Keeping up with the Jonesy

So my 1st proper diary post

Nothing much will be happening in :money: land for me this week. My spreadsheet tells me it's 4 days 'til payday (it actually tells me lol i set up a formula ) so i'm just trying to hang on until then. Atleast today was a NSD.

I have precisely £5.27 in my current account (hence my weekly challenge budget of £5). Everything is paid and we have food in the house, however friends want us to go out Thursday. I have been selling on eb*y and am currently awaiting payment for 3 items so hopefully that'll boost the bank balance enough. I am determined to stick to the repayment plan I calculated in my spreadsheet - I need to in order to achieve all my 2013 goals!

C'mon Eb*y buyers - pay up!

Thanks for dropping in Snagggles! Fingers crossed for Eb*y too!

Just gave SP my gas & elec reads - we are now a massive £3.60 in credit :rotfl: Still, better than being in debt I suppose.

Bonjour :money: diary,

I'm back from a lovely few days in Paris. The trip was very romantic, the hotel was tres posh but it was flipping cold! From an MSE point of view we had 90 euros left from the trip so they can be kept for our next break

The sheen was slightly taken off our trip as the day before we went we got a massive water bill for £336 for 6 months and were told the DD was increasing from £21 to £82 a month! I rang and did all the checks and it seems the bill is right - the toilet had a small problem of not flushing properly a few months back but i never thought it would cost us over £300. It was fixed ages ago so i've tried to give more meter reads to prove our consumption forecast will be wrong but the adviser didnt seem to want to take them/re-adjust things. In the end i dug my heels in and told them the DD can be put to £50 to pay off the debt and ongoing usage. The problem was apparent in August yet they didnt feel the need to tell us so i wasn't really going to put myself out/in debt. (btw i work for an energy company and am aware how changes in consumption are flagged to companies so had weight in my argument). Anyway rant over - we'll pay the bill, give regular reads and keep an eye on things.

Well it's the 1st of the month and all the DDs have gone out so I can update figures. As things currently stand:

Credit Card: £850 outstanding 63% paid
Loan: £2850 outstanding 43% paid
Savings: £350 saved 35% saved

I've joined NSKs March challenge to keep me focused and will be keeping up with the WSCs as i think keeping track of what i spend in a week really highlights waste. I mean its all well and good if i have 6/7 NSDs a week but if i spend a fortune on the 7th day then my good stats arent really a true reflection.

Alongside the usual money challenges, i'm also determined to lose weight this month. I weighed myself today (13.5 :eek:) and will check on this every Friday. Ideally i want to be around 9 stone so a long way to go (i'm only small so this is healthy for me).

So see you in a week (if not sooner) diary! x

The exciting news for today is I sold my car!

Only £200 but it was 16 years old with a judder.

I just couldnt justify the cost of it - insurance £53pm, fuel £15pm, tax works out at £20pm plus any MOT/repair costs. Even if i took a taxi everywhere i used it for it wouldnt come to £90 odd a month. OH has a new nice car, which we've agreed to share - I walk to work and he cycles most days so should be quite easy to manage. My only monthly costs will be my name on his insurance (£10 approx) and about £15 petrol, if that. Still, feels wierd to look out the window and see an empty space.

I rang up Di*mond to cancel my insurance and despite telling the advisor I'd sold the car today, had to listen to a script about how a car with no insurance needs a SORN etc etc... The insurance was due to run until 5th May so i asked whether the cancellation fee would outweigh paying the final 2 months. I was told the admin fee was £47 to cancel, March already paid for, a lot of useless info that didnt apply to me and then the man said I dont owe anything and *mumble mumble* refund. I asked him to repeat what he meant about a refund but he was non-specific so didnt really answer me. So I asked "please, yes or no, will I get a refund?", again the response didnt directly answer me :mad:. So I dont really know where I stand - the documents are in the post so hopefully that'll clear things up.

If i get a permanent job which requires a car, i'll have to buy a new one, so i need to add a new goal:

Save for a car £3000

Not sure where that'll come on the priority list yet. In case you are wondering why i got rid of a car when i might need one shortly - the old one really couldn't be trusted anywhere you couldn't walk back from :rotfl: