LonelyRat's (not so lonely) Road to Riches

Day off today and nothing to report. NSD which is always good Going to aim for another one tomorrow.

I am panicking a tiny bit at how little money I really do have this month. It's only been 3 days since payday and I'm already in a flap I know I made the choice to go part time for the sake of my mental health but I am worried it was the wrong decision. I don't know if I should have held off until I had more debt gone... Nothing I can do about it now though I suppose

I hate that I seem to be wishing my life away always waiting for payday.

Oh Silver Queen the pastry was such a disaster! Will not be trying again for a wee while I think! I'm on Season 5 at the moment and am really enjoying it. It is very silly but I think that's why I like it... It's just pure escapism! I usually watch shows that can be a bit darker so having something like this is nice. I'll be sad when I'm all caught up. I'm not a fan of change either though so we'll see how I feel when I get to the latest season! I'll keep you posted :rotfl: I'm not sure if I've read your thread or not. Will jump over and check it out when back from the shops

Dd's all come out the bills account now and I had more in there than I anticipated. I always round up the dds and leave some extra in the account anyway but I think this time I rounded up too much as had quite a bit left... Better than having too little I suppose! Have now transferred £150 to the Santander CC so that's brought that balance down a fair chunk which is nice! I'm also expecting some money from OH when he gets his student loan payment at the beginning of Feb so that will be going to Savings/ rat fund.

Ideally I'd like to have £300 or more in the savings before we go to Copenhagen in March. Then the plan will be either use the Monzo or the Santander CC as a back up card (0% fx fees). If I do have to use the Santander card I will be paying off what I use straight away from the Savings and will not use more than I have saved.

Day off today and just lounged about (watching more Once Upon A Time :cool:). Going to pop to the shops and get a bottle of wine as me and OH going to make a nice dinner and watch a film tonight

HI Dusty! Thanks for popping in That's amazing how close you are to being debt free! I'm a little bit jealous but happy for you all the same haha! Soon that will be me... just need to persevere. I have an app on my phone that counts down days and I've set my Debt Free Date on it... Only 175 more days to go! :cool:

I'm finding that posting here more regularly is really enjoyable and like you say I am more likely to try something if I post it here

How are you finding Slimming World? Loads of my colleagues use it and have lost a lot of weight so I've been toying with the idea for a while... It's just quite expensive and I don't know if I can commit to it while I'm this skint :eek: I may bite the bullet as I am overweight and would love to shift some of it. We shall see... Maybe I can find some room in my budget!

Aww thank you Dusty! I will definitely go check it out I'll leave joining Slimming World right now and may join as a reward for doing (the dreaded) Overtime - if I ever manage to get any! :mad: All the requests I put through were declined today as they capped the offers after I applied Nothing on the go for the next few weeks as well which really isn't ideal. I may see if I can find a part time evening/weekend job to top up my sad little wage.... I don't know how likely it will be that I can find one but I can try.

Had a look for accommodation for Copenhagen and managed to find something £100 cheaper than what I'd already booked :beer: Cancelled the old booking and re-booked with this new one. So saving some money which is always ideal. Best thing is the new place has a small kitchen so we can save money on meals out as well!

Took little lady rat to the vet today about her lump as it's gotten quite a bit bigger since her last visit. I was hoping to see if she would do surgery to remove it but she seemed quite against it. She says lady rat has lost quite a fair bit of weight which means she is more likely to not wake up from the anaesthetic. She said she would book us in if we wanted but she wasn't too optimistic about it. So we've had a think and we'll just leave her as she is now and then when she starts to stop doing the things she enjoys take her in and have her PTS. It's really hard because I feel like we're just doing nothing and I feel quite helpless. Vet did say she doesn't seem to be in any discomfort at the moment which is my main concern. Going to book in her cagemate for a check up in the next few days as well as I'm concerned she's either got a pituitary tumour or an ear infection. If it's the tumour then we'll likely have to say goodbye to both of them pretty soon Maybe it's for the best though as they shouldn't be kept on their own. Gahhh. I feel so guilty and useless. My main concern is either of them being in pain but that doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.

On more positive note the vet only charged us £8 for the visit and it should have been more than that. She said the boss was on holiday so she could get away with it! Also 173 days till I'm debt free! (Although today has only just begun so that's a bit of a cop out).

Had an issue with a self scanner at Tesco on Wednesday... I paid an odd amount in change in then put a round figure on my Tesco cc by scanning their Pay+ app but I think I confused the machine and it just completely froze! They asked me to pay again, which I did, but I could already see it had come off my Tesco card balance so I had thought it was going to be a whole rigmarole of contacting customer service etc. to get a refund BUT they handled it really well in the shop. The lady helping me just took my number and called me about half an hour after we left and said the machine had finally spat out a receipt so she had my refund in cash if I wanted to go in for it. I'm neutral money-wise but still feels like a win not having to chase it. Paid the cc off using my current account and just going to keep the cash in my purse.

Got £65 left of the cash I'd taken out and £40 in the spending account. Got plenty of food in and me and OH have quit the booze again (only as of yesterday, but still, it's an improvement) so that should save us some money this month

Hmmm so yesterday was a bit of a write off :rotfl: I tried to go back to sleep at 3 am but didn't have any success so just stayed up then left for work at 6. By home time I was totally and completely shattered. I had a vending machine coffee for the first time since August last year... I was proud of kicking my buying food/ drink at work habit but I just couldn't make it through the day! Full of regret - 80p down and it tasted god awful.

Made chicken, haggis, neeps and tatties for dinner yesterday - a bit belated for Burns night but it was very yummy all the same!

Because I was so tired I didn't really manage much on my to do list I ended up snoozing at about half 7! Slept straight through to 6 this morning which was amazing. Never have I been so refreshed in my life...

To do:
[STRIKE]1. Email HR again as my proof of season ticket purchase wasn't sufficient
[/STRIKE][STRIKE]2. Call vet [/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]3. Call Tesco Bank
[/STRIKE]Turns out I don't actually need to which is good. I hate speaking on the phone (... and I work in a call centre, oh the irony!)
4. Text friend who just had a baby to organise a meet up
Will do this this evening
5. Laundry (wash and sort)
Will do this tomorrow as is my day off
[STRIKE]6. Shower
[/STRIKE]7. Try the new face mask
Will do this tonight
[STRIKE]8. Try to get to sleep at a reasonable time[/STRIKE]
Was 7pm reasonable?!

Having so much fun with my new spending tracker app thing (how sad am I?). It's got an option of adding in regular outgoings so I've input all my dd's so I don't need to do them again. It has a little pie chart for your expenses and I'm sad to say that 'credit card payments' is my largest part of the pie Only 172 days to go so need to keep my chin up.

Researching things to do in Copenhagen and how to travel about and there's something called a Copenhagen Card which looks pretty good. You get it for a certain amount of hours and can travel on all their public transport and get free entry into museums and stuff so am considering getting that for us. Going to add up the price of the Card then the price of individual activities/ sights that I want us to see and work out if it actually will be the most economical.

Still haven't found OH's passport so that will be my task for tomorrow... I did ask him about it a few weeks ago so I'm worried if I mention it again it may arouse suspicion. Being sneaky is not my forte :eek: