme as this is the direction I'm moving in. I think this is a natural progression from living a frugal and organised life.Small Notebook - Rachel who lives in Texas and has a lovely simple blogSimple Mom - Toblerone who's passionate about simplicity and balanced livingSimply Breakfast - I could look at these simple breakfast photo's all dayMiles Away in France - Escaping the Rat Race to life in a beau...
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Grocery Spending so far in May
2008-05-18 09:16:00
I've spent £124.68 so far this month, so with a budget of £200 I have £75.32 left.My menu plan for this week is:Roast Chicken and VegPizza and SaladSpaghetti and Tomato SauceShepherds Pie and VegChicken CurryLarge Tuna/Prawn Salad with New PotsFish, Chips and PeasAll these meals are simple and easy to get ready after work. The shepherds pie and the curry are made and in the freezer.
More About: Spending , Grocery

Can you learn to cook at 43?
2008-05-16 11:11:00
This post has nothing to do with paying off the mortgage, but is more a word of warning if you value your sleep!Do not discover the world of food blogs at 11pm at night, as it leads to staying up almost all of the night and your whole world changing. I now need to learn to cook and I mean really need to.Further Reading:Smitten Kitchen in NY
More About: Food , Blogs , Cook , Learn

Our Goals Board
2008-05-14 14:28:00
If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that I'm pretty focused on achieving our goals, very focused, sometimes I think it borders on obsession. We have constant reminders of our aims and goals all around us, a laminated copy of them near the computer, a handwritten copy in our account book, Algarve reading by the bed, a mortgage overpayment piggy bank on the dresser, and the visual goals board above. Everywhere you go in our house you can't escape the fact that we want to pay off the mortgage and move to Portugal. Some may think this is too much, I think it keeps us motivated to achieve our dreams. When we first devised our plan dh and I both wrote down our five main priorities in life after family and our health. These are a given. These priorities could be anything, however silly they may seem. Mine were, in no particular order, to have financial freedom, to be in the sunshine, to travel (I love America), to lead a simple life and to read good books. If I achieve...
More About: Board , Goals

Renewal of passport - How much?
2008-05-14 12:52:00
There is no way to save money on this, unless you never want to travel, £72 to change the name on a passport, I thought it was £55 but it appears to have gone up!
More About: Spending , Renewal , Passport

Organising: Our housekeeping schedule
2008-05-10 08:36:00
Lizzie from Lizzies Homeworld gave me the idea for this week's organising post. Having seen the photos of my house she assumes that I clean a lot, lol, oh if only you new the truth Lizzie :)I don't clean a lot but I am very tidy. I'm very ruthless about clearing the clutter as soon as it hits the house. I spend about ten minutes in the morning before work, after the kids have finished their morning rituals, and then ten minutes before bed at night. The only cleaning I do mid week is a quick wipe down of the kitchen and bathroom. At the weekend, usually Sunday morning, dh and I both spend an hour cleaning the whole house, he will hoover and dust upstairs while I sweep and dust downstairs, dh will then clean the floors downstairs while I blitz the bathroom.Once every three months we 'spring clean', this means go behind cupboards and beds, hoover the blinds, clean the windows inside and out, clean out all the kitchen cupboards etc. This takes about 4 hours.To keep paperwork clutte...
More About: Schedule , Housekeeping , Organisation , Clutter

Project grocery bill
2008-05-07 09:49:00
Another post about grocery costs, meal planning and my constant frustration with it all!I need to get serious about the amount we are spending on food. I was allowing myself a budget of £200 a month for the five of us and this was proving impossible due to the rising food prices. I've overspent every month this year. Now that my eldest daughter is away until June I should be able to feed the four of us in May for £200, with a little planning.As well as lowering my spending I'm trying to provide healthier food, I've slipped back into oven chip mode, which is not good. One of my goals this year was to provide healthier food for my family and its got better, however there is still a long way to go.May goals:Go to the farmers market once a weekStick to the meal planBatch cook this SundayProvide one vegetarian meal a weekI'm going to post my grocery spending on this blog to make me accountable.Spent so far: £41.75
More About: Project , Bill , Grocery

Organising: My meal planner
2008-05-03 13:43:00
I'd love to do a post about how I use my meal planner without fail every week, always sticking to it, always following the meals, but I'd be lying. I probably stick to it about 60% of the time.When I do stick to it, it definitely saves me money, when I don't it sometimes saves money, sometimes costs money. Take last night, I went shopping only buying things on offer and have then done a quick menu plan for next week to fit around them.My meal plan folder contains the following:12 weeks of meals on a 4 week rotationRecipes, cut from magazines, MSE, anywhere reallyWeekly shopping list for every weekly planA monthly shopping list for basicsI also do the following:Stock up on BOGOF items (if I use them only)Shop at all supermarkets (Aldi for tins, eggs etc)Use coupons (which I keep in my handbag)Adapt the menu's for food on offerUse a price bookMy menu plan took about 3-4 hours to set up, however was time very well spent. If only I could stick to it 100% :)Further Reading:Living fru...
More About: Organisation , Planner , Meal

The great mortgage payoff
2008-05-02 09:45:00
The May direct debit payment has gone through and I've sent the overpayment check, so the new balance on our mortgage as of today is £129,438.The percentage figures now stand at:Abbey own 69.97% of the house. We own 30.03% of the house.We've now made £3,100 in over payments this year.The target date for owning 50% of the house is 31st December 2009
More About: Great , Mortgage

Retiring early? - No not me
2008-04-28 09:54:00
I've received an email from a reader asking if I'm looking to retire when I move to Portugal. The answer is no. I would go out of my mind with nothing to do all day apart from cook and sunbathe. That's not to say I want to work like I do now, I'm looking along the lines of part time, with my own small business. I just want a more simpler life. DH is going to be working full time, he's still quite young and isn't ready to quit the rat race yet, that's why he's learning the language so intently.There is a post on one of my favourite blogs, The Wastrel Show about retiring at fifty. Check out cinzea's post, it's certainly gives you something to think about.
More About: Goals , Early

The sun is shining - at last!
2008-04-26 14:24:00
I want one of these, not need, want!They do cost the same as one months mortgage overpayment, so I will have to go without.A towel on the grass is much cheaper :(
More About: Dreaming , Shining

The #149 Carnival of Personal Finance
2008-04-21 20:13:00
This week Frank at The Happy Rock presents the 149th Carnival of Personal Finance - Chasing Dreams Edition.My post Organising my Paperwork was included along with 85 other posts. Please visit the Carnival, there are some great blogs to discover.Thank you to Frank for running the Carnival, and for including my post.This post was also linked over at Brip Blap, one of my favourite blogs. Steve at Brip Blap covers personal finance, wealth building, self improvement and all sorts of other things.Other reading:The #140 Carnival of Personal Finance

Organising my paperwork
2008-04-19 08:56:00
This is the simple method I use to keep all our paperwork/bills organised and paid.When anything arrives in the post during the week it goes on top of the boxes under the pig, then once a week on a Sunday morning I pay it, file it or shred it.We have a file for each personal account, a file for the joint account, a box for insurance policies etc and a box for the children's finance stuff.There is also an A4 book that I use for keeping a written monthly budget, this also has our annual goals printed at the front.We have gone paperless on most bills but not all companies offer this service. I like to be organised, it saves time and it can save you money. Who wants to pay late payment charges to a bank or company?
More About: Organisation , Clutter

Health cover in Portugal
2008-04-17 21:03:00
I'm currently building up a picture of what our budget will look like when we are eventually living in Portugal . One of the things we need to budget for is health care cover. At the moment we are both covered by our company Private Health Plan which costs us next to nothing every month. I've put some quotes into the BUPA website tonight, and this has given me a variety of options and costs to think about.For the fully comprehensive cover the cost is £3,732 for the two of us per year. If you have an excess of £1000, this then reduces to £1,879 per year.The cost for basic cover, just hospital in and out patient care, is £2,021 a year. Obviously this would reduce if you had an excess amount on the policy.We would be looking for the fully comprehensive cover, as you never know what is around the corner, however would have the excess of £1000 and self insure ourselves for anything up to this amount.Dentist treatment is also expensive in Portugal and I read somewhere that its better to ...
More About: Healthcare , Cover , Budget

Holiday week update
2008-04-16 17:49:00
Things are progressing along nicely with a business idea I have. I'm sticking with what I know and that's how to organise things, I'll let you all know more when its up and running.The new washing machine is installed, with the plumbing all done by 'move to Portugal' plumbers, me! It wasn't as easy as it should of been as the outflow pipe didn't reach the under the sink bit (a good plumbing term) and so I had to connect an extra bit. So far no leaks.The garden is now ready for the summer, I know that it'll be here soon. We aren't buying any plants this year just living with what we already have. I would rather put any money towards the mortgage.My eldest daughter is off to Thailand in the morning for nine weeks and I have to drop her at the train station at 4am, so I need an early night tonight. I wish I was going, I know the weather is good there!
More About: Holidays , Holiday , Update , Week

April update
2008-04-12 21:45:00
We have a week off work next week which should provide some time to get the garden in order and get the garden furniture out for those long summer nights ahead of us here in England. I'm hopeful anyway!We will also be re doing the budget for the rest of 2008. Things keep changing and we want to know exactly where we are at. We're looking to overpay by £700 in May, an increase on the normal overpayment of £600, I would love to overpay by this much extra every month but I'm not sure if we can quite achieve this yet. We only have two more months with the Abbey and then we switch to our new mortgage. The monthly payment from July will be more than we are paying now, although it has reduced at the moment as the Bank of England base rate has dropped to 5% and the new fixed rate mortgage is linked to this.The switch from British Gas to Eon is now complete, we just need to pay the final bills for both the gas and the electric. I'm still waiting for the cash back of £30 from Moneysuperm...
More About: April , Update , Budget

In one hand and out the other
2008-04-11 14:12:00
Well I managed to save over £100 on the buildings insurance and the washing machine broke the next day. It's beyond repair. I have another one being delivered today, fingers crossed. The cost £250 for delivery and removal of the broken machine. I went through cashback rewards and then Tesco. Tesco Direct are currently doing triple points on purchases.
More About: Spending , Hand

Renewing the house buildings insurance
2008-04-06 15:17:00
We received a quote from our current insurer for the annual buildings insurance cover, which is due to expire this month, for £270.59. Don't worry the quote said they've checked over ten insurance companies and found us a great deal! Never ever just renew in this way, always check yourself.I went to Money Saving Expert and following the Martin Lewis way of finding the best quote. It took about 30 minutes in all, but I managed to get a quote for £151.98, a saving of over £118. I will be paying the premium outright as the finance charges of 21% APR for paying monthly doesn't seem too attractive.
More About: House , Insurance , Buildings , The House

The great mortgage payoff
2008-04-01 08:29:00
First of all I've been a bad blogger. Things got a bit hectic around home due to a few things but I should be back to normal this week.The April direct debit payment has gone through today and I've sent the overpayment check for £600 so the new balance on our mortgage as of today is £130,305.The percentage figures now stand at:Abbey own 70.44% of the house. We own 29.56% of the house. Small progress, but at least its progress.The target date for owning 50% of the house is 31st December 2009
More About: Great , Mortgage

Week-end round up - Portugal
2008-03-22 20:00:00
I thought I'd start a little ongoing weekly round up of the blogs I read. This week its food week as everyone, apart from me who's talking about tables, seems to be talking about food, eating it or cooking it.Eddie at Algarve Buzz is making Folar da Pascoa- Portuguese Easter cake.Lily at In Love with Lisbon continues the theme with Lily makes Portuguese Easter BreadJennie at Straight From The Farm has been to Portugal and continues the food theme with Simple is Best. Thanks to Lily for highlighting this post.See Portugal is highlighting the Pois, Cafe in Lisbon and Dream Portugal is making Chicken Piri-Piri
More About: Round Up , Week , Round

To ship or not to ship
2008-03-21 10:22:00
I know its a bit early to think about shipping items to Portugal but I've been thinking about it all week. I'm not sure that I want all new stuff when I get there. Besides the environmental reasons there is also the sentimental reasons. I've had the pictured dining table for 21 years, its as old as my eldest daughter, its battered and far from perfect. All those years of family meals, homework, children painting and colouring has had an effect on it. Even so it would last another 21 years. Do I ship it along with other things or is this too expensive to do this? I need to find out.Living a frugal life is having a real effect on how I view things. I've become so accustomed to not buying anything, making do and repairing what we do have in order to save money, that I've actually lost all desire to buy anything again. The consumer spender in me has disappeared.
More About: Ship

Financial happenings
2008-03-17 09:19:00
We've been approved for our new mortgage deal, it seems to have taken ages, we won't be drawing it down until June but at least its in place.We had the woodworm in the roof treated on Friday at a cost of £269 + vat. Its got a 30 year guarantee attached so hopefully this will be the end of it.The Council Tax bill arrived, an increase of £6 a month on last year, an annual extra cost £60 so I will need to adjust the budget slightly.Grocery costs update: I'm working on a Menu Plan File, which will contain a 12 week menu plan, frugal recipes and shopping lists to go with the weekly plans. At the moment I do plan what we eat however if I'm honest I deviate from it too much. I will start to follow the plan next Monday with the aim of reducing the weekly grocery bill, until then we are doing a store cupboard challenge.
More About: Financial , Happenings

House prices
2008-03-14 20:39:00
I've been thinking, read that as stressing, about house prices a lot lately. Are they dropping? and if there are, are they going to keep on dropping? There is no way to know the correct answer. If we weren't going to Portugal the price of our house would be immaterial as we'd never be moving, but we are going to be selling eventually, and the price we gets affects what we buy over there. At the moment houses in our village are not selling very quickly and I check the property websites nearly every day and they don't seem to be selling much either.Dh tells me not to worry as we still have over 4 years yet and a lot can happen in that 4 years, so as of today I'm going cold turkey on the property sites and not looking at them. I'm going to concentrate on the thing that is in my control and that's our house. I can get it looking so great that it'll sell like lemons on pancake day (sorry that was the first thing I thought of!)I'm going to create a plan and a budget this weekend ...
More About: House , House Prices , Property , Prices

Recommended Reading
2008-03-12 07:15:00
Dh and I read a lot of personal finance books. Having spent years wasting money we wanted to re evaluate our finances and our life. We didn't want to move to Portugal without any money, without any assets and have to come back home after a while with nothing left in the bank. We wanted to have a well thought out plan that will help us achieve our dreams and yet still remain sensible about it.Lizzie at Lizzies Homeworld has a link to our blog that says 'Laura taking sensible action to Move To Portugal ' and this is exactly what we are doing. I couldn't have put it better myself. Sensible does not equal boring though. Trying to pay off your mortgage is fun.As part of our move from consumerism to a more frugal way of life we've read many personal finance books. The best for us without a doubt was Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez and Robin. This book is not just about money but about your relationship with it. This book shows you how to get your life back, so that you can start...
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Saving money - Free toiletries
2008-03-10 07:32:00
I haven't bought any toiletries, shampoo, shower gel, soap etc since last year. I'm trying to go the whole year without actually spending any of our money on them. We use all own brand products except for toothpaste and I buy them with Boots vouchers that I get through Pigsback. Me and hubby both have an account with them and you complete daily quizzes and click through sites to get piggy points. A full explanation of the site is here.There are different rewards available and one of them is Boots vouchers. I now have £20 in vouchers ready to stock up on toiletries for the next few weeks. I always get bog of items and go to the shop when the toothpaste is on a 3 for the price of 2 offer.
More About: Money , Free , Saving

Reviewing our goals
2008-03-09 10:33:00
I'm constantly reviewing our goals, both long term and short term. When I first started out with this blog our goals were a little woolly. I've learnt a lot over the last few months and I have a better understanding of what we need to do to achieve our dream. The goals are more concise now, they are SMART.S = SpecificM = MeasurableA = AchievableR = RealisticT = Time bound2008 1st Goal:S : Our mortgage balance to be under £119,000 at the end of 2008M: Our mortgage statement in January 2009A: Our budget covers the extra £600 overpayment, our annual bonus is guaranteedR: See achievable goal (above)T: We will achieve the above before 31st December 2008.We have these printed up on our goals board in the dining room to remain focused.
More About: Goals , Reviewing