Shortie's DFW Diary

Thanks Loz, yes it felt good having a productive day, and I managed to get a solid night of undisturbed sleep which did me a huge favour today - woo hoo!

Oh wow.... I knew I had been away from my diary for a fair while but I hadn't realised it had been this long. I feel bad for appearing to fall off the face of the earth for so long...

Lots has moved and shifted in these few months - mostly emotional ones, and some of those have driven some financial changes (which should in trun help with some of the emotional ones, lol)

I'll grab my newer SOA from work and post that up too.

So a mini round up on a few months that have seen some of the biggest personal shifts I've seen...!

So mid to end of Jan saw Mr Shortie and I falling out with his brother and sister in law. It was the culmination of years of a strained relationship and I'm not proud of the fact that I didn't just 'sit back and take it again' and that this time I stood up for myself/us and voiced my frustration over a situation, which went down like a lead balloon lol. a few failed attempts to meet up and one positively rude one where I took such umberage to being disregarded and not even asked over for a cup of tea after they decided to just cut a day's plans short and they knew full well that I was 2 roads away after a 1 hr drive to get to theirs, that I cried on my way home I was so frustrated... Anyway, needless to say we're no longer speaking, and this isn't like me.. I normally try and smooth things over even if it means I'm the one backing down. But maybe there is just too much water under this bridge at the moment for me to care any more..

I couldn't tackle the mass climbing growth on the back fence on one side as I quickly realised that it was holding big bits of the fence up (lol) and it's ours to replace. We were getting quotes for £1,300 to replace it (we have a long garden and some bits had no wooden fence, just the old council chook wire stuff and I wanted proper fencing to stop the dogs barking at each other) so I decided to sell my classic Mini to help fund it. Which proved tonnes harder than I thought and I lost a lot of money on her (but she was a project car that would cost a lot to put right, and I don't have the money!). So we replaced the fence ourselves with the help of my Dad, in 2 days for £412 and a Chinese takeout as a thanks Then, the next day the flipping Mini sold and I had cash for no specific purpose lol... (that's been decided to go to redecorating and refurnishing the kids bedrooms - I want to see the money go to something I deem as emotionally valuable seeing as I lost my Mini for the money...)

Money started getting rediculously tight too - with making a big a payment to my Dad for the loan as I could, my travel card costs going up and realising that I wasn't putting enough aside for the oil etc.... I am lucky to come out of a month with £10 to my name, and most months I am a couple of hundred pounds overdrawn (which naturally then makes the next month a couple of hundred pounds tighter!) so we cracked and we're in the process of trying to sell our rental property - the equity release will clear our debts outright, saving me £800+ a month (which will actually work out to be £500+ as I have to consider my Benefit in Kind tax payment, which the rental income was 'dealing' with) AND we'll have enough to get building work done on our house - at the very least we'll be able to reroof, remove walls from and insulate the annex which is an oddshape and also a heat sink, but hopefully also be able to go through planning and get and extension to get another room downstairs to use as a playroom and guest room for when the inlaws come to stay (and adding a bedroom should we ever move again) or go into the loft space maybe...?

My eldest also had a 4-5 month spell of constant infections since just before Christmas, which had a knock on effect of other symptoms as well as playing havoc with his blood sugars (he's Type 1 Diabetic) but is now having a series of ops for the repeat infections he gets


Wow, that was a waffle and a half there wasn't it?? On the good front though...

My eldest had a good quarterly review (Diabetes) today despite the barrage of infections and having 2 ops last month, and we've changed hospitals for the issues relating to the infections (they're not D related) and we finally have a great team who are on the ball and not messing around - it does mean operations every 6 weeks until the issue is resolved, but finally.. we have a plan in place!

Taking the plunge to sell the rental house has really helped me chill out about money now..I know it is/was a pension for us, but we were struggling every month right now, plus after the income tax on the rent, my benefit in kind tax, letting agent fees and interest were taken out there was hardly anything left over to pay off the mortgage balance (it's a One Account mortgage so anything you leave in there is seen as a payment off the balance unless you draw it back out again) so it seemed fruitless - I'll have the BIK tax as long as I work where I do, and I'll have the income tax for as long as we rent the property - it felt like the situation wouldn't change while I felt really stressed about paying debts etc off..

Paying off the loans means I can start to build our savings up again. For example we have old cars (which we like so it's fine) but if one goes bang tomorrow... well.. we have one less car as I have no means to get another, even a cheapie run around.

And as silly as this may sound, we got to spend some time at the lottie this weekend - oh my the weeds were HUGE but we've cleared the beds where the previous owner had things planted and we have gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, chives, red currant and fennel growing there as we speak - woo hoo! Oh and the plum tree that overhangs our garden has a nice amount of fruit setting on there at the mo too. Plus the strawberries we inherited in the garden are looking great and have loads of fruit on them (provided we get them before the slugs or birds of course, lol)

**Updated SOA**


Incoming wages, post tax: £3,596

Outgoings:

Direct from my account:
- Petrol - £100
- House Ins - £38
- Life Ins - £15
- Travel card for work - £500 (due to go down by about £80 as I've figured a cheaper way to do the journey)
- Entertainment - £100 (anything from cinema with the kids to a family take out) but in especially tight months we don't take this out
- Food - £200 - this is for 2 kids, 2 adults, 2 dogs, 2 cats and some chooks. It covers everything from food to toiltries. If it comes from Mr T (or alternative) it comes out of this budget. In truth, we sometimes go over budget with this
- 'Yearly by Month' - £225 - this is an account where I have worked out certain annual costs like MOTs, car Ins, car tax, school uniforms, vets bills.. and broken the questimated total down to per month. The outgoings have gone down in this as I have sold my Mini so one less lot of insurance, MOT & tax , plus I take school uniform out of the clothing budget instead of out of here now. I'm still putting the same amount aside at the mo though as it might be a handy emergency buffer one day!
- Clothing - £30 - Mr Shortie and I tend to keep clothes until they fall apart, but things need replacing. School uniform now comes out of this too
- Mobile Phone - £47.50 for both of us - our old phones we one their last legs

Other Monthly spendings:
D/D to bills account - I move £430 here to cover any changes to utilities- a buffer as it were. This covers:
- Oil - 100 - we've had to base this on winter spends as we've not had a summer with oil heating yet. I'm hoping we'll have a decent build up by next winter!
- Water (metered) - £46
- Electric - £66 (so far over winter this hasn't been enough - we'll either level this back out in summer or need to increase this)
- Council Tax - £137
- Sky - £26 -yes, not an essential but we don't live an extravagent life, and don't go down the pub
- BT and broadband - £40 (still in contract so this can't be changed even if there are better deals around..)

Debts
- Mortgage - £731 - I'm on a stonking deal here for a chunk of it, and a much higher rate top up - plans are to focus on getting the high rate top up product paid off when the loans have gone
- Extension Loan - £302 - carried from old house - I think this is at 7.9%?
- Bank of Mum and Dad loan - £500 per month at 3.5% interest (the rate of the account this was borrowed from)


Mr Shortie: He isn't working so he gets paid the remainder of the Child Benefit (some is paid into a child trust fund), the DLA and the Carers Allowance. So, total incoming for him there is: £506.80

Mr Shortie's outgoings:
- Mobile phone - £20 - he pays this to me
- Plumbing Course Loan - £130 (he got suckered into this and has totally lost interest. he can pick it back up at any time, but regardless of if he's doing it or not, he still has to pay off the loan he decided to go for when the sales person 'complimented' him into enrolling for ht eblooming thing, sigh...)
- Petrol - guestimated at £100